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Killer5

Starting using Eternity, initial thoughts

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Hello. I have started using Eternity because I really like whatever the software renderer is doing (not privy to the technical stuff :P), I like that it is supporting more advanced mapping features, and I like that there aren't tas commands with which someone could modify demos (to my knowledge).

 

I am using the following dev build:

Eternity-x64-3.42.03a-271-gbb07591.7z    Feb 07 2018 03:12:40    2,937,912

 

After using it for a bit here are some observations I have made:

1.) Red screen from pain palette carries over to main menu - If I die I generally go back to the main menu and reload my game. If I die from something like a cyb rocket my screen is red from the pain palette.. if I press escape to go back to the main menu to reload a save the main menu is also red from the pain palette which prevents me from navigating the main menu. Can it be/is it possible to stop the pain palette from appearing when you are at the main menu?

 

2.) Addition of a 'restart map' button - prboom+ has a restart map and a skip map button. These functions are incredibly convenient to have assigned to a hotkey.

 

3.) Sound fx and midi are linked. If I reduce midi volume the sound fx get quieter. Is it possible to have these two sliders act separately from one another?

 

4.) It sounds like monsters are falling back asleep and waking up again like in vanilla cl2 (I hear boss monsters waking up constantly if they cannot see me). Is it possible to prevent this behavior from happening?

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2 hours ago, Killer5 said:

3.) Sound fx and midi are linked. If I reduce midi volume the sound fx get quieter. Is it possible to have these two sliders act separately from one another?

Make sure you have midiproc.exe in your Eternity folder. The drdteam builds don't seem to provide this for some reason (@Blzut3 needs to resolve this) so you'll need to probably grab it from a main release.

 

2 hours ago, Killer5 said:

4.) It sounds like monsters are falling back asleep and waking up again like in vanilla cl2 (I hear boss monsters waking up constantly if they cannot see me). Is it possible to prevent this behavior from happening?

It sounds like you've turned on "Monsters give up pursuit" in the compatibility options.

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@Edward850

Thanks for pointing out the give up pursuit command.

 

However the sound fx volume is still linked to the midi volume slider when I add 'midiproc.exe' to my eternity folder.

 

Eternity-3.42.03a-272-g0d2197c.7z    Feb 10 2018    03:12:232,674,779

 

Folder looks like this

 

 

y.png

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No problem. Also, I'll see what I can do about your issues 1 and 2. The second one should be pretty easy, as adding console commands and bindings is pretty trivial. The first one is a personal annoyance, though I'm not sure entirely how to deal with it cleanly.

 

EDIT: I've added a "restartmap" command. It's not in the menus, but you can type in console:

bind <SOMEKEY> restartmap

to bind it.

Edited by Altazimuth

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Hello. I've recently tried using the same build of Eternity as Killer5, but noticed larger maps were giving me significantly lower FPS than PRBoom+ in Software mode. If anything, it's closer to ZDoom in that regard when it comes to high sector maps or large numbers of enemies. Here is an example from Speed of Doom's map28: 40FPS in PRBoom+ vs 19FPS in Eternity. Same deal with testing high monster counts, such as in nuts.wad, where I get about half the frame rate of PRBoom+. So, is it just me or is Eternity's performance closer to that of ZDoom rather than PRBoom+ when it comes to handling large maps or monster counts?

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Eternities software renderer will be slower than PRBoom+, it's higher precision and thus has an extra overhead cost. Running nuts.wad with all the boom extensions enabled will also be slower, and thus requires -vanilla mode to strip that off.

You are also likely comparing a build of PRBoom+ built with the intel compiler, compared to Eternity which isn't.

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There is a high priced proprietary compiler made by Intel that is optimized to a degree that usual compilers don't match. Official PrB+ executables were compiled with this fancy pants compiler and were thus SIGNIFICANTLY (like 20%?) faster than if they had been compiled with GCC or MSVC or whatever.

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I imagine some resolution scale options would make a few eternity users happier. Prboom+, Zdoom and Choco/Crispy all have resolution scaling, so it's pretty much a standard at this point.

 

12 hours ago, Danfun64 said:

How would one build with this compiler?

Have a lot of money and here you go 

Be aware though, there are reports that Intel compiler is only optimal for Intel processors (surprise surprise)

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10 minutes ago, DerTodIstEinDandy said:

I imagine some resolution scale options would make a few eternity users happier. Prboom+, Zdoom and Choco/Crispy all have resolution scaling, so it's pretty much a standard at this point.

Planned. I skimped on it when moving over to SDL2, but I'll see what I can do. I felt guilty at the time. Thanks for the reminder though (I had forgotten about it).

 

10 minutes ago, DerTodIstEinDandy said:

Have a lot of money and here you go 

It's also free for students (I think at places of higher learning), but I dunno what the terms of use are (in terms of distributing compiled programs).

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On 2/12/2018 at 0:17 AM, Edward850 said:

Make sure you have midiproc.exe in your Eternity folder. The drdteam builds don't seem to provide this for some reason (@Blzut3 needs to resolve this) so you'll need to probably grab it from a main release.

midiproc isn't built by CMake to my knowledge.

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I could try make midiproc included in CMake when using MSVC. I'll see what I can do.

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The most necessary and long-awaited feature for me is full Heretic support.

Edited by riderr3

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@Altazimuth

Sick man. Thanks for that command. Works great and is very useful (I like to play without saving a lot of the time so it is nice just being able to restart the map sometimes).

 

One thing I have noticed:

- Is it possible to implement a unique graphic for having both keys of the same color in the hud? The keys in the hud dont change to the double key graphic like in prboom+. If I get both keys in eternity it only shows the skull. This is fine for maps I know but it would be really annoying if I forget that I have both keys of the same color.

 

Edit:

I decided to try recording some demos for large maps. Miasma crashes every time I try to start a recording.

 

Using version:

Eternity-x64-3.42.03a-274-g604ed80.7z    Feb 21 2018 03:10:06    2,936,597

Edited by Killer5

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8 hours ago, Killer5 said:

Is it possible to implement a unique graphic for having both keys of the same color in the hud? The keys in the hud dont change to the double key graphic like in prboom+. If I get both keys in eternity it only shows the skull. This is fine for maps I know but it would be really annoying if I forget that I have both keys of the same color.

It's already there, but the it's single-key display by default (not sure why, but not sure why not either, really). Options > Status Bar > Single Key Display (turn it to No).

 

EDIT:

8 hours ago, Killer5 said:

I decided to try recording some demos for large maps. Miasma crashes every time I try to start a recording.

Oh jeez. That's serious. I'll take a look-see at that. Bear in mind Eternity can only record vanilla demos, and current demos. It'll play cl 9 back just fine, though. Are you just recording as per normal, or also using -vanilla? Honestly I have no idea what even should happen if you're playing a Boom-compat wad and using -vanilla.

Edited by Altazimuth

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50 minutes ago, Altazimuth said:

It'll play cl 9 back just fine, though. Are you just recording as per normal, or also using -vanilla? Honestly I have no idea what even should happen if you're playing a Boom-compat wad and using -vanilla.

I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to say here. Does this mean eternity can play back -cl9 demos, but can't record them?

 

I'd actually like to switch to a port that does not support TAS features, so I have been following this discussion for a bit. If eternity performs well for me, I'd like to use it to record runs in the future, and also recommend it to others. Because, IMO, the non-TAS-able aspect of it would be nice to have as a standard for demos (assuming it stays that way).

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1 hour ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to say here. Does this mean eternity can play back -cl9 demos, but can't record them?

Yes. We can record -cl2 demos, and EE's own demos only (ZDoom-style, it will only correctly play back demos from the current version, because the complexity of the engine means that trying to support earlier versions of itself is an exercise in lunacy), but should be able to play back most everything up to and including MBF.

 

EDIT: @Killer5 Fixed the hang. It was an issue with it defining lumps elsewhere that had already been defined in the HI_ range. Thanks for the report!

Edited by Altazimuth

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@Altazimuth

Sorry I should have given you my command. Since you fixed it already it is prolly whatev but here it is anyways:

C:\Doom\SourcePorts\Eternity\testing\eternity.exe -iwad C:\Doom\WADs\IWADs\DOOM2.WAD -file C:\Doom\WADs\Miasma\miasma.wad -skill 4 -warp 01 -record relax

 

I saw the -vanilla command, but I havent used it yet.

 

Haha cool beans about the keys. I should have looked at the menus again =x.

 

Thanks!

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Just to clarify: Will the -vanilla parameter record Doom/Doom 2 format demos that can be played back in PRBoom+ or other vanilla/limit-removing ports? And recording Boom and MBF stuff will create Eternity-specific demos that can only be watched through the latest build?

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I wanted to do a casual run of one of my favorite maps to check out how eternity behaves compared to what I am used to. Everything behaved as expected :D.

 

Thanks for making this port. I am really enjoying using it!

 

Also one observation:

- Is it possible to have a monster counter similar to prboom+'s counter with smart totals off? Currently the counter in eternity's boom style hud shows what appears to be the number of monster kills I have acheived out of the number of monsters in the map rather than the number of monsters dead vs the number of monsters in the map. I would have expected the monster counter to never exceed the total monster count in the map.

 

Here is a ss of the current behavior I see:

su11-38xx.zip

x.png

Edited by Killer5

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11 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

Will the -vanilla parameter record Doom/Doom 2 format demos that can be played back in PRBoom+ or other vanilla/limit-removing ports?

Yup!

11 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

And recording Boom and MBF stuff will create Eternity-specific demos that can only be watched through the latest build?

Just using demo recording w/o -vanilla will record a demo for current-version Eternity.

 

10 hours ago, Killer5 said:

Is it possible to have a monster counter similar to prboom+'s counter with smart totals off?

I'm honestly not sure, never messed with those settings before.

 

1 minute ago, DerTodIstEinDandy said:

I can point out at least one -cl9 demo that desyncs in Eternity: sunder.wad map14

Darn. That will need to be looked at.

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43 minutes ago, Altazimuth said:

Darn. That will need to be looked at.

Sorry, false alarm. Looks like it's already fixed in the Eternity-3.42.03a-274-g604ed80 devbuild :D

BTW, how to toggle the framerate counter?

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I have an issue where the game sound is very quiet compared to the midi volume. Like I have to crank up the system volume to 80%, but then the midi volume goes from muted to loud with just one tick, while the game volume bar is maxed out.

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What build are you using of Eternity, and if it's an SDL2 version, have you updated your midiproc (see my first post in this thread for downloads)?

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I am using Eternity-x64-3.42.03a-274-g604ed80 and the midiproc unfortunately doesn't solve it.

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