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Re: Eternal X Tour of Duty Chapter 3 Stage 1
Posted By: Lion O CyborgDate: 10/1/20 3:19 p.m.

In Response To: Re: Eternal X Tour of Duty Chapter 3 Stage 1 (Aaron Freed)

: A few scattered notes: * S’pht of the same colour all share the same physics
: on a given level; each colour represents a specific clan. There are,
: however, two different shades of what you refer to as “blue”. The less
: saturated blue S’pht are hostile on the first three levels of Chapter
: Three (they become friendly once the Pfhor invade), and the more saturated
: blues are friendly throughout the game. I can’t remember which clan Raven
: associated the less saturated blues with, but the saturated blue are the
: S’pht’Kr. If memory serves, they also show up as blue dots on your map.

Pretty cool. :)

: * All Ticks are hostile to basically everything around them. They’re very
: fickle, though, so it’s almost random as to whether they attack. Their
: attack is pretty dangerous, though.

I see. Is the idea that they are being used as carriers for the S'pht virus a good theory though? It would fit, given the circumstances.

: * “She Is the Dark One” originally had another view of the Citadel of
: Antiquity in the northwestern corner, until we realised that this made no
: logical sense, given how far underground the player was, hence the segment
: of “Bob’s Big Date” I replaced it with.

: We had a lot of fun revising that map. I’m not really sure how many of the
: additions wound up being my work and how many of them were Raven’s. I
: suspect slightly more of them were mine, but when a map gets passed back
: and forth between people that much, it’s almost a moot point, since people
: often end up piggybacking off each other’s ideas to some extent. I have
: absolutely no idea who built a few of the segments in the map now.

And what a good map it is despite the maziness. The original could get messy if you kept falling in the lava, so the sewage tide in the main fissure helps.

: * Split doors get messed up in VML/Vasara if a player saves them in a
: different position than they’re supposed to start the level. That door
: would’ve been correctly aligned when the map was saved, but because it
: starts the map closed, it would end up misaligned if a person saved the
: map with the door open. This is one of the most annoying things about
: texturing in Aleph One.

So that's what caused it. I remember in the Tomb Engine things can F up like that simply when saving during gameplay, at least in much older builds of the engine: for example, in Lud's Gate of TR3, a secret door starts open but closes if the player is spotted by a guard. However, if they save in the general area where the door is (past the point of a ledge with harpoons between two filtration tanks), reloading that slot causes the open door to behave as if it's closed via an invisible wall.

The entrance to that stealth room has the same bug so I wonder if that was due to the doors starting closed and the engine forgetting to move the collision boxes if the save is reloaded after opening them.

: * The annotations including our names and dates (e.g., “Aaron 2018.10.04”)
: are really just notes to ourselves about when a map was last revised, and
: aren’t of any interest to people outside the development team. That said,
: we weren’t very good about updating them regularly, so they’re not really
: even of much interest to us.

: * Although “Omega” was at one point planned to be the name of what would have
: been the final release, it was dropped from the title during development,
: as it became clear that Eternal was unlikely to wrap up its development
: anytime soon – there’s never actually been a release entitled “Eternal X
: Omega”.

I see. Bear in mind that the entries which I wrote myself were made last year so they will likely still refer to it as Eternal X Omega. (though I could always edit that part out when porting the text)

: * I wouldn’t put too much thought into what real-world materials a texture
: resembles – these textures have been through so many revisions that
: there’s a decent chance the mapmaker’s original choice looked like
: something completely different.

That's indeed true, but it sure is fun to use my imagination like that. :) I wonder what the "techno gems" were meant to be? I think the textures of Eternal in general, old and new are great either way.

Again, I thank you for those points you note. I appreciate the feedback. Be sure to check out the Halo SPV3 entries too. (they were supposed to be written after Eternal's Tour of Duty came out here on the forum, but due to the long wait for Chapter 2 Stage 2 they ended up being written after Eternal's log releases)

I've got an archive of all parts on the Pfhorums too:

Eternal: https://www.pfhorums.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=54140

SPV3: https://www.pfhorums.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=54125

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Pre-2004 Posts

Replies:

Eternal X Tour of Duty Chapter 3 Stage 1Lion O Cyborg 10/1/20 8:51 a.m.
     Re: Eternal X Tour of Duty Chapter 3 Stage 1Aaron Freed 10/1/20 12:58 p.m.
           Re: Eternal X Tour of Duty Chapter 3 Stage 1Lion O Cyborg 10/1/20 3:19 p.m.

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