What would it take?

[SoM]

I'm curious: What would it take (in the opinions of the people who read the posts in this forum) to attract more mappers to Eternity? Would it require more insane editing features? Perhaps the destruction of ZDoom? What does everyone here think?

[Amaster]

Heh, well a feature list would be a nice start :P. I dont think a lot of people actually know anything about what EE does. Partly I think it's because there's no real feature list on the EE page. No tutorials either. Lack of demo maps. The only reason I know anything at all about EE's features is because of IRC. I think most people end up seeing it as some kind of PRBoom with some other random stuff thrown in. Maybe I'm full of crap though.

[darknation]

I don't even know half the stuff eternity does that zdoom doesn't. Only information I have is when Quasar ignorantly screams code over the top of a penis-related conversation in #zdoom.

Plus, the eternity related projects that I am interested in (Millennium, Mordeth) are not exactly steaming down the pipeline like high speed shit.

Make a wiki or something. Grease someone to make a level that simply *must* be played on account of it's eternity related awesomeness. Demo it. Make tutorials. Build it and they will come, but you'll need to give them directions first.

[Quasar]

Yes. We need demo maps. BOOMEDIT.WAD immediately made me a BOOM fanatic on the first gametic. We've had a couple in the past which need to be resurrected and fixed up if necessary. More wouldn't hurt. I have an ExtraData demo map in progress which is barely acceptable for release. I'll probably go ahead and put out an alpha version of it after 3.33.50 release.

The wiki needs work. It's basically still empty. This is one of those things I barely have any time for.

[myk]

Well, to some it may look like ZDoom without slopes, plus by the look of things on the discussion threads its features either seem rather obscure, or else somehow broken (or incomplete).

And if you want to compare it to ZDoom, ZDoom already has an array of available maps; people play them and say "hey cool, I wanna do this", while they still don't really know much about what exactly should make them care about Eternity, or bother to install it.

Also, in a way Eternity is advertised as classic but feature rich, yet if you want features you generally go directly for something like ZDoom, where that is the prime motivation, and if you want to make a classic wad you go for standard Doom or plain Boom.

Plus threads like this come out a bit whiney or lacking in confidence, and that probably won't inspire much "loyalty".

[Lüt]

Probably the release of Millennium H1 and Mordeth E2...

SoM said:

(in the opinions of the people who read the posts in this forum)

...and asking this question in a forum that more than 5 people read :P

But seriously, as long as there aren't a considerable number of noteworthy maps requiring the port, there isn't going to be a considerable number of people using the port. I can't seem to find anybody to do more than a few day's worth of work over the course of a year, so good luck trying to get a quality demo map put together. Although, for the effort that would go into that alone, the same amount would likely finish Millennium's H1. I'm not saying this selfishly (at least not entirely), but if the occasional dedicated person would join up with Millennium and Mordeth, I'm sure you'd have your 2 huge projects in a short matter of time and the publicity you need for Eternity to join the ranks of popular port choices for both editing and playing would finally be generated.

Oh, and linked portals.

[Quasar]

I think for Millennium you need to get a hard, set list of what needs to be accomplished for the first release. Make it public. And most importantly, don't change or extend it. Lock it in so it can get done. The successful projects these days are more transparent, and less team-based. The problem is that people are *not* dedicated. They work on a whim and may abandon what they started. But somebody else may be willing to finish it given a chance.

[Lüt]

Heh, that much is true. I have been a lot more open about the project the last year or two, though not fully public. I've been letting essentially anybody I know and trust fairly well into the project/forum and asking just about anybody whose work I've seen and liked if they wanted to check it out. I suppose the next step is posting the public list. And really, a whim from most people would probably be enough to check most of the items off. As far as resources are concerned, I've been ready to drop almost any that aren't finished by the time the maps are ready to go. But until then, I'm trying to get as many done as possible.

[Mordeth]

What Eternity needs to attract more players? Simple... attract designers because the players will follow them. Getting the designers to notice you is what counts. So what to do...

First, the website. This needs to have a short highlights list of features, with screenshots to show it off, and with a link to the complete comprehensive list. Highlights are important to start with, since this will interest people more than a dull all-included list. Make also a special "designer highlight" section, where you also give short examples on how easy / flexible / robust your new editing features are. Also, what is it that makes Eternity distinctive from your main "competitors" ? Answer this question for yourself, then present the answers in your highlight feature list.

Then: showcase material. A visually atractive demo map showing off the highlights in action I'd call almost mandatory. Make a tutorial for designers explaining how to make that demo map. This will satisfy players and designers alike. And always give links to Eternity levels / projects.

Thirdly, the engine itself. No problem there, since it already packs a good distinctive feature list. But scripting needs to be your first priority instead of H/H support. Scripting is what makes people go and use ZDoom, so yours needs to be up to par. So far you've layed the foundation, but it needs to be fleshed out fully. Make sure one of your demo maps visibly contains scripting.

For now I totally agree with Lüt. Eternity is used by two big well-known projects, and once those are released you will have your audience. Unfortunately they seem to be a bunch of slackers :P

[Quasar]

Actually preliminary work on Hexen support should boost Small too. Pretty soon I'll be getting the ACS interpreter working and then I'll add matching natives to Small to cover its functionality. This would include such critical stuff like changing line textures.

Not to mention that ACS itself is a boost to scripting, since it is another alternative and widely known scripting language. EE doesn't provide its own ACS compiler; you either use Raven's original or use zdoom's set to generate Hexen-format ACS code (I have no knowledge of zdoom's new custom lump format and do not currently plan to support it). Now if I can figure out a good way to make it usable from DOOM-format maps with ExtraData, I'll really be in business.

[Mordeth]

Oh, just to make this clear: "scripting" is what immediately comes to my mind if you want to lure more designers this way. It's not anywhere near the top of my own priority wish list... because if it was I wouldn't have been using Eternity all this time ;) But like I said, it's the one main thing ZDoom still has over Eternity.

Not that this is a competition though :)

Going a bit offtopic, but scripting is also a bit overrated. You don't really need it for level design stuff. Any Boom-compatible port can do some nice seemingly "scripted" stuff. It's just that most new(er) mappers don't know the options at hand and automatically assume they need scripting to pull off something.

For example, last month I made a 64x64 console graphic that shows the on / off status of eight different switches and a text alternating proclaiming something 'safe' or 'not safe' depending on the actual situation in-game. That console is repeated a few times around the map since the player can shatter the console by (accidently) shooting it. No scripting involved, although I used Eternity features... with a bit of trouble I probably can pull it off in Boom as well.

But if you ask a question how to make stuff like that in the editing forum, you probably get "can't be done" or "use scripting" :)

Scripting is great for visual interaction with the player, like showing a boss health bar (see littlewhitemouse's latest creation), in-game storytelling or interaction with NPC's. In those cases scripting is required to have.

[fraggle]

Quasar said:

Yes. We need demo maps. BOOMEDIT.WAD immediately made me a BOOM fanatic on the first gametic. We've had a couple in the past which need to be resurrected and fixed up if necessary. More wouldn't hurt. I have an ExtraData demo map in progress which is barely acceptable for release. I'll probably go ahead and put out an alpha version of it after 3.33.50 release.

The wiki needs work. It's basically still empty. This is one of those things I barely have any time for.

Bring back SMMUEDIT.WAD!