: Well, I'm playing through it; I'm currently several levels in, although I
: think I've lost track of exactly where I am. My positive thoughts are that
: it's an interesting story with occasionally challenging gameplay, but I'm
: afraid I have a criticism or two as well: the textures make the levels
: look very bland to me, and some of the weapon art seems subpar. I like
: carrying the Pfhor Fighter staff again, but I think Marathon: Evil's
: "in-hand" graphics for it look much better.
Well, that depends on which textures you're using. Lores, midres, or insanely-hires? The lores textures, I admit, look kinda like shit. The midres look pretty good, in my opinion. But you see Eternal the way it was meant to be seen using the hires textures. Forrest designed the textures in 512x512, and to get them into midres and lores, he had to scale them down. The result was that the lores looked like shit, and the midres, as I've said, were only pretty good. However, the hires eat at your computer like...uh....hires textures.....on a computer.....On my 1 GHz eMac (32 MB VRAM, I think), every map in Eternal takes at least 20 seconds to load, and whenever I look at a big area for the first time, it slows alot for a second or two. But, if you can put up with that, you can see what Eternal was meant to look like. I also think that the music I'm currently working on scripting into Eternal (see my post "Difficulties" for details on why I'm still working on it) really improves the feel.
Also, in Mk II, I (and maybe another team member or two) will be going back to Chapter 1 and refining many of the maps. My plan at the moment is, after I finish making my maps for Chapter 2, I will remake some of the maps in Chapter 1, although I plan to have the layout be similar, if not the same, as the originals. I would actually prefer not to do this on a "Mark" system, but Forrest is determined to release Eternal as it is developed. I understand why, though. He wants to make sure that he gets as much as he can of Eternal out before something happens to essentially stop development. I side with Forrest on this.
