[Release] Demon Eclipse - Episode 1

[Blue Shadow]

Code: Select all

Disclaimer:
-----------
   The mod you see here is not my own creation, and despite being given the authority by Amuscaria to do
   whatever I want with it, I had decided to keep it mostly untouched.

Demon Eclipse - Episode 1

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This is the first episode of Amuscaria's Demon Eclipse mod, made stand-alone. This started last week when I was searching the forum and I stumbled upon a post by Amuscaria in Demon Eclipse's project thread, stating that he is going to drop the first episode of the mod in favor of focusing on the second episode and the hell-tech-themed arsenal. I, just like some of the people who posted later, thought that it'd be a shame to see this happen, and would've liked if the episode were to receive a final, "farewell" release. So, I decided to take it upon myself to do just that. After six days of work, Demon Eclipse's first episode has become its own thing, and with Amuscaria's approval (thanks, by the way!), I'm able to share it with the rest of you.

The majority of the work I've done was "under the hood", so don't expect anything substantially new gameplay-wise. Here are the highlights of the made changes:

• The project uses the archive structure (PK3/ZIP), with everything organized in directories.
• Only the needed resources are included. Anything that didn't have a use was removed, except for the extra unused UAC weapons. These are still there.
• Fixed/addressed whatever bugs I came across.
• Did some code cleaning and tidying up here and there (mainly DECORATE and MAPINFO stuff).
• Added dynamic lights to needed actors, as well as [wiki=GAMEINFO]a "Demon Eclipse" startup banner[/wiki].

[Ed the Bat]

Jolly good show! Now the 'deleted' episode is officially and permanently preserved for us to enjoy. Good work!

[SyntherAugustus]

First thing I noticed was that the playerheight is upped to 50. I tried this with the current mod I'm using and it feels a lot more natural. I'm not a 4ft man running around the game anymore!

[Viscra Maelstrom]

well, technically, Episode 1 isn't considered the first episode of Demon Eclipse anymore, so the name can be a bit misleading with recent developments of the mod for those who doesn't know about that. unless Eriance had a change of heart regarding that.

anyway, it's nice to see this episode here, and not forgotten to the dark depths of the internet, so thanks a lot for doing this!

[seedzhao]

thank you very much for this!

i love eriance´s works, and hope that one day i could see more from him.

[Graf Zahl]

This started last week when I was searching the forum and I stumbled upon a post by Eriance in Demon Eclipse's project thread, stating that he is going to drop the first episode of the mod in favor of focusing on the second episode and the hell-tech-themed arsenal.

It's sad to hear these things. The funny thing here is, there's actually three episodes one now - it looks like it was redone TWICE while throwing away most, if not all the old work. Although this one reuses the maps from the second one it's different enough to warrant keeping both around.

What I don't understand is that some mappers just prefer to throw the stuff away instead of just making a public release to /idgames to ensure its survival.

Many years ago I stumbled over a nice techbase-themed mapset that suffered from the same problem - a perfectionist mapper who just couldn't stop tinkering with it and in the end all work was lost because he lost interest and never released it. Fortunately I still got some earlier versions of those maps...

Please make sure that this goes into /idgames.

[Robomorons]

Question. Where is all the ammo? Currently on E1M3 and all I have to start the level off is a chainsaw and 0 ammo of everything. And the secrets didn't help, with one being a berzerk pack near the end of the level, a clip and 4 shotgun shells. Is this WAD supposed to feel like a survival horror mod, because it sure as Hell feels like it. And before you ask, yes I am playing on Ultra Violence so technically I asked for it, but this is still cruel and unusual difficulty.

[xenoxols]

Even on hey not too rough there is very little ammo. I would say it is possible to not ever run out of ammo, but very hard.

[SyntherAugustus]

E1M2 was pretty bad about the ammo early (especially during the chaingun drop/imp ambush in the beginning!) on but it got better later on. This is me playing on UV.

The maps may need to be rebalanced for ammo.

[Jimmy]

Thank you for this release, Blue Shadow. If I may be so bold as to ask what on earth Eriance is thinking by throwing out this episode entirely - I mean, a dash of perfectionism is all well and good, but this is ridiculous.

There's nothing to lose at all from leaving old or outdated material in a project, regardless of what you might think as the creator/artist. He's a fantastic artist and I fully understand how he might not be able to devote all his time into this project due to more important commitments, but Demon Eclipse has the possibility to be a fantastic project if he focuses more on forward progress and putting together a finished product, rather than something that keeps getting refined to the point where it has no sense of identity. As it is, discounting the levels (that make Demon Eclipse a very enjoyable and fresh experience to actually play), the project is technically very much a limbo of custom resources, and has been through so many iterations now that I'm sure that it's been essentially a completely different thing every two or three years since it started back in the mid-2000s.

If it's the mapping that's taking the longest time, I wonder if attending speedmapping sessions would help. And if the graphics to do are also a big roadblock, then I wonder if it would be so hard for Eriance to emulate one of his older, simpler styles? Would that speed up the process if anything? I'm not an artist so my opinion on this is probably moot.

I just wonder what could solidify the chances of the project reaching its goals, and I feel that the degree of Eriance's hyperattention to details and obsession with keeping an utterly consistent quality within the project when it's so ambitious in scope is at this point dangerous to the project. He's already done the work - incredibly high-quality work it is, too - and it's a shame to see him just letting it go and making the project into something totally different again.

I'll be playing this again when I get the chance - perhaps for the dozenth time? This really is one of my favorite Doom projects of all time and it really has incredible artistic and gameplay value.

[Graf Zahl]

That's the problem with perfectionists. They never get anything done because the feel the need to rework it again and again and again and...

To be honest, the DE releases from 5 years ago were perfectly fine, yet still here we are and all work is invested in refining the stuff again, and we still have no official release.
I can't remember any other project that threw out this much perfectly good stuff along the line.

[Jblade]

I can see your points, but unlike other artists Eriance has frequently released his older work to the public and created a ton of resources for other mods to use - I think in cases like this it's fine to be a perfectionist since I get the feeling Eriance is doing this purely for the love of it rather than for any kind of public acclaim (not that he needs that anyway, since me and about 90% of the zdoom community I imagine are grateful for his hard work and his great sprite art which has widened the roster of enemies available that aren't just coloured reskins)

Anyways thanks for putting this together - the first episode is still a great slice of Doom action and the new content blends in perfectly.

[kmxexii]

thanks to eriance for authorizing this and thanks to blue for "maintaining" it.

[Blue Shadow]

well, technically, Episode 1 isn't considered the first episode of Demon Eclipse anymore, so the name can be a bit misleading with recent developments of the mod for those who doesn't know about that. unless Eriance had a change of heart regarding that.

I suppose you can call it just "Demon Eclipse" (the startup banner does). The newest iteration of the mod has been given the subtitle "Hell-forged", which I think works well in separating it from this.


Regarding ammo: I don't know, but I've never had an issue with it. True, the mod doesn't overload you with it, and you might feel that you're running out of it sometimes, but it doesn't take long until you find some more. To me, it's fair in that regard.

All I can advise is to be conservative, use your weapons wisely and rotate between them. This is not vanilla Doom/Doom 2, where you eat and breath shotgun shells all the time.

[demo_the_man]

very very good