Will a non-Eternity Engine version of Heartlands exist?

[AschTheConjurer]

As per title:

I'm already assuming the answer is "no". I'm also assuming the follow up is something along the lines of "specific Eternity Engine features are needed for it".

I tried looking up if there's any projects going on to try and adapt it to a format other sourceports can handle, but results were a bust.

I want to play it, because it seems interesting and it's Skillsaw, but tonight's experience with Eternity Engine has turned me off the port completely.

 

Could it even happen at all, or am I better off just forgetting about the idea altogether?

Edited February 17, 2022 by AschTheConjurer

[Edward850]

Why does there need to be one? What's stopping you from running Eternity?

[Biodegradable]

32 minutes ago, AschTheConjurer said:

Could it even happen at all, or am I better off just forgetting about the idea altogether?

 

I think you'd be better off simply adapting to using Eternity if you REALLY want to play it. Otherwise, yes, forget about it. One of the big driving points behind making Heartland was for it to specifically demonstrate the engine's features, so it being played in other sourceports misses the point.

[Gez]

48 minutes ago, AschTheConjurer said:

Could it even happen at all, or am I better off just forgetting about the idea altogether? 

The text file for Heartland does allow modification and reuse, so theoretically, yes. Someone could decide to spend their time adapting Heartland to a different engine.

 

But that seems unlikely to happen.

[AschTheConjurer]

36 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Why does there need to be one? What's stopping you from running Eternity?

 

Nothing; I can run it perfectly fine. I just didn't know how stripped-down the port is before I used it for the first time tonight. I had heard about Eternity's mapping features, which is what made me interested in projects made for it. But it has some aspects I consider dealbreakers, and I know most people wouldn't care about any of them (and more than likely actually enjoy the things I don't like).

I'm not really interested in rambling about my personal gripes though, the point of the thread was just to ask if there was some conversion project or some such that people knew about: I've been out of the loop for ages now because Doom stopped being my major hobby a while ago.

 

24 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

 

I think you'd be better off simply adapting to using Eternity if you REALLY want to play it. Otherwise, yes, forget about it. One of the big driving points behind making Heartland was for it to specifically demonstrate the engine's features, so it being played in other sourceports misses the point.

 

8 minutes ago, Gez said:

The text file for Heartland does allow modification and reuse, so theoretically, yes. Someone could decide to spend their time adapting Heartland to a different engine.

 

But that seems unlikely to happen.

 

Bugger, but expected.

[RHhe82]

4 minutes ago, AschTheConjurer said:

Nothing; I can run it perfectly fine. I just didn't know how stripped-down the port is before I used it for the first time tonight

This is little off the topic, but I have steered clear of Eternity Engine because I thought it was like GzDoom but even more bloated with fancy features that I was sure my laptop wouldn’t run something like Heartland on it. Have I been wrong in assuming that?

[Thelokk]

9 minutes ago, RHhe82 said:

This is little off the topic, but I have steered clear of Eternity Engine because I thought it was like GzDoom but even more bloated with fancy features that I was sure my laptop wouldn’t run something like Heartland on it. Have I been wrong in assuming that?

 

Would need to know specs but my midrangy, non gaming laptop runs it just fine. 

[Gregor]

11 hours ago, RHhe82 said:

This is little off the topic, but I have steered clear of Eternity Engine because I thought it was like GzDoom but even more bloated with fancy features that I was sure my laptop wouldn’t run something like Heartland on it. Have I been wrong in assuming that?

If your laptop can run GZDoom fine, it will run Eternity smooth as butter.

Edited February 17, 2022 by Gregor

[Kinsie]

1 hour ago, AschTheConjurer said:

As per title:

I'm already assuming the answer is "no". I'm also assuming the follow up is something along the lines of "specific Eternity Engine features are needed for it".

I tried looking up if there's any projects going on to try and adapt it to a format other sourceports can handle, but results were a bust.

I want to play it, because it seems interesting and it's Skillsaw, but tonight's experience with Eternity Engine has turned me off the port completely.

 

Could it even happen at all, or am I better off just forgetting about the idea altogether?

Probably not. At their very core, the maps are built around Eternity Engine features that no other port is interested or capable of implementing for a wide (and completely understandable) variety of reasons. It's kind of like asking for an EDGE port of, say, Hocus Doom.

[rzh]

27 minutes ago, RHhe82 said:

This is little off the topic, but I have steered clear of Eternity Engine because I thought it was like GzDoom but even more bloated with fancy features that I was sure my laptop wouldn’t run something like Heartland on it. Have I been wrong in assuming that?

Maybe you're thinking of Doomsday and mistaking it for Eternity?

[Shepardus]

22 minutes ago, RHhe82 said:

This is little off the topic, but I have steered clear of Eternity Engine because I thought it was like GzDoom but even more bloated with fancy features that I was sure my laptop wouldn’t run something like Heartland on it. Have I been wrong in assuming that?

If you know your way around PrBoom+/dsda-doom/Woof, then Eternity Engine will feel mostly familiar.

[Gregor]

33 minutes ago, AschTheConjurer said:

 

Nothing; I can run it perfectly fine. I just didn't know how stripped-down the port is before I used it for the first time tonight. I had heard about Eternity's mapping features, which is what made me interested in projects made for it. But it has some aspects I consider dealbreakers, and I know most people wouldn't care about any of them (and more than likely actually enjoy the things I don't like).

I personally wouldn't worry too much about missing features compared to GZDoom. Any switch from GZDoom to one of the other popular sourceports is likely going to feel like a step down initially since GZDoom is so stuffed to the brim with features that, while not necessary to enjoy Doom, are difficult to give up on once you got used to them. Took me a while too before i could embrace ports like DSDA or Eternity. What are some of the things you consider dealbreakers?  

[RHhe82]

12 minutes ago, rzh said:

Maybe you're thinking of Doomsday and mistaking it for Eternity?

You could be right; Google results of Doomsday engine more or less match the image I had about Eternity, which all of a sudden looks to be closer to my ports of choice, PrBoom/DSDA. Guess I need to give it a try, would love the play Heartland.

[Redneckerz]

1 hour ago, AschTheConjurer said:

Nothing; I can run it perfectly fine. I just didn't know how stripped-down the port is before I used it for the first time tonight. I had heard about Eternity's mapping features, which is what made me interested in projects made for it. But it has some aspects I consider dealbreakers, and I know most people wouldn't care about any of them (and more than likely actually enjoy the things I don't like).

Well, perhaps you could name what are absolute dealbreakers?

 

Heartland is one of those mapsets (like Vaporware) that really is built against the source port, and as such are an exclusive. I am sure some conversion is possible (After all, ZDaemon regularly has conversions of ZDoom-only wads but that's easier since the two ports have the same source base) but, its likely not wort the effort.

 

46 minutes ago, RHhe82 said:

You could be right; Google results of Doomsday engine more or less match the image I had about Eternity, which all of a sudden looks to be closer to my ports of choice, PrBoom/DSDA. Guess I need to give it a try, would love the play Heartland.

Without hating on Doomsday because that Bias lighting is fly, older Doomsday is stable. In general, the rendering of Doomsday is not that much changed: Its OpenGL and it looks good.

[Mayomancer]

Is it about mod compatibility with other things you play with?

[ReaperAA]

2 hours ago, RHhe82 said:

This is little off the topic, but I have steered clear of Eternity Engine because I thought it was like GzDoom but even more bloated with fancy features that I was sure my laptop wouldn’t run something like Heartland on it. Have I been wrong in assuming that?

 

If anything, Eternity is far far less bloated than GZDoom. It is actually closer to DSDA-Doom than GZDoom.

[RaiderX]

On the topic of Heartland, does anybody have a GZDoom version of its weapon set? Thanks

[Nikku4211]

3 hours ago, RHhe82 said:

This is little off the topic, but I have steered clear of Eternity Engine because I thought it was like GzDoom but even more bloated with fancy features that I was sure my laptop wouldn’t run something like Heartland on it. Have I been wrong in assuming that?

My 2.9 GHz desktop with Intel Core-i5 processor and 8 GB RAM and Intel integrated graphics can run it just fine at 320x200 render resolution scaled up to 1200x900.

 

Though the port doesn't have a hardware renderer, it's all software, so GPU may not matter as much as your CPU does.

[Pirx]

4 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

 

I think you'd be better off simply adapting to using Eternity if you REALLY want to play it. Otherwise, yes, forget about it. One of the big driving points behind making Heartland was for it to specifically demonstrate the engine's features, so it being played in other sourceports misses the point.

 

 

heartland was effective in making me use eternity to play it. tbh, i knew that engine, but used gzdoom for everything, because it looks good and plays almost whatever. heartland was not made for eternity for shits and giggles, but because it uses its features. so, even if someone ported it to gzdoom, it would be quite laborious to replicate everything eternity does.

[Salt-Man Z]

2 hours ago, Pirx said:

heartland was effective in making me use eternity to play it. tbh, i knew that engine, but used gzdoom for everything, because it looks good and plays almost whatever. heartland was not made for eternity for shits and giggles, but because it uses its features. so, even if someone ported it to gzdoom, it would be quite laborious to replicate everything eternity does.

Yeah, I use GZDoom for literally everything, but I had no issues adjusting to Eviternity just for Heartland.

[NokturnuS]

Afraid that not conversion to EE to GZdoom of Heartland will be possible. Edge portals are the name of the game, you can literally have infinite options with them, in gameplay and map layout, and Heartland takes adventage of that. Maybe if GZdoom in the future implements edge portals or a similar feature a crossport will be possible.

[Graf Zahl]

I said before when the same topic came up last time that aside from edge portals there's another thing that makes it hard to port the mod - the wall portals have all been done without any sector on the back side. GZDoom's collision code didn't like these setups very much so it was disabled.

 

I think a far more realistic goal here would be to make a hardware rendering fork of Eternity rather than porting the maps and all the EDF stuff. Of course that hypothetical port still needs to solve how to render edge portals without running into portal recursion issues.

 

1 hour ago, Salt-Man Z said:

 but I had no issues adjusting to Eviternity just for Heartland.

 

:D

 

[Edward850]

7 hours ago, RHhe82 said:

This is little off the topic, but I have steered clear of Eternity Engine because I thought it was like GzDoom but even more bloated with fancy features that I was sure my laptop wouldn’t run something like Heartland on it. Have I been wrong in assuming that?

It's a vanilla compatible port, how bloated are you expecting it to be? 

 

 

 

[RHhe82]

5 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

It's a vanilla compatible port, how bloated are you expecting it to be? 

 

Well, Heartland looked so beautiful and intricate that I just assumed.. :'(

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nUNyRpMRHs

 

[PsychEyeball]

8 minutes ago, RHhe82 said:

Well, Heartland looked so beautiful and intricate that I just assumed.. :'(

 

It's always nice to know what source ports are all about! If anything, I found these videos by Dwars to be pretty interesting on this matter.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzauoLqk_9U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ49AQTX_rU

 

They are 2 years old so some information might be a little out of date, but they're still pretty informative. 

[ginc]

2 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

I said before when the same topic came up last time that aside from edge portals there's another thing that makes it hard to port the mod - the wall portals have all been done without any sector on the back side. GZDoom's collision code didn't like these setups very much so it was disabled.

 

When I saw this thread I started poking around in MAP01 of Heartland to see how feasible a port to GZDoom is, and at least in this map it seems very doable (but quite labor intensive). Edge portals are only used for the underside of the hoisted truck in the garage, so reworking that into 3d floors shouldn't be too hard.

 

With GZD 4.6 now recognizing Line_QuickPortal, adding buffer sectors onto the back of the non-polyobj line portals should also work.

 

The big pain, however, is the sector portals. Each one would need to be ported manually. The problem is that Eternity's Portal_Define (which is what Heartland uses for sector portals) uses a different linedef anchor system than GZD's Sector_SetPortal so it can't be directly translated. I would have to redo the anchors/specials and sector tags, which is a lot of work, but its doable. It would be nice if both ports could handle each other's UDMF sector portals, but here we are.

 

I'm also assuming the EDF can be converted but I could be very, very wrong.

Edited February 17, 2022 by ginc

[Misty]

EDF can be converted back to decorate or even zscript... But in other hand, Heartland is already perfect as it is. Not every mapset must be compatible with other popular ports, even if players would like to. 

[Graf Zahl]

If

1 hour ago, ginc said:

The problem is that Eternity's Portal_Define (which is what Heartland uses for sector portals) uses a different linedef anchor system than GZD's Sector_SetPortal so it can't be directly translated.

 

Making the Portal_Define special work shouldn't be too hard. It's just a different setup method, not some fundamentally different way to internally handle portals.

 

 

[ginc]

14 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

Making the Portal_Define special work shouldn't be too hard. It's just a different setup method, not some fundamentally different way to internally handle portals.

 

If you can add this to a future GZDoom update that would be great, the more compatibility the better IMO. As you said, the portals are functionally identical, they just have different geometry on the anchors (one linedef pair vs. two pairs) and sector tagging (sector tags vs. UDMF properties) so XLAT won't work in the current version.

Edited February 17, 2022 by ginc

[Edward850]

11 hours ago, AschTheConjurer said:

Nothing; I can run it perfectly fine. I just didn't know how stripped-down the port is before I used it for the first time tonight.

Stripped down from what, exactly? Eternity hasn't really removed anything notable from SMMU.

 

Well I mean unless you really were that attached to Small.

Edited February 17, 2022 by Edward850