Heartland - final version available on idgames

loving this wad but my only issue is that the engine chugs at 150 fov at 1080p

my work-around is to lower render resolution to 720 (which isnt a big deal in a game like this thankfully) and that fixes the issue but on a rx580 and a 3900X,its a bit disappointing,but its my only gripe

but hey who am i to judge

Can’t wait to play this!

On 3/25/2021 at 5:45 PM, VanaheimRanger said:

Damn, last night I completely swore off playing Doom in a non-VR way...and now I see this...and I can't play it in VR.

 

So, I guess I will swear off non-VR Doom after this then...lol

I found a way to play this in VR, lol.  Since there isn't an Eternity Engine VR (yet...) I just played it on the latest EE devbuild.  But played through a VR app called Bigscreen VR which projects your desktop windows into a virtual 3D space (I chose a home theater environment) it's not quite as immersive as GZDoomVR, but still pretty fun :)

Great map-pack. Really awesome work.

I got Stuart Lynn's soundtrack at bandcamp as well. I just have a dumb question: I've never used Eternity unitl now so, do I just create a WAD with the tracks inside in, say, MP3 format, or do I have to do osmething differently for it to work?

The midis are in the .pke file along with everything else, you don't need to buy the soundtrack to have it play ingame! 

5 hours ago, stewboy said:

The midis are in the .pke file along with everything else, you don't need to buy the soundtrack to have it play ingame! 

That was silly of me then. But I'm happy to support your work anyway, stewboy.

Seriously good stuff, with a few nitpicks. Skillsaw is probably my favorite mapper, and his brand of combat is all over Heartland, making it a joy to play. The levels are mostly excellent, and the Eternity engine gimmicks are well integrated and are really cool. At first I was afraid this went too far into the Build engine style stuff, but Skillsaw didn't abuse the gimmicks, and the extra stuff blends in really well.

The nitpicks - flying snot monsters and those orange creatures that drop a grenade after death are a bit too gimmicky, and overall there are just too many new monsters. The 7th weapon is amusing, but it's not as fun as a BFG. It could've been nerfed a little and placed as an extra 5th weapon. Probably my biggest complaint - the 7th map. It wasn't nearly as good as the other maps - the combat, the overall design, the level geometry, it just didn't fit in with the rest of the wad (imo, of course), the map felt like an afterthought or a repurposed map.

Anyways, this was a blast to play, and some of the combat encounters were probably the best yet by Skillsaw. Can't wait to play the next wad. Kinda hoping that it won't be another Eternity Engine one because these maps definitely require more time investment, and while they were really fun, I can't say that it's an overall improvement over vanilla. It's fun, but it's not better, it's just a bit different.

Oh, and excellent MIDIs by Stewboy. I think he needs to form a prog/fusion band or something. Not that MIDIs aren't great and all, but a lot of his stuff would sound absolutely wonderful played by an actual band. Though it is one hell of a time, energy, and money investment.

Thanks dianghong!

MAP07 was intended to be different than the rest, so if it felt different in design, theme, and combat that was definitely by design - but I've felt for a while that my execution came up a bit short with it (for a lot of reasons, but mostly because the map pushed me past exhaustion and I felt like I needed to be done with it) so I'd agree that it could be better.

Although I doubt I'll do 'vanilla' stuff ever again (outside of potentially helping with BTSX related things) I do plan to do boomish/crossport stuff in the future (mbf21 hype!) -- though I certainly want to work in EE again as well because it's really fun to be able to build complex 3d structures and have all the flexibility that comes with ACS, UDMF, and EDF.

Just finished this one.

Another excelent work @skillsaw, awesome level design and balanced difficulty (just played UV with pistol starts, plutonia-like difficulty, easier than Valiant and Ancient Aliens). Clearly this will be another Cacoward.

My only complain were a couple of engine bugs mainly related to horizontal portals and/or "3d floors" (or whatever you used):

• Player suddenly accelerate (a lot) when running over certain "3d floors" in map 5.
• A few graphically split monsters when they were walking around portals in map 4 and 7.
• Vertical aim didn't work well in certain zones (classical play-style without mouse-look)

Thanks Karsios! Glad you enjoyed it.

I'm curious about the acceleration issue on MAP05 - was this by any chance due to wall running along fence midtextures? (wall running, IIRC, is possible on the bridges past the BK door that lead into the central tower that goes to the roof with the control room)

I'm hoping for an engine side fix one day for the other issues but overall I don't think they negatively impact the experience too much, and if the engine side fix never comes, I'm not worried too much. I tried to minimize them as much as possible without rebuilding large portions of the maps but there was a limit to how much I could do.

On 10/19/2021 at 11:43 PM, Karsios said:

Vertical aim didn't work well in certain zones (classical play-style without mouse-look)

That's an engine bug actually, which I fixed, after the last official release. You need to get a development build from devbuilds.drdteam.org (if stuff still get uploaded there).

22 hours ago, skillsaw said:

I'm curious about the acceleration issue on MAP05 - was this by any chance due to wall running along fence midtextures? (wall running, IIRC, is possible on the bridges past the BK door that lead into the central tower that goes to the roof with the control room) 

You're right, it happens when wall running on midtextures, I could notice it in the bridge of map 5, but it also happened in other zones.

One of the zones with autoaim problem (map 2). Curiously autoaim worked if player was behind the red pillar.

And an example of split monsters, it happened sometimes especially under boxes.

Anyway, minor bugs that shouldn't stop players for playing this mapset neither using the engine. But it will be cool if eventually get fix.

1 hour ago, Karsios said:

[...] an example of split monsters, it happened sometimes especially under boxes.

By the image, looks like some sort of sector- or even BSP-related issue.

1 hour ago, Karsios said:

One of the zones with autoaim problem (map 2). Curiously autoaim worked if player was behind the red pillar.

Exactly, known bug. If you have Windows try https://devbuilds.drdteam.org/eternity/. I would also recommend the macOS page for macOS users, but it looks like it's lagging…

On 3/5/2021 at 1:24 AM, skillsaw said:

I'm not too sure what the state of EE's coop is. Sadly, coop is untested - Heartland really is just 'starts only' at this point. There are probably sequence breaks and also the possibility of some maps becoming unwinnable if everyone respawns.

I tested Heartland with two player coop. Promising start on MAP01. I could not find anything resembling friendly fire in Eternity but otherwise it worked surprisingly good. No issues until we ran into a door that closes and leaves the other player permanently on the other side. Tried to noclip but turns out it's not available in netgame. After a quick look at the source code I just disabled the netgame check for "cheats" and recompiled. Game works but as soon as I step into a wall with noclip on, the other player quits due to an inconsistency with the game state. I guess the netgame checks are in place for a reason :)

We managed to come around this issue when we found out that it's possible to save in a multiplayer game. So we save ever so often and if we run into a deadlock, we just load from a saved state.

This approach worked until MAP03 which only has a start for player 1. Eternity refuses to start the map for this reason. (In ZDoom based ports the other players start from the same position if there's only player 1 start.)

I'm playing on HMP and I gotta say, this mapset is great! I especially love how it manages to create some challenging slaughtery encounters that still feel fun and fair to play. I've played maps that just spammed monsters in a boring and unfair way and I disliked it, but this WAD nails it; I think the new weapons help a lot.

Any specific reason why the button that opens the garage doors in MAP02 to get the yellow keycard wouldn't trigger? I saw it work in a Youtube video, but I am trying right now and that thing just doesn't do anything.

*EDIT*
Disregard. Looks like Eternity doesn't like the spritefix mod I used with this.

I want to play Heartland mod with complex mod, but Eternity Engine can not use complex doom mod, and Gzdoom can not use Heartland mod. What should I do?

12 minutes ago, Cthulhu said:

What should I do?

You can either:

1. Port Complex Doom to Eternity
2. Port Heartland to GZDoom
3. Abandon the idea of mixing these two mods together

Does anyone know how to access the secret map without using commands?

Sorry - there's no secret map in Heartland.

Hey whenever I launch Heartland, is it normal to see a flash of red text saying R_init shows before the wad loads up fine. Just wanted to ask is that normal?

3 minutes ago, Merigold117 said:

Hey whenever I launch Heartland, is it normal to see a flash of red text saying R_init shows before the wad loads up fine. Just wanted to ask is that normal?

That's the startup log, it's very normal. Doom originally had it as a text-mode output in DOS, some ports maintain it as text (chocolate-doom), Eternity has it as a graphical mode once the video is initialized.

31 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

That's the startup log, it's very normal. Doom originally had it as a text-mode output in DOS, some ports maintain it as text (chocolate-doom), Eternity has it as a graphical mode once the video is initialized.

Thanks for the clarification

Hello... =)

I don't know if this is intentional or not. When I load Doom, Doom 2 alone, without mods in Eternity Engine, all graphic options referring to rocket trails, BFG effects and etc... They are activated, but when I load Heartland everything is disabled, and if I activate these options, everything is fine, but when exiting and coming back, everything will be disabled again. This only happens with Heartland.

Big thanks!

The behavior you're describing is due to the options.txt lump included in Heartland.pke, which tells Eternity to override your previously selected options with some defaults for Heartland. I'm pretty sure the rocket trails are disabled since custom rocket trails are implemented by Heartland itself; likewise with particle effects for blood and bullets since Heartland replaces those. Not sure why the BFG effects were disabled off the top of my head but the BFG is not present in Heartland.

Thanks for the answer! I just wanted to know if it was intentional and it is. Yes, rocket trails are present, even with the option disabled. And thanks for the good work! I played Ancient Aliens and Valiant and for me the two most Heartland are my top three mods!

I know it's taken a few years, but I'm finally getting to play Heartland! Cannot wait!

It'll be the first time I'm using the eternity source port too, and at setup, feels good. Thanks to Skillsaw and team for their hard work!

If anyone wants to watch my stream later, here we go, (obviously helps the views), but I hope you enjoy too, we all love this game:

This is interesting to play doom maps on another engine that gives the mappers more things to add in their maps,two trains moving at the same time with different speed and fighting is nice,moving a big platform left and right with a switch too,the new enemies,Catharsi and Grell reminds me Duke Nukem 3D,Cybruiser is one to kill fast before it gets too close to you,Suicide Bomber is funny(AHHHHHHHHHHHH),Rocket Zombie looks innocent and quiet but can be annoying if we forget him,the Fire Axe is fun.

About the gameplay,the verticality and horizontality is interesting because it adds more exploration & we are shot from a lot of angles,these rooms-over-rooms and the industrial/docks themed maps are a good choice to show this,i liked the musics too,The Beating Heart was hard and fun,Castle Of Hell feeling,shooting the big beating heart reminds me Doom 2016.

Heartland is great stuff from what I played. I had a question though, I'm not familiar with messing with Eternity stuff -- what would it take to make Heartland compatible with Slaughtertools?