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	Message: : Chapter 3 Stage 2: Crisis Galaxy : Forward by LOC: As per usual, the failure plank coverage of Eternal was : written by Viking Boy Billy, with footnotes added by me in Durandal's : color from my own recordings of said levels, currently on my log. Said : recordings will be posted prior to Chapter 5 at a later date after the : actual failure plank entries like this one so we get to see both sides : (and major parts of the expanded story started in the prologue writeup), : so to tell my ones apart from the actual Tour of Duty entries by VBB, mine : will be referred to as Lost Episodes, like the Doom 3 expansion pack on : the BFG Edition. I also add in map images, terminals and three normal ones : from the Lost Episode version for context e.g. the conveyor belt mentioned : below. I also used the Lost Episode recording as reference when helping : VBB through the levels in our email correspondence while he was writing : this Stage, especially as my memory is more fuzzy on Eat S'pht & Die : than on others. : Act 1: Eat S'pht and Die : Last time, we got the S'pht'Kr onto K'lia so they can teleport away and : trapped Hathor on Lh'owon by inserting two big computer chips under the : tower of antiquity, only to somehow wake up one thousand years later in : the pfhor invasion (which is in the 1700s Gregorian, if you're keeping : track). Now we're going to bring the S'pht'Kr back and win the war for the : s'pht, which should have no unforseen consequences whatsoever. : : Actually, we're just going to be a distraction while s'pht—... umm... : whatever his name is, calls them over so the Pfhor don't see them. So it's : the old red herring diversion stall trope while the main character : infiltrates the enemy and... wait, I'm the goofball doing the diversion! : This doesn't feel right, and that map title signals that we're going to : have a bad time. : And there's hardly any time to use the pattern buffer before a pile of : enemies swarms all over us from the nearby alcove! But at least the : pattern buffer and a 2x charger are right here at the start. But since : we're stalling their attention by killing as many phor as we can here, : that must mean this is another extermination map. But hey, we get to see : some ancient s'pht architecture before Lh'owon became a desert ghost : planet of incompetent pfhor outposts. That's a lot of Buts. : There's some debris floating down from above, probably ash, and one of : Lh'owon's moons above. It can't be K'lia; the s'pht'kr haven't come back : yet. : : Note by LOC: Cool! It’s raining fire! Well, sort of. : Shining Raven’s rain script works well again here too: the volcano is : erupting, blocking out the night sky and making it snow ash. : Personally I call the S’phtBobs S’pht Corals as S’pht in general remind me of : coral, going by a cross section of them I saw in Geology class back in : 2011: The machinery underneath they fly with is the skeleton (the bit that : makes up the reef) and the organic part is the coral animal itself. I : guess that would make the S’pht world network/collective consciousness the : coral reef and Lh’owon the sea. : The corals are actually S’pht with no armour or carapaces, going by the image : of unarmoured S”pht in Charon Doesn’t Make Change. I think the basement : mentioned below is the one with blue shock absorbers I noted in the Lost : Episode recording. Speaking of the corals, why are they here? (on this : map) They should be hiding! : : There' a bit of space out here and some s'pht flying overhead. They can't be : s'pht'kr, but they use their sprites. I guess the modder(s) weren't arsed : to make a new s'pht clan enemy, but they were arsed to make an unarmed : civilian (I'll call them S'phtBobs), so I guess we're pretending these are : an older version of their biomechanical suits. : There's only one way to go. Actually, two, but the battlefield on the other : side of the stairs is suicide, so we're heading deeper into the tunnels. A : bunch of friendly gray f'lickta block off a path in the sort-of : garage/basement below, so we head up the only open route that doesn't : require friendly fire. There's a funny elevator where the button rides up : the platform with you, and the s'pht up in this area aren't so friendly. : (edit: the texture with the lever on it doesn't rise up with the lift on : later retries... it must have been glitched out the first time I hit it) : This map is just full of Fuck You skirmishes, as I suspect will be a : continued pattern in all the failure plank maps. You need to use the : elevator to take cover and the 2x at the top when enemies aren't : attacking. The last enforcer amusingly dies in a lava pool, and there's a : button that I THINK lowered the platform to another lever, and that lever : raises the platform up to a lever that does... something (Edit from the : future: the lever that activates the lift in the next paragraph is : inactive until this lever is pulled). Who else but a game designer would : make switch-based infrastructure like this? I guess it can be good for : security in a battle. No wait. The first lever didn't lower that platform. : What it actually did was open a locked door to a lever that... opens the : door when it locks behind you. What is the point of that? : We eventually find the one non-troll lever that lifts us up to a rampart : above the arena. There's some very M1-ish design ala "welcome to the : revoloution" where we have to run across the air into holes on the : side of the wall to keep going... and M1 brown hunters. Ok, I like the : howl they do, but why is this different? Bringing back the hulks and : lookers is one thing, but is this an old hunter model the pfhor were using : in the 1700s? We run all the way across the edge... back to where we : started in this room. So this is one big troll room. I guess the only : reason for anything is to kill all the pfhor. : As I head back to the pattern buffer at the start, I go out the wrong exit : and almost get myself killed! It is time to explore the other half of this : outside area at the start. There's some lava walls here that are solid so : you can't walk through them. Must be decoration. : : If we run up the sort-of-staircase in this room up to the platform with a : column on it, we see a slot to insert a computer chip. There's nothing : else here, so we make a mental note of that and go back downstairs to kill : those f'licta blocking the last route. After getting them out of the way, : the area has a lift that brings us up to... nowhere? There's clearly some : fighting going on in the windows in the building around this place, and an : innocent S'phtBob got downed by pathetic shock-staff plasma, but... where : do we go? : The light in the pillar makes an odd locked noise when we press use on it. : : It appears the only place to go is grenade-hopping into one of the windows up : here and it's a tricky jump with the narrow space and the weaker grenades : to do it, but I manage it after a few attempts. The weaker grenades might : make it better for not killing yourself. There is a pattern buffer over : here, which seems to be a wink from the map designer "yep, this is : really what you had to do. Now go swim in lava! Hahaha!" : Yeah. The only new place to go here is into a lava tunnel. Err.. lava : aqueduct? But nay, even that spits you out to the starting area. Somebody : is getting their jollies out of this, and it's not the player. : Okay, back in the "troll" area, there was a hole I missed right : here. It blends in with the lighting. : : In it is a tunnel with a lever that reveals the computer chip we need : surrounded by fluorescent light. Grabbing it opens a wall that is a : shortcut to the computer chip slot. Inserting it opens a wall with some : friendly s'pht. : : But once we enter, so much hell breaks loose that it causes slowdown in the : framerate. There's even a nasty juggernaut that likes to hide around the : corner. : There's a hole in the wall we have to take a short lava swim to get to, and : from there we take a ride up to some more ramparts, with a weird door that : we have to walk into a lighted alcove to the left to open. One of these : rooms has a horrible strobe light, and below we can see the area where the : juggernaut was and some lights in the cliff face. A lever here will make : an opening in the lights. We can jump down here and check it out, or keep : exploring the ramparts. I pick the former, and get a 3x charger reward for : braving the lava. The switch opens the door above, and it turns out we : needed the 3x for the long lava swim back... and discover the lava is : crawling with gray f'licta under the surface! : We have to jump around some closed doors to progress, and there's two levers : at the end of the ramparts here. One of them opens up a wall at the end : with a staircase, with a fork to a small lava river. I'm low on shield : now, so I can't risk the damage and keep going upstairs. Turns out the top : opens up that area we had to rocket hop to earlier, but the pattern buffer : is still there. The lava river below is actually short enough for us to : live, but there's a mean f'lickta guarding the lever at the end. The lever : opens up a few areas where some flying ticks apparently sucked the life : out of some S'phtBobs. So these floating things are natural predators of : the s'pht... interesting that they choose to keep them floating around in : the wild. These S'phtBobs probably ran in here to hide from the pfhor and : ended up getting eaten by their own wildlife... like the equivalent of : egyptians getting eaten by lions running from roman soldiers. Poor things. : But... how do they survive with predators like this? Humans had to deal with : flying eagles and owls that can kill us, but these things are like arial : anti-gravity vampires that never sleep... and the s'pht might as well be : one-eyed brains in wheelchairs. You can shout Brain Beats Brawn as much as : you want; there has to be something to even the playing field here. This : is like if humans exist while dinosaurs are still roaming the Earth. You : know how Jurassic park turned out. : There's a sort of lava fountain here with a switch opening the wall on the : left, which opens up a path to an exit. But it also looks like something : opened up where that "locked light" was on the tower before from : the view here, so we gotta check that out first. It looks like a breakable : panel! But it's not breakable. So it opened something, but it's actually : nothing. There must have been plans for this map that got jettisoned to : the wayside. Ok, we're done here. Moving on. : Act 2: Second to Last of the Mohicans – Forge of Hours : : Note by LOC: ““drictelt 0906” aaron ”’|8-’|9” Raven 19 Also, the original : map text in the original Eternal X says “Why can’t I all this?! : Boohoohoo!”” : I’ve been looking forward to this map in particular for 1.2. When I was in : the chat for the Rampancy.net Halo 2 Anniversary stream, I mentioned : during the energy conveyor belt section in the Arbiter that Aleph One : seriously needed conveyor belts like Halo 2 and other 2.5D shooters like : Marathon (starting with Build engine games). Infinity at least had : conveyors but they were just animated textures with no behaviour so they : did nothing. : In both main older versions, this map had a cargo conveyor belt in it (some : sort of factory or mine?) but you couldn’t reach it, as it was impossible : to ride it. During that part of the chat, Shining Raven informed me that : she had actually made the conveyor belt on the 1.2 version of the map not : only accessible, but functional too. That is one of the best upgrades to : Eternal X 1.2 besides the rain script, geometry and texture updates. : https://youtu.be/GM_ZUo7L4kw?t=1294 : Check the chat around here. : According to the rain script after splitting the Eternal Precipitation WAD : into individual maps, the rain here on Mohicans in my copy at least is : supposed to be nuclear fallout. : Now, this map was originally a success plank map in 1.0. Leela sent us here : for some reason or another. By Eternal X 1.1, it’s now a failure plank : map: this one and Flames of Icarus swapped places. Flame of Icarus in 1.2 : is now is a tad more faithful to the original map, necessitating a title : change but hold on, we’ll get to that. : : We're teleported to a big tower that has a lone pfhor fighter in chartreuse : armor. The switch he was guarding opens a door across the field, and the : terminal here says this: : So this map is more filler. This terminal is a kind of trick, too, because : the lever is one of those timed switches that closes the door some moments : after it's activated. We have to open the door and then turn it off to : stop it from closing. There's a long stairwell there and it looks like : there's a lot of places to go. I choose to climb all the way to the top : and burn away the small resistance, and it's a lucky guess because the : pattern buffer is in the tower this path leads to. We can see a lot of : juggernauts stationed outside, and another trick switch that we have to : tab twice to keep a door open. The windows are plasma-proof glass, so we : can't shoot the juggernauts. : If we head down one story, we'll be on the ledge with that door we just : opened, and the juggernauts seem to be asleep. A hunter comes out and : wakes them up, but they don't seem hostile. One even blows up easily and I : wasn't killed, despite being near the explosion. We walk up and to the : right to the next ledge over, and in the next door are some S'phtBobs and : a trooper and hunter, and a lot of boxes. This map is full of wide, boxy : areas. We can't proceed from here, but there's a big red platform on the : map at the bottom of this room, so we must be able to access the roof : above eventually. : Another weird thing about these pfhor: not only do they wear chartreuse : armor, but their skin is... greenish? Maybe it's the lighting. Take a look : for yourself. : : I bet they're cribbing from that M2 terminal that showed green pfhor shooting : a s'pht's face. If we head back to the stairs, the middle path has a 1x : charger, and if we keep going we find a switch to open that door that was : locked on the other side, as well as wake up an enforcer on the other side : of glass that can wander, but not shoot us. That enforcer will somehow be : there to greet us on the other side when we head there, so we must be : headed to the path he was on, and... it was another trick switch, because : the door shut >=( : After reopening the door, and keeping it open, we eventually find a 2x shield : charger on the other side, and a button that's permanent because I can't : re-press it, but it's not obvious about what it did. It becomes apparent : when we head back and a door is open to a skirmish with fighters and a : hunter, and there's a PB in here. We find an enforcer guarding another : trick switch we have to hold down, and proceed downstairs to find a switch : that opens a big garage door with a juggernaut outside. : One good plasma charge is enough to down the juggernaut, but the outside : doesn't go anywhere. Another path takes us to a trick switch that opened a : door in another location; head back to the other side of the wall where we : came from and we find a door outside on the other side of the building : with some troopers and a hunter to fight. There's a tower here, and two : wacks with a shock staff downs the enforcer and we can open the door at : the outside area where that juggernaut was. We head up to find more : stationed juggernauts, and one of the rooms with an enforcer on a ledge : has a pattern buffer for us. : A switch here opens a door back to the entrance staircase and... it shuts : behind us! One of the worst trick switches! The other path we can go leads : to a switch that does... : *explores aimlessly a bit* : I think it raised the stairs in this region. See those red stairs? : : Up ahead are boxy rooms full of pfhor waiting to get slaughtered, and we make : our way inside another tower. It's hard to see, but using the map, we can : tell that it opened a door at that juggernaut rest area, and we need to : re-press it so it doesn't close on us. In that room is a weird block with : a texture on it that looks like a s'pht terminal, but it's not. : : The switch here opens up the whole wall with a hunter, and the next switch : opens the next wall with an enforcer. He likes hiding behind the boxes, : but I'm still beating these guys back with a shred of my shield left. Up : ahead is... a room dedicated to an oxygen charger? Ok, that's not useful, : and I really need to go find that 2x that's way back in the opposite : direction because there's just more danger up ahead. The next set of rooms : are deviously tricky, with enemies taking advantage of higher ground to : make things difficult. If we take a left in the room with the black and : brown hunters, this set of boxy rooms has no glass in the windows! : Everything can shoot at us through these rooms! But there is a 2x charger. : There's a couple of perma-switches, that opens up a room to another : temporary switch that opens the door on top of the stairs where an : enforcer gave us trouble earlier. This leads to a shortcut back to an : earlier area. There's also another door on the side up the previous : staircase I missed that loops back to the stairwell all the way from the : start. So one of those two switches from earlier must have opened : something in these earlier rooms. : Aye... ok, there was another room in the northwest I missed with a button : that opens a door across the... sewer area? It's a big tunnel with a : stream in it because the map marks it azure. : Note by LOC: That’s the cargo conveyor belt. Now with chaselights! : : I find this very soothing. If anyone makes a map taking place in an aquatic : base or underwater aquarium like Deep Sea World by the south river, I’d : love to see a shark and jellyfish tank belt section with this kind of : lighting. : And over there is... a terminal of Thoth??? : : Eh... Thoth? Did you get shut down yet? You're clearly awake, but you don't : look alright (tip from an alternate timeline: we might find out what's : going on with Thoth if we chose to find Leela when we had the chance : instead of becoming a sideshow to win this war). : We can enter the "sewer" tunnel, but there isn't any water. The : ground is a moving treadmill, and to get it to look azure on the map, they : must have put liquid under the floor (or above the ceiling). But... the : ambient sound in here is that underwater rumble. What's going on under the : hood in these polygons? : Note by LOC: Reading this terminal opens the conveyor belt umbilical. At : last! Conveyor belts in Marathon! : https://youtu.be/U7Gr-sDUPIE?t=1173 : They seem to be faked with a barely hidden layer of water, going by the : automap but I don’t care. Hat’s off to Liacrow/Shining Raven for upgrading : this map so. Other map makers better be talking notes. I want to see more : conveyors in the future e.g. factory levels, starports etc. : Crouch controls to go with my jump script too, so air vents of more realistic : size (not too realistic or we wouldn’t fit) or narrow caves to be made, : enhancing maps further. : There’s circuit panels to smash but even doing that, in the Lost Episode : recording those notes I add are taken from I take the slow way back, : savouring every picosecond. The belt is too slow though: it outruns me : as I ride it but again, I happy enough just to have it. The panel I : break opens the belt’s loading hatch back at the start. Also, I need to : point out the Tomb Raider 3 & Doom esque Hall of Mirror’s glitch due : to missing textures in the cargo conveyor belt’s doorframe by the exit : sluice. : : : This hall of mirrors glitch makes me think of the infinity well illusion at : the Satrosphere science museum down at the beach. : We finally get to shoot down the drones we may have saw here through the : windows earlier, and there's even a hole above for them to drop down from. : We have to punch a panel to open the door at the end, which spits us out : to an earlier area? So what's left? If we go back to Thoth, he's now more : coherent: : Witness the consequences of your intervention? Thoth, do you see into the : future, or are you just that good at prediction? : Act 3: The Manipulated Dead – I Need TP For My Bunghole : : Here we are, back at the station of the failed timelines. Let's see what went : wrong this time (like I really can't guess what happened when the pfhor : have that Trih Xeem thing for battles they can't win because they're sore : losers): : : : : : Uhh... is this Lh'owon's W'rkncacnctr? Speaking into our mind? Ok, it's a : little tacky for marathon storytelling. : Note by LOC: Personally, I don’t think so: It’s deliberately evoking the : Gravemind in Halo 2 & Halo 3, who speaks in a really hammy poetic way. : Imagine if the Gravemind evoked Ahriman from Zoroastrianism or Mephiles of : the Darkness from Egypt instead and there’s the Wrk. It’s also why I added : the edited text referencing the above on my log screenshots of the : terminal, though I forgot to edit out the MS Word spelling error wavy : lines. : And as we wander the ship, even a little bit, we run into a phantasm from : Pathways into Darkness! Good thing I had my fire gun equipped (the : enforcers should work on one that shoots ice crystals). Plasma is far more : effective on them than fire (fire IS a plasma, but you know what I meant). : And there's an invincibility we really need because these guys move faster : than they did in PID. They can quickly surround and kill you before you : have time to blink. The Swirls track does not fit with the creepy : atmosphere here, so I'll turn that off. Maybe I'll substitute Iron : Cthulhu Apocalypse music in its place, but I got flak for recommending : music tracks for maps before so I'm not enforcing it as a rule (an album : named "Universal Suicide" is pretty fitting for this scenario). : The way they move around the map is like playing a slenderman-type game, and : I highly suspect they're respawning. In fact, I recommend using plasma : sparingly because I ran out of charges getting overrun by the things. : Note by LOC: : : Yes, not only is the W’rkncacnter free again, but now it actually spawns its : ayakashi, which as we learned in my Pathways into Darkness Tour of Duty, : are monsters created as living manifestations of its own nightmares. Like : Pathways into Darkness they constantly respawn, in all previous versions : of Eternal X, NOTHING we have at this point can kill them. You can only : run. But there’s no escape; they WILL catch you, which means dying and : reloading A LOT. Instead of the Manipulated Dead, this map should have : been called “I Need TP for My Bunghole”. : In Eternal X 1.2, the banshees are weak to fusion shots and according to : Liacrow, the plasma flamethrower too. This is why I warned you all to save : your ammo for this point. : When we sruvive this creepypasta game and make it to the end, it's a terminal : that I assume is from Thothrandal (because he exists outside the : constricts of time) : : : : : : : You're accusing the literal cyborg killing-machine of acting rashly? : Soooorrrry! : Note by LOC: I second Billy’s concerns so just don’t, Durandal. Causality : be damned, we saved the S’pht from the Pfhor when they were supposed to be : first enslaved and THIS is how you and Thoth repay us? Ungrateful : bastards! Even though the Pfhor used the Trih Xeem, We could have just : done as we did in Infinity and stopped it millennia in the past. The only : reason we’re here is because either you two or past Thoth sent us to the : future world against our will! Leela could have found us and helped us : steal a pfhor ship to reach the terraforming platform from Aye Mak Sicur. : As it stands, the W’rkncacnter Trigger did its job, assuming Hathor’s : little name for the Pfhor to get me to go on her mission still applies : after she revealed her true colors. : Ok, joke's over, let's get back to S'pht Happens. : Note By LOC: This time I need to find Leela. Tune in next time for Chapter : 3 Stage 3: Cosmic Base. Don’t miss it!
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