Getting Eternity TC resources into playable state

[brick]

The Eternity Total Conversion was was an extremely ambitious project started in the late 90s, gathering together Quasar, Ebola, Adam Williamson, Holger Nathrath, and other big names of that era, with the goal of developing an engine and a TC wad that would run on it and take advantage of its advanced features. The engine survives to this day and is indeed advanced and impressive in so many ways. Unfortunately the TC ran out of steam and was never completed. A large number of its resources got published, in fragments that don't fit very smoothly and with maps riddled with missing objects; I don't know how much of the planned Dehacked work was done but none of it was included with the resources. Loading the maps and looking at the incomplete work, I would think of what could have been, and lament that no one seems to have had any interest in picking up the pieces. Then I thought, well, be the change you want to see.

 

Before anyone's hope/outrage gets too high: I do not plan on finishing Eternity TC, or fill in the missing map slots, or even finish the incomplete maps. I do not have the time, creativity, or interest. What I'm trying to do is get what is already there to work properly and to fit together into a more or less cohesive whole, even if it'll still be missing much of what would've made the complete TC special. I also don't want to run into trouble with the permissions; the resource website seems to indicate they're up for grabs, but then the wad template explicitly forbids modifications ("absolutely MAY NOT"). My solution is to create a separate wad, which uses NO resources from the TC, but can be loaded alongside specific TC wads to patch things together.

 

Despite the TC being made for Eternity, I'm making a wad that will require GZDoom. I had what I thought was a good reason at the time: I wanted it to run on something other than a custom engine version that hasn't been updated in 25 years, and modern Eternity doesn't support FraggleScript anymore, which the TC uses. This turned out not to matter much, since most of the scripting is either simple stuff that any mapinfo can do (including EMAPINFO), or specific extensions that will only run on the original custom engine anyway. Because of the way GZDoom runs the various games, and my familiarity with its inner workings, it still turned out to be a good choice, as it allowed me to re-implement many of the missing pieces quite easily between ZMAPINFO, ZSCRIPT and SNDINFO. Speaking of, let's talk about those missing pieces.

 

A. The Things.

The resource site has a long list of all the enemies, decorations and items that the team wanted to create and implement. Not all of them are used in the maps that do exist; I ran each map, made a note of what was missing, and compiled a shortened list of Things that needed implementing:

Name		     Editor Number   Dehacked Number
Swamp Tree 1, tall 	-- 6002	  --	157
Swamp Tree 2 		-- 6003	  --	158
Tree w/ Leaves 		-- 6004	  --	159
Destructable Tree 	-- 6005	  --	160
Roof Moss 1		-- 6006	  --	161
Roof Moss 2		-- 6007	  --	162
Cleric **, Human Enemy  -- 6008	  --	163
Maulotaur Torch, lit    -- 6009	  --	165
Maulotaur Torch, unlit  -- 6010	  --	166
Fog Spawner             -- 6011	  --	174
Horned Column           -- 6016	  --	179
Wooden Barrel           -- 6017	  --	180
Hanging Skull           -- 6018	  --	181
Wall Torch              -- 6019	  --	182
Chandelier              -- 6020	  --	183
Meat Clever             -- 6021	  --	184
Beer Stein 1            -- 6022	  --	185
Beer Stein 2            -- 6023	  --	186
Overturned Cup          -- 6024	  --	187
Cup                     -- 6025	  --	188
Cauldron, unlit         -- 6032	  --	195
Swamp Vine              -- 6033	  --	196
Hanging Corpse, bloody  -- 6034	  --	197
Sitting Corpse          -- 6035	  --	198
Impaled Corpse          -- 6036	  --	199
Hanging Corpse          -- 6037	  --	200
Small Rock              -- 6041	  --	204
Large Rock              -- 6042	  --	205
Wind 			-- 7001
Water, babbling 	-- 7002
Water, rushing  	-- 7003
Dripping 		-- 7005
Swamp Sounds Collage *  -- 7007
Big bubble sound        -- 7008
Shlurp Sound            -- 7009
Falling rocks sound     -- 7010
Bubbling lava           -- 7013

If some of these sound familiar, it's because they're either from Heretic or Hexen. This is where doing this for GZDoom was a boon: any custom object with an editor number in your pwad map can be assigned to an existing object from any of the games that GZDoom supports. I had to rewrite a few of them in ZSCRIPT because of renamed sprites in the TC, but for the majority of the listed Things I just had to find which existing Heretic/Hexen object they corresponded to and reassign the DoomEd number. Suddenly my list of missing objects became much shorter:

Name		     Editor Number   Dehacked Number
Cleric **, Human Enemy  -- 6008	  --	163
Fog Spawner             -- 6011	  --	174
Dripping 		-- 7005
Swamp Sounds Collage *  -- 7007
Big bubble sound        -- 7008
Shlurp Sound            -- 7009
Falling rocks sound     -- 7010
Bubbling lava           -- 7013

The cleric enemy has sprites that look like the class ones from Hexen. I doubt it was meant to be Traductus since there's so many of them, it looks more like a melee enemy. I think I've seen it implemented in another wad before but I can't remember where. The fog spawner and the remaining ambient sounds need some work. They're all from Hexen, but I think when they're used as map objects there they are controlled by ACS scripts, or by parameters unique to the Hexen map format (which the TC maps do not use). I think I got the fog spawner to work, but I'm not sure what to do about the cleric and the ambient sounds.

 

B. The maps

The resources have several map wads, along with a couple of planning files listing map orders. Some are very easy to figure out, others not as much.

1) Prelude map by Kurtis. It was meant to be purely cinematic, and was easy to turn into a GZDoom TITLEMAP.

2) Main level set, I think by Quasar. These are the easiest to figure out as they are already named for the slot they're meant for: MAP01, MAP02, MAP03, MAP13, MAP16, MAP18. Some are complete but not all, notably MAP03 Swamp only has a handful of completed rooms.

3) Adam Williamson has 2 versions of the same map, using MAP11 but meant as MAP10 according to the level plan. Oddly, the version that seems more detailed and developed has an older date...

4) Holger Nathrath has 5 maps, all complete, probably meant for MAP11-MAP15.

5) 2 unsued maps by an unknown author. One is clearly an incomplete version of what would've been MAP06. The other is a ship with supplies and no enemies, not clear where it would've fit.

6) Mantra has 2 map sketches. One would've been MAP05, the other is unclear.

7) Ebola has one map sketch, not clear where it would fit.

Many of these don't even have map titles but enough are complete that it's possible to reconstruct a wad with at least 10 maps that can be finished.

 

Now that I've written all of this I'm having doubts and wondering if any of this is a good idea... I'm not even sure I can put the maps together without having to repackage them, which I would like to avoid if at all possible. For some maps it's possible to use what bits of them are done, MAP03 for example doesn't have an exit but I used ZSCRIPT to "insert" one and make it possible to finish it without changing the map file itself. I'm going to see how many of the maps are salvageable this way, put them into some order, and see what the result looks like. I also need to figure out how to get the missing ambient sounds to work, and what to do with the cleric enemy. I'd love to hear everyone's ideas if you want to share them.

 

I thought about tagging Quasar in this post but decided against it, I wasn't sure if he'd appreciate being bugged about a project that he hasn't worked on in 20 years. However he would probably be the ultimate authority on what was planned for the TC. Quasar, if you see this and feel like sharing I would love to hear your take on the missing pieces. Either way thank you for sharing the resources with us and not letting them all fade into obscurity.

 

I hope this was the right subforum to create the thread, I wasn't sure but none of the others seemed to fit.

Edited November 16, 2023 by brick

[Mordeth]

On 11/16/2023 at 6:57 AM, brick said:

Despite the TC being made for Eternity, I'm making a wad that will require GZDoom.

 

LOL :)

[HavoX]

On 11/15/2023 at 11:57 PM, brick said:

Despite the TC being made for Eternity, I'm making a wad that will require GZDoom.

...what?

[ludicrous_peridot]

If you need states and action code for these check out Tartar source code (C, not ZScript though). They come for Caverns of Darkness source code made available by @Murdoch couple years ago. I did not find any playable maps among published ones back in the day so ended up building my own to showcase the actors the engine had support for and dialogs engine. You can check those out as well in Tartar full distro.

 

PS

My experience on this board was that Quasar was quite friendly when it came to the TC. He responded with a lengthy storyline explanation and such already; can fetch the link if your search does not come up with anything relevant.

Edited November 20, 2023 by ludicrous_peridot
Quasar