Michael Jensen Posted June 8, 2021 (edited) I enjoy finding out about the creation of my favourite media, be it films, games or even Doom wads. Even though textfiles tend to contain notes about development, fun trivia and that sort of thing, most Doom wads don't have a detailed development history. This is especially the case with older wads from the 90's. One that I always wanted to know more about is Eternal Doom, simply because it's one of the best, most unique wads ever, and so much stuff seemed to happen during the development. There is actually more information available, compared to other wads, but it's scattered all over the place. Doom Wiki for instance doesn't even have page on Team Eternal. I tried to write down a timeline of events based on various sources. Textfiles, TeamTNT's archived site, snippets of info that Dia Westerteicher mentioned on Doomworld, and whatever else I could find. By far the largest source of information are the 5 Year of Doom interviews with Sverre Kvernmo and Ty Halderman, which I didn't even know about for the longest time. They aren't exactly easy to find (more specifically, learn of their existence). Another important sources are Eternal Doom I and II, which I couldn't find at first, as they aren't uploaded to any archive, but Grazza had and uploaded them in a thread "Eternal Doom wad" from 2018. Someday I hope to make a thread comparing the differences in more detail. The Beginning: In fall of '94, Sverre Kvernmo joined Compuserve's Action Games forum, where several prominent names in the gaming industry hung out, such as Shawn Green, Richard Gray, Alex Mayberry, along with "the whole of the Eternal Team". This suggest that Team Eternal was already formed in late 1994. Sverre wasn't part of the development for the first 6 months. He believes that the project was started by Jim Flynn and John Anderson. Although I can't find any mention of Anderson's possible involvement. There wasn't much of progress at the start until Paul Schmitz became the project leader and the project took off. Sverre was invited to the project by Jim Flynn after the team examined his earlier work. Of his 3 levels, Nucleus and Darkdome took almost 2 years to finish. Time Gate was made in just 2 weeks and was intended to fill in the time travel story. He started work on couple others that weren't finished, including a potential Map01 intended to be set on a crashed spaceship. He also made all the new textures, besides the ones lifted from Hexen, which he wasn't happy about ("I never wanted those in there to begin with."). Some of the graphics were hand drawn and scanned (Original Titlepic and the Intermission Marine), others were made in Photoshop 3 Nucleus and Darkdome had to be cut down due to engine limitations. Both were about 20% bigger at their largest state. Time Gate was made in the last 2 weeks of production of Eternal Doom I. Originally it featured a third "wrong" gate, which would send you back by a hour, restarting level. I don't really know it was supposed to work, but they couldn't get the effect working consistently, so it was axed, and there was no more time to make the third area. Hence there are 2 "right" exit gates. This is where Sverre's involvement ended, as he claims he only worked on the first release. Music: Sometime before the release of Eternal Doom I, Alex Mayberry uploaded prerelease pack of levels in the Action Games Forum on CompuServe. This attracted the attention of Rich Nagel. At that point it had no custom music, so Rich sent Alex an email asking if they are interested in any. Mayberry showed interested and asked him to send an example of his work. Rich then quickly put together Suspense! (Map04) which got a positive response. He would go on to compose the entire soundtrack. Nagel originally intended Suspense! to be Map 01 music, but didn't have a say about the placement as Mayberry was in charge of the production for ED I and II. By ED III, Nagel was in complete charge of music production and organization (as well as leading the beta/play testing team). The First Release: Eternal Doom I, is dated 1st of August, 1996 in the textfile. This phase of the project was coordinated by Paul Schmitz. It contained: Levels 1-12 (TeamTNT website claims 13 + credits, but this is not the case) The full story in the text file. (Same as the final release, other than different spacing between paragraphs, and 2 more exclamation points somewhere.) Separate resource wad, already containing most of the new textures, sprites, status bar graphics and slightly different intermission level graphics without music listings. 14 music tracks, 10 sound effects are included as well, though there are more of both in the final release. Interestingly, they already allowed the resources (ETERNRES.WAD) to be used by others, long before RETRES became a thing. The Second Release: ED II was first released as an upgrade application for ED I, which is dated 20th of January, 1997. Then it got released as a full package, with its own textfile, dated 31st of January, 1997. It adds levels 13-27 and additional resources. This phase of the project was coordinated by Dia. Strangely enough, Maps 28-32 are also replaced. They are all the same octagonal arena with random monsters and supplies. These aren't mentioned in any textfile. Merging of Team Eternal and TeamTNT: Somewhere around this time, TeamTNT joined the project and eventually merged with Team Eternal. The exact circumstances aren't known. All we have are snippets from Dia and Ty. According to Dia, it occurred when ED II was already in late testing phase when Ty contacted them about it. Ty went into a bit more detail. He originally suggested that ED II be released on the Internet. When work on began ED III, he invited them to join TeamTNT. TNT would provide the use of their infrastructure (web, mail, FTP sites), but most of the work would be still done by the original Team Eternal members and coordinated by Ty Halderman. Dia also mentioned that after the merger, the intended seamless transitions from level to level were dropped, although a lot of this idea can still be seen in the final product. The Final Release: The final release came on 14th of November, 1997, when the complete megawad came to idgames archive as Eternal Doom III. As mentioned previously, the final additions were managed by Ty Halderman. It contained 6 new levels and their respective music tracks. Along with few more new graphics. Map 15 from ED II was moved to Map 32 slot and the credits map, originally in the 27th slot, became a standalone bonus level along with another bonus level, Cybersweeper. There was also an application to update ED II to ED III. Apparently, there are small differences between the ED III full release, and the patched version from ED II, enough to cause demo desync. Tidbits of information I couldn't work into the main text: Dia was hired by Team Eternal sometime after November 1995. He made his first, never published map at that time. Later he worked on project called "weapons.wad", in which you had to survive each level with mostly one special weapon in mind. It was then he got hired. Map 03 and Map 08 of ED were his first published works. The starting level of weapons.wad became level 14 of ED. Map 20: Silures, started as an installment of Bob Evans' Odessa series and the main layout was already finished by the time he joined the project. They planned to include another level he worked on, but that would eventually become Odessa 14. Map 30: Excalibur is the only level he made specifically for ED. Death March (Map 12 music) was written in 1994 for Patrick Hipps' DOOM 1 level "Command Control". It was slightly changed for use in ED. Apparently it used to have a flute solo. The Lost Souls (Map 11 music) is also from 1994 and Rich wrote it after his grandmother passed away. Doomin (Map 26 music) was written in 1995 for a wad made by Nagel himself which was never released. Suspense reprise (Map 10) came about from experimenting with Cakewalk Pro's "Retrograde" operation (reverse all events), which took the original Suspense! and reversed it. The result was pretty bad but he liked the overall effect, so he re-sequenced the whole song based upon the reversed melody and other tracks in the MIDI. Conclusion: This is my best attempt to piece together the history of Team Eternal, Eternal Doom, and an important part of TeamTNT's history. If anyone reading this knows something I didn't mention, or perhaps got wrong, feel free to comment below. I hope the people behind Eternal Doom who are or have been present on these forums won't mind if I tag them here, so they could perhaps tell us more :) @theDia @Soundblock @ChrisC Additional closing thoughts and questions: I've seen it mentioned couple of times, that one of the reasons for TeamTNT's involvement was that the project ran into trouble during it's final development phase. One post in the "If There Was A Doom Hall Of Fame, What Would Be Your First Inductees?" thread, stated that "They also stepped in to save Eternal Doom from the brink of total collapse" without any elaboration. I couldn't find anything indicating such thing, so I assume this is just some urban myth. This is one of the things the original developers could help clear up. Specifics of the merging of teams still aren't very clear. One of the reasons I went looking for all this info was to learn about Team Eternal. While we still don’t know many specific details, we can assume that Team Eternal was already formed around late 1994 and development of ED started by then (Based on Sverre’s recollections). From the start, they intended to create experience more focused on storytelling and atmosphere, rather than all out fighting, and they wanted to push the limits of the engine and utilize many new tricks with the Doom engine. No wonder they joined TeamTNT, they had the exact same goals! I also wondered how much of the work was done by TeamTNT. Of course, you could say all of it, since the teams later joined, but ED I and II were done completely independently. Ty then joined their team and suggested the merging. For ED III, the contributors were still people from Team Eternal, except for Ty. Over the years. some people wondered why ED was released in 3 parts over the course of development, rather than a whole package. I think Ty summed it up best "With the size of most Eternal levels, building a dozen of them is like anyone else's megawad." Other stuff I'd be interested in knowing are details of Team Eternal’s forming (same thing applies to TeamTNT, honestly) and the foundations of ED, with it being such an ambitious project. Of course, any other info would be great as well. Relevant links: Ty Halderman's 5 Years of Doom interview - https://5years.doomworld.com/interviews/tyhalderman/ Sverre Kvernmo's 5 Years of Doom interview - https://5years.doomworld.com/interviews/sverrekvernmo/ Sverre Kvernmo's Doom Wad Station interview - http://www.doomwadstation.net/twid/ ED I (full package) and ED II update application were uploaded by Grazza in this thread - https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/103026-eternal-doom-wad/?tab=comments#comment-1933875 ED II (full package) on Wad Archive - https://www.wad-archive.com/wad/61ca3cf59311e6f8e1c81271b0c3b7dbfe4b9e4e ED III (full package) on idgames archive - https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/themes/TeamTNT/eternal/eternal Archived ED page from TeamTNT website - https://web.archive.org/web/20160313202202/http://www.teamtnt.com/ixet.htm Archived Team Eternal page - https://redmars.org/mirrored/teamtnt.com/teamet.htm Archived usenet posting by Ty Halderman (ED II release) - https://www.gamers.org/pub/archives/doom/articles/art-1871 Archived usenet posting by Ty Halderman (ED III release) - https://www.gamers.org/pub/archives/doom/articles/art-1993 Edited June 11, 2021 by A.H. Sankhatayan 48 Quote Share this post Link to post
Doomkid Posted June 8, 2021 Well, that was a good history lesson! This probably won’t add much, but apparently a few of the layouts initially created for Eternal Deathmatch were developed into maps that would become part of the SP experience. https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/themes/TeamTNT/eternal/edm I even had the old site this file was hosted on saved, but apparently haven’t added it to the big archive of Old Doom Sites (that was dumb of me). I don’t think it was exactly overflowing with trivia or new info anyway, but it would have been nice to share it in this thread.. the URL in question isn’t even mentioned in the text file, unfortunately. 4 Quote Share this post Link to post
Diabolución Posted June 8, 2021 29 minutes ago, A.H. Sankhatayan said: While ED I and III received standalone releases, I'm not sure ED II did. The file Grazza uploaded contains only the application to update ED I to ED II. ED II is dated 31st of January, 1997 and contains levels 13-27 and additional resources. This phase of the project was coordinated by Dia . -rw-rw-r-- 1 thldrmn ftp-id 8083328 Feb 4 1997 eternal.zip eternall.wad - WadArchive https://doomshack.org/uploads/eternal__31011997.zip 4 Quote Share this post Link to post
Afterglow Posted June 8, 2021 40 minutes ago, A.H. Sankhatayan said: Originally it featured a third "wrong" gate, which would send you back by a hour, restarting level. I don't really know it was supposed to work In vanilla, line specials "51 - S1 Exit Level (goes to secret)" & "124 - W1 Exit Level (goes to secret)" will restart the current level when used outside of MAP15 & MAP31. However this behavior changes in some circumstances when the global game state is different, e.g., when command line parameters -warp or -playdemo are used. If you progressively play MAP01, MAP02, MAP03, etc. in a continuous session and hit line special 124 on MAP05, doom2.exe will restart MAP05. With -warp or a loaded save game, it resets the game back to MAP01. (Some source ports like ZDoom "fix" that undefined behavior by treating the trigger like a regular exit when no secret map destination is defined.) 10 Quote Share this post Link to post
Michael Jensen Posted June 8, 2021 (edited) Some random additional closing thoughts: I've decided to add this to the OP, to make the whole thing more cohesive. Edited June 9, 2021 by A.H. Sankhatayan 1 Quote Share this post Link to post
thestarrover Posted June 8, 2021 (edited) 1 hour ago, A.H. Sankhatayan said: 1 hour ago, A.H. Sankhatayan said: While ED I and III received standalone releases, I'm not sure ED II did. The file Grazza uploaded contains only the application to update ED I to ED II. ED II is dated 31st of January, 1997 and contains levels 13-27 and additional resources. This phase of the project was coordinated by Dia . I have a copy of eternal.zip, released on The Games Machine Cd Coverdisc with a text file dated 01/31/1997 and seems to be a full package and not the patch to update ED I to II ( with a text file dated 01/04/1997). Even the INSTALL.TXT is different. INSTALL.TXT.zip ETERNAL.TXT.zip ETERNAL.ZIP Edited June 8, 2021 by thestarrover 5 Quote Share this post Link to post
Redneckerz Posted June 8, 2021 @A.H. Sankhatayan Brilliant stuff about the TeamTNT history! Bravo. Really enjoyed this. No relation to Eternal Doom (But it does to TeamTNT), Daedalus: Alien Vanguard's build system was build using REX files, batch files and the Patcher executable by Jim Flynn. It is mentioned in their text file. I don't know why, but the impression of such a makeshift build system to produce new builds, keeping in track older builds and their differences has always struck me as impressive for the day. No surprises then that TeamTNT would go above and beyond with most of the releases, as seen in ESHELL, CyberSweeper, and so on and so forth. 5 Quote Share this post Link to post
Michael Jensen Posted June 8, 2021 (edited) 49 minutes ago, Diabolución said: eternall.wad - WadArchive https://doomshack.org/uploads/eternal__31011997.zip 22 minutes ago, thestarrover said: I have a copy of eternal.zip, released on The Games Machine Cd Coverdisc with a text file dated 01/31/1997 and seems to be a full package and not the patch to update ED I to II ( with a text file dated 01/04/1997). Even the INSTALL.TXT is different. INSTALL.TXT.zip ETERNAL.TXT.zip ETERNAL.ZIP I checked them out. So ED II was released as a standalone package and also included Maps 28-32, which aren't mentioned in any textfiles. They are all the same octagonal arena in the sky with random monsters and supplies. Why? I dunno. They all use Eternal Medley as the soundtrack (same as Map27) Edited June 8, 2021 by A.H. Sankhatayan 1 Quote Share this post Link to post
Redneckerz Posted June 8, 2021 Funny enough, the Doomshack package contains a parameter in ESHELL called MakeIWAD - A blunt way to make Eternal Doom effectively be its own standalone game, using a merged Doom 2 IWAD. But ETERNAL.WAD has to be renamed. Quote MakeIwad - Suggest you ONLY use this if your system has 8M RAM or less and you use EMM386. You'll probably have to then, or use a boot disk without EMM386. It uses a bit more disk, and must rename ETERNAL.WAD to DOOM2.WAD (in the ETERNAL directory!) to avoid loading both DOOM2 and ETERNAL at run time. Be sure to have PLENTY (50MB+ usable) disk space available before starting this option. DO NOT install Eternal in the DOOM II directory if it is your intention to exercise this option! Once you have exercised it, the option disappears from the menu. The only way back is reinstallation from the files in BACKUP (hopefully). A curious way of going standalone. Robocop (by CDoom author Carlos) also is a standalone game, but in the more literal sense of the word - It does not make use of a merged IWAD. 6 Quote Share this post Link to post
Dark Pulse Posted June 8, 2021 I do know that Sverre is still around and actually posts on Doomworld from time to time. No idea how good his memory would be even more decades later though, or what else he could further elaborate on. I'm sure if he feels there's something he could add to this topic, he will in due time. 3 Quote Share this post Link to post
DoomGater Posted June 8, 2021 Great Job! I really adore Eternal Doom and TeamTNT, they really pushed the limits. @A.H. Sankhatayan : Thanks for digging in the dust of time. they deserve it! And if we could manage to gather old (and may be new) members, they possibly could Return from Oblivion... 3 Quote Share this post Link to post
JadingTsunami Posted June 8, 2021 Long ago there was an interview with TNTFatal on Functional Entropy that covered many of these topics. If someone by chance has a copy it may provide some new insights. 4 Quote Share this post Link to post
Dusty_Rhodes Posted June 8, 2021 (edited) 2 hours ago, DoomGater said: Great Job! I really adore Eternal Doom and TeamTNT, they really pushed the limits. @A.H. Sankhatayan : Thanks for digging in the dust of time. they deserve it! And if we could manage to gather old (and may be new) members, they possibly could Return from Oblivion... Man, a rebirth of Team TNT with new and old members would be a dream come true. Those guys were always innovating and pushing what they could do. It was never perfect (Final Doom as much as I love it is proof of that) but it was always interesting, always fresh. Being in a big - time mapping team like that would be incredible. Maybe not too realistic of a dream though. :) Edited June 8, 2021 by Dusty_Rhodes 5 Quote Share this post Link to post
Dusty_Rhodes Posted June 8, 2021 2 hours ago, Redneckerz said: (by CDoom author Carlos) Speaking of CDoom, where do you find that engine? I've looked all over the web to no avail. Even the Doom wiki didn't have any links last time I checked. Always been curious about this port. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post
Gothic Posted June 8, 2021 The first Eternal Doom titlepic was so much better, I find it funny how it got worse with every iteration (that's 90s graphic design I guess) 8 Quote Share this post Link to post
Dreemurr Deceevurr Posted June 8, 2021 4 minutes ago, Gothic said: The first Eternal Doom titlepic was so much better, I find it funny how it got worse with every iteration (that's 90s graphic design I guess) Going from a fancy looking goth-ish font to generic MS Sans Serif and "good" ol' Comic Sans is certainly a choice. 2 Quote Share this post Link to post
Catpho Posted June 8, 2021 (edited) As a big Eternal Doom nerd, i can't express enough my thanks to you for this @A.H. Sankhatayan! I've been intending to do something like this myself a while back, so i had some potential sources of info saved. Your research was quite comprehensive; nevertheless, i'll leave these here: + Dia Westerteicher left info on ED's development in the One Man Doom review comments section + The DWMC playthrough of ED has scattered info Edited June 9, 2021 by Catpho 7 Quote Share this post Link to post
Andromeda Posted June 8, 2021 Thanks for this great post, learned a few new things today! 6 Quote Share this post Link to post
Michael Jensen Posted June 9, 2021 Thank you all for the positive response! 1 hour ago, Catpho said: As a big Eternal Doom nerd, i can't express enough my thanks to you for this @A.H. Sankhatayan! I've been intending to do something like this myself a while back, so i had some potential sources of info saved. Your research was quite comprehensive; nevertheless, i'll leave these here: + Dia Westericher left info on ED's development in the One Man Doom review comments section + The DWMC playthrough of ED has scattered info Don't worry, hopefully this is just the start. I will continue to update the timeline with any information we find. Thank you for providing these. I'm already thinking about another possible source of information. In an old "Evolution of the Wad" thread, CapnClever found an old, archived Usenet posting by Ty Halderman https://www.gamers.org/pub/archives/doom/articles/art-1871. We might be able to find more at the The r.g.c.Doom Usenet postings archive hosted by gamers.org 2 Quote Share this post Link to post
Devalaous Posted June 9, 2021 I've been looking for Eternal Doom's first and second releases for ages, and with @Terraformer9x widescreening the titlescreen of ED3, I wondered if the first and second had neat titlepics. It's unfortunate when the non-final releases of things go missing or really hard to find. 3 Quote Share this post Link to post
Doomkid Posted June 9, 2021 (edited) All of the old Doom Usenet stuff is archived in Google groups these days, isn’t it? I know a good chunk of it is - but sifting through it all is hard, especially since for the last 10+ years the pages have been relegated to spambot dumping grounds.. The Usenet era was way before my time, so I might be missing some links, but if you sift all the way back to the 90s and very early 00s, you can find the goods, and all the rec.games.computer.doom stuff seems to be saved, as well as the alt.games.doom stuff: https://groups.google.com/g/alt.games.doom https://groups.google.com/g/alt.games.doom.ii https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.computer.doom.misc https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.computer.doom.playing https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.computer.doom.announce https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.computer.doom.editing https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.computer.doom.help Edited June 9, 2021 by Doomkid 5 Quote Share this post Link to post
Chris Hansen Posted June 9, 2021 8 hours ago, Dark Pulse said: I do know that Sverre is still around and actually posts on Doomworld from time to time. No idea how good his memory would be even more decades later though, or what else he could further elaborate on. I'm sure if he feels there's something he could add to this topic, he will in due time. His username is @Soundblock 2 Quote Share this post Link to post
Michael Jensen Posted June 9, 2021 6 hours ago, Doomkid said: All of the old Doom Usenet stuff is archived in Google groups these days, isn’t it? I know a good chunk of it is - but sifting through it all is hard, especially since for the last 10+ years the pages have been relegated to spambot dumping grounds.. The Usenet era was way before my time, so I might be missing some links, but if you sift all the way back to the 90s and very early 00s, you can find the goods, and all the rec.games.computer.doom stuff seems to be saved, as well as the alt.games.doom stuff: https://groups.google.com/g/alt.games.doom https://groups.google.com/g/alt.games.doom.ii https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.computer.doom.misc https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.computer.doom.playing https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.computer.doom.announce https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.computer.doom.editing https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.computer.doom.help And here I thought I was gonna be preparing for my exams :D I need to get something to drink. Then it’s doom archaeology time. 3 Quote Share this post Link to post
Dark Pulse Posted June 9, 2021 9 hours ago, Chris Hansen said: His username is @Soundblock I know, but that just pinged him, and I was trying not to bother the guy. :P 0 Quote Share this post Link to post
Vorpal Posted June 9, 2021 Does an archive of Team Eternal's site exist (I mean pre-tnt)? Keeping in theme with the wad, the site was a colossal disorganized clusterfuck of 90's glory 0 Quote Share this post Link to post
Michael Jensen Posted June 9, 2021 (edited) I updated the OP to include more information you all provided and include relevant links. I also hopefully made it more cohesive, fixed some mistakes and updated info regarding EDII standalone release. 2 hours ago, Vorpal said: Does an archive of Team Eternal's site exist (I mean pre-tnt)? Keeping in theme with the wad, the site was a colossal disorganized clusterfuck of 90's glory That would be great but I couldn't find it anywhere. Maybe somebody else knows more? 13 hours ago, Devalaous said: I've been looking for Eternal Doom's first and second releases for ages, and with @Terraformer9x widescreening the titlescreen of ED3, I wondered if the first and second had neat titlepics. It's unfortunate when the non-final releases of things go missing or really hard to find. Check the relevant links section in the OP. Edited June 9, 2021 by A.H. Sankhatayan 1 Quote Share this post Link to post
thestarrover Posted June 9, 2021 21 hours ago, A.H. Sankhatayan said: ED III (full package) on idgames archive - https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/themes/TeamTNT/eternal/eternal I don't know if it is important, but on idgames is also available, for ED III, a dehacked patch created by Rich Nagel. It changes automap names, modifies the cheat codes, etc... Here 3 Quote Share this post Link to post
Redneckerz Posted June 9, 2021 18 hours ago, Dusty_Rhodes said: Speaking of CDoom, where do you find that engine? I've looked all over the web to no avail. Even the Doom wiki didn't have any links last time I checked. Always been curious about this port. They aren't listed because the author might be trickled into posting again. But in recent times this has waned. EDIT: Apparently the author is still working on it given the 2021 fixtures. Find here. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post
DuckReconMajor Posted June 9, 2021 Fantastic stuff! I was also in the same camp of wondering where Eternal Doom 1 and 2 were, having only seen some cursory explanations of "oh it's included in 3". On 6/8/2021 at 2:15 PM, A.H. Sankhatayan said: 5 Year of Doom interviews ... (more specifically, learn of their existence). I stumbled upon it a while back and there's a ton of good stuff in there. My favorite is this glDoom preview (does anyone know who wrote this?) 2 Quote Share this post Link to post
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