Eternity Engine v3.39.20 "Resheph"

The Eternity Engine v3.39.20 release, codename "Resheph", is now available:

• Win32 "Plus" Binaries - Recommended for Windows Vista, 7, and fully updated Windows XP
  
• Win32 Binaries - Required for Windows 9x, not recommended otherwise
  
• Source Code
  
• Spare EDFs
  
• Readme File
  

For anyone who can't be bothered to check the readme or changelog for more info, some of the major feature additions since the last official release include texture/flat mixing, DECORATE-format states definitions in EDF, tall patch support, and ZDBSP extended node support. To name just a few. There's a hell of a lot of new stuff and improved functionality.

Among other things, this means it plays Deus Vult 2.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

*downloads*

Good stuff here :)

esselfortium said:

tall patch support,

Tall patch? What is the limit now?

readme said:

Volume limiting added to reduce clipping when sound channels are saturated.

I'm not really sure what that means. Saturated channels means they're all busy? Volume limiting means it will never be too loud? Clipping is distortion?

* Ability to load Nerve .disk files with -disk <file> <wad> command line parameter:
EX:
-disk doom2.disk nerve

Nerve software? The company who made RTCW and RoE? :o

(If you do not know what this is for, do not ask ;)

Oh, nevermind :)

+ Namespace specifiers in action arguments (ex. thing:DoomImp) are unnecessary and are now deprecated for use in new EDFs. They are still required/allowed for use in state misc fields.

I don't think they're required. I don't remember they were when I was using RandomJump, Spawn or others like those.

Readme Priority future said:
Double flats

Double flats?

Posting in epic thread.

printz said:

Good stuff here :)

Tall patch? What is the limit now?

See here.

No real limit, as you can see, since you can always give a number lesser than the sum of all previous numbers. Well technically the header will not let you give a height above 65535.

Oh I forgot the M4/M5 button support is also new to this version. I've used it for so long... :)

This port just gets better and better. I'm particularly grateful for the Master levels bit - a nice differentiator from the other source port(s) out there... :)

PS: In the news submission essel use the acronym FP. What the hell does it stand for!?

Per-Scan said:

In the news submission essel use the acronym FP. What the hell does it stand for!?

FP = First Post :P

Anyway. Great news. It was a big surprise for me when I saw that Eternity had almost 300 new SVN revisions since the last time I was here.

It is good to see a new official release with many new features and improvements, so I would like to give a huge thank you to the developers and other contributors for continuously improving the Eternity Engine. I hope more people decide to give the Eternity Engine a chance, once I tried it I never looked back.

^
Thanks! :)

As for the engine; yeah, it does have it's own charm. I can't quite put my finger on it but there is something really nice playing WADs in it. By the way, I'm not a modder so none of the fancy stuff affects my opinion too much. There's just an intangible thing going on...

printz said:

I'm not really sure what that means. Saturated channels means they're all busy? Volume limiting means it will never be too loud? Clipping is distortion?

Yes, not necessarily, and sometimes. The volume limiting turns down the volume of each channel by just a few notches, the number of notches being based on the number of channels currently playing, so that the game roars just a bit less. Eternity's audio has always been excessively hot and I have long been searching for ways to solve that without making it sound odd at the same time. I think the current solution works pretty well.

printz said:

Nerve software? The company who made RTCW and RoE? :o
Oh, nevermind :)

And other more topically relevant ports for a certain current-gen video game system...

printz said:

I don't think they're required. I don't remember they were when I was using RandomJump, Spawn or others like those.

They're required when the name you are referencing is ambiguous. That is, if you have both a thingtype and a frame named "Foobar" and you only put "Foobar", it will always interpret this as a thing and translate it into that thing's DeHackEd number for storage inside the frame's misc field. To overcome that, you must use an explicit namespace specifier (frame: in this case).

This isn't necessary for state arguments any longer because they are evaluated at runtime now, inside the action function itself, which knows what kind of argument it expects. It can't make any sense to pass a thingtype to an action function expecting a frame, so it will never allow interpretation of the parameter as anything other than a state mnemonic or DECORATE state label.

printz said:

Double flats?

I think it would be nice to be able to composite flats at runtime with custom rotation and translucency parameters, but esselfortium is somewhat dismissive of the idea since he thinks it would be just as simple to do that in Photoshop or some other drawing software :P

Quasar said:

I think it would be nice to be able to composite flats at runtime with custom rotation and translucency parameters, but esselfortium is somewhat dismissive of the idea since he thinks it would be just as simple to do that in Photoshop or some other drawing software :P

I don't remember being quite that dismissive of it, but add in custom scaling and I'm sold. ;P

I also wonder if sort of perspective trick could be done to make it look like the layers are at slightly different heights from each other.

What are you guys talking about, pairs of flats on top of each other, one of them translucent? And eventually turn the one above into shallow water? Could work well, there's already an implementation for deep water footclip. Use it in conjunction with that displaced lower flat.

printz said:

What are you guys talking about, pairs of flats on top of each other, one of them translucent? And eventually turn the one above into shallow water? Could work well, there's already an implementation for deep water footclip. Use it in conjunction with that displaced lower flat.

If you've seen the water effect in Doom 64, where two water flats are layered on top of each other translucently and they scroll slowly in different directions, I believe this would be something along those lines, but with a lot more customizability.

Csonicgo said:

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

DECORATE support? I guess this means I can use my fun shit for the non-Skulltag PK3 for Oblige.

Mr. Chris said:

DECORATE support? I guess this means I can use my fun shit for the non-Skulltag PK3 for Oblige.

It's not a complete implementation of DECORATE, but rather the ability to use DECORATE-format states definitions (i.e. Spawn:/POSS AB 10 A_Look/loop) in Eternity's existing EDF systems for defining actors. Which, really, isn't all that different from DECORATE, nowadays :)

This isn't intended to allow ZDoom wads to be loaded in Eternity directly, but it does make porting DECORATE monsters and such significantly simpler.

esselfortium said:

This isn't intended to allow ZDoom wads to be loaded in Eternity directly, but it does make porting DECORATE monsters and such significantly simpler.

And defining actors period a hell of a lot less of a pain in the ass ;)

Great new release, very cool stuff! I'm not sure if I should hope for the A_giveinventory/takeinventory/jumpifinventory flags in Eternity, as that may invite the hacky DECORATE jumping that I thrive off of...

Edit: Though "WeaponCtrJump" may do some similar effects.

phi108 said:

Great new release, very cool stuff! I'm not sure if I should hope for the A_giveinventory/takeinventory/jumpifinventory flags in Eternity, as that may invite the hacky DECORATE jumping that I thrive off of...

Edit: Though "WeaponCtrJump" may do some similar effects.

Counters are what you seek. :)

For weapons, WeaponSetCtr, WeaponCtrJump, WeaponCtrOp, WeaponCopyCtr, WeaponCtrSwitch, and similar give quite a bit of control for numeric operations and frame scripting.

For actors, SetCounter, CounterOp, CounterCopy, CounterJump are the equivalents.

The old, non-wikified docs are way outdated and no longer updated, but they're worth a look for info on the many codepointers that don't currently have wikified documentation: http://eternity.mancubus.net/ee3.33.50-docs.zip

(On that note, some more assistance in getting more of this stuff converted over to wiki form would be great...someone, anyone..)

Ah, I love how you can edit the system.cfg to point it to the iwads. Very nice. I noticed there is a string for the Master Levels but those don't show up in the launcher when I set it.. hm.

Well anyway, nice to see a new version.

*Edit, read the changelog, now I know. Doesn't appear to let you select a difficulty setting.. well, neat feature nonetheless. It would be nice to be able to select Masterlevel wads from the launcher.

esselfortium said:

(On that note, some more assistance in getting more of this stuff converted over to wiki form would be great...someone, anyone..)

Well, I do it while I'm actually working on my Eternity stuff. What about you?

Mike.Reiner said:

Ah, I love how you can edit the system.cfg to point it to the iwads. Very nice. I noticed there is a string for the Master Levels but those don't show up in the launcher when I set it.. hm.

Well anyway, nice to see a new version.

*Edit, read the changelog, now I know. Doesn't appear to let you select a difficulty setting.. well, neat feature nonetheless. It would be nice to be able to select Masterlevel wads from the launcher.

I don't see how that'll work, seeing that it requires you to load DOOM II first, but it *was* at least meant to be available from the in-game menus. I just ran out of time to design a good place for the item to be before I wanted to do this release.

Not being able to select the skill is also a problem I am still thinking about. As an interim, you can change your "default skill" setting, because it always uses that currently.