act Posted November 24, 2021 I'm relatively a complete newbie when it comes to Doom and it's various source ports. Personally I primarily use PrBoom+, so I'm curious on what is the Eternity engine, what does it add to the Doom engine that other source ports don't, and why I should consider using it? And no, I feel like someone's going to ask if this is or interpret this as a passive-aggressive "Why tho lol xd" post, but I'm seriously wondering, what's up with Eternity? 1 Quote Share this post Link to post
Edward850 Posted November 24, 2021 https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Eternity_Engine 5 Quote Share this post Link to post
DuckReconMajor Posted November 24, 2021 2 hours ago, act said: why I should consider using it? The short answers: Vaporware Demo Heartland The long answers: the wiki entry posted above trying it out yourself to see if you like it 4 Quote Share this post Link to post
LadyMistDragon Posted November 24, 2021 It adds a feature called portals. Basically, it involves rendering multiple levels of a building without teleporting you invisibly. GZDoom has a similar portal capability, but the difference is you can tell you're being teleported because of how said portals are arranged.. I'm no expert but that seems to be the main thing it does. Only thing is that visuals tend to lack vibrancy, but sets like Heartland that are designed with it in mind do a slightly better job. 3 Quote Share this post Link to post
printz Posted November 24, 2021 (edited) Q1. What's the purpose of Eternity in a world so full of source ports? A1. The Eternity Engine aims to provide features that extend the DOOM experience in a way that is as natural and seamless as possible. It is one of only a few ports that boasts a DOOM compatibility level that is near 100%. New features are all optional and can be individually enabled or disabled by the player; even old v1.9 demos have a good chance of staying in sync, in large part thanks to enhancements shared with prboom. The small amount of work it takes to keep the engine compatible doesn't keep new features out of the it, either. See the next question for some ideas of what will appear in future versions of the Eternity Engine. Haha, there used to be an EE FAQ which since long ago hasn't been included due to outdated info in it. The excerpt above is from the source code docs/eefaq.txt, with the addendum that demo support is much much better. Of course this is a niche interest unlikely for many to care for, but the idea stays that it's like a PrBoom with extra capabilities ahead for modding. GZDoom is still extremely powerful, but lacks the PrBoom part. PrBoom+ itself may also have superior backwards compatibility support. The ongoing breakthrough ports which enhance PrBoom/MBF with better modding like MBF21 and DEHExtra also present a challenge for Eternity to support these stuff just as well (until recently, the tendency was for each port to have its own exclusive incompatible editing features, which while cool, caused only a few ports, like GZDoom, to win the wads). Edited November 24, 2021 by printz 9 Quote Share this post Link to post
Gwarl Posted November 24, 2021 (edited) It's the most advanced engine that can still look and play exactly like Doom. PrBoomalikes can also look and play exactly like Doom, but Eternity has EDF which gives editors control over all the game content, much more flexible and extensible than BEX, and it supports the UDMF map format and ACS, greatly increasing the possibilities for what level designers can do. It also has the best support for portals of any doom engine (GZDoom can do them, but they are subject to more caveats and limitations). Unfortunately there are not many Eternity exclusive mapsets, but you can use Eternity for all the boom and below mapsets as well. There are a couple of mapsets which are playable in both Eternity and GZDoom but nothing else, so you can use eternity to play those in an engine which is faithful to the vanilla game. https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/122115-megawad-tarnsmans-projectile-hell-rc2/ https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/122483-dread-moon-map02-released/ Edited November 24, 2021 by Gwarl 4 Quote Share this post Link to post
act Posted November 24, 2021 18 hours ago, printz said: Q1. What's the purpose of Eternity in a world so full of source ports? A1. The Eternity Engine aims to provide features that extend the DOOM experience in a way that is as natural and seamless as possible. It is one of only a few ports that boasts a DOOM compatibility level that is near 100%. New features are all optional and can be individually enabled or disabled by the player; even old v1.9 demos have a good chance of staying in sync, in large part thanks to enhancements shared with prboom. The small amount of work it takes to keep the engine compatible doesn't keep new features out of the it, either. See the next question for some ideas of what will appear in future versions of the Eternity Engine. Haha, there used to be an EE FAQ which since long ago hasn't been included due to outdated info in it. The excerpt above is from the source code docs/eefaq.txt, with the addendum that demo support is much much better. Of course this is a niche interest unlikely for many to care for, but the idea stays that it's like a PrBoom with extra capabilities ahead for modding. GZDoom is still extremely powerful, but lacks the PrBoom part. PrBoom+ itself may also have superior backwards compatibility support. The ongoing breakthrough ports which enhance PrBoom/MBF with better modding like MBF21 and DEHExtra also present a challenge for Eternity to support these stuff just as well (until recently, the tendency was for each port to have its own exclusive incompatible editing features, which while cool, caused only a few ports, like GZDoom, to win the wads). This convinced me to try out Eternity later today. Hell, maybe it'll dethrone PrBoom+. 2 Quote Share this post Link to post
act Posted November 25, 2021 Sorry to double-bump my thread, but I'm having an issue with a module called "adlmidi". When trying to create the build files, CMake returns that I don't have adlmidi as an error. I can't find a package for adlmidi anywhere, would anyone know where I could find it? 0 Quote Share this post Link to post
Edward850 Posted November 25, 2021 (edited) 11 minutes ago, act said: Sorry to double-bump my thread, but I'm having an issue with a module called "adlmidi". When trying to create the build files, CMake returns that I don't have adlmidi as an error. I can't find a package for adlmidi anywhere, would anyone know where I could find it? adlmidi is in the root of the repo, it's a submodule. Make sure you clone with the --recursive flag or initialise submodules. Edited November 25, 2021 by Edward850 1 Quote Share this post Link to post
xvertigox Posted December 28, 2021 I tried out Eternity recently to play Heartland and I was surprised at how good the software renderer looks. After playing with it some more and reading this thread I think I know how it fits - it feels like the logical evolution from prboom. Chocolate Doom -> Crispy Doom -> prboom -> Eternity I like how close to vanilla it feels despite offering advanced editing options. I've been trying it out as my daily driver and so far so great. As much as I enjoy messing around with GZDoom it doesn't feel like Doom, it feels like ZDoom. Eternity feels like Doom. 8 Quote Share this post Link to post
GraphicBleeder Posted February 12, 2022 On 11/23/2021 at 8:58 PM, act said: I'm relatively a complete newbie when it comes to Doom and it's various source ports. Personally I primarily use PrBoom+, so I'm curious on what is the Eternity engine, what does it add to the Doom engine that other source ports don't, and why I should consider using it? And no, I feel like someone's going to ask if this is or interpret this as a passive-aggressive "Why tho lol xd" post, but I'm seriously wondering, what's up with Eternity? Just read the wiki page Edward850 posted. Try it out for yourself to see if you like it. Personally it and GZDoom are my 2 main source ports (besides multiplayer stuff like Zandronum). 0 Quote Share this post Link to post
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