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The Edge of Time - TPC (Beta 1.9r1 "Contra")

Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2017 10:07 am
by FireSeraphim
Image
Yes, This is the third time I have attempted to remake this old project of mine.
Yes, I am also aware of my track record for failing to release stuff I'm working on.

Now that we have that bit of unpleasant details out of the way I think a basic overview
is in order.
You are the chief of security at a remote research facility near the polar caps
on the recently terraformed planet of Venus, having been assigned to a
new project to create an alternate form of teleportation technology that can
allow the user to go anywhere in space-time, including other time periods and
even other universes. Things seems to going perfectly, but perfect never lasts...

as you were taking your daily hike you briefly hear the alarms from the base
and a radio message, A demonic invasion of the base has begun!

you immediately drop what you're doing, whip out your service pistol and rush
back to base, hoping to stop the demons before they get their claws on the
technology.
This iteration of The Edge of Time is not like any of the prior iterations or
even like any other mod at all due to certain odd bits of gameplay decisions,
which I shall be listing here
  • A rather unique scoring system coded by Zhs2 and PhantomBeta, where you get a random
    powerup once you get the amount to trigger a score bonus,
    inspired by the scoring system used in classic Konami arcade games
  • Deployable inventory items, including fan favourites such as the Morph Ovum,
    an improved Flechette and cool new items such as the Golden Medikit, the Frost Ovum,
    carryable Radsuits and Nightvision Goggles
  • Coins and Treasure items you can collect to add to your score to trigger score bonuses
  • New AI for certain vanilla enemies to spice things up a bit, as well as a few new foes
  • New Weapons, perfect for rising to the challenge!
  • New Maps made just for the mod
I don't think I say much else about this mod of mine, as I consider it to be currently in
an alpha state
. Also the credits are currently stored away in .txt files inside the mod's
main .PK3 file since I have not yet gotten around to making a bunch of CREDIT pics and
the contents of the mod itself is subject to change, stuff that might appear in the mod
right now may be removed or altered depending on the evolution of the mod itself.

==Screenshots==

Episode 1 Venus Labs screenshots
Spoiler:
Episode 2 Ancient Egypt screenshots
Spoiler:
Episode 3 Medieval Europe Screenshots
Spoiler:
Episode 4 The End of History Screenshots
Spoiler:
==Videos==
--Trailers--




--Other people's video's on The Edge of Time--



==Changelogs==
Spoiler: Beta 1.9r1 "Contra"
Spoiler: Beta 1.9 "Crisis Force"
Spoiler: Beta 1.8r1 "Life Force"
Spoiler: Beta 1.8 "Salamander"
Spoiler: Beta 1.7 "Gradius"
Spoiler: Beta 1.6r3 "Gyruss"
Spoiler: Beta 1.6r2 "AJAX"
Spoiler: Beta 1.6r1 "Super Cobra"
Spoiler: Beta 1.6 "Scramble"
Spoiler: Beta 1.5 "Time Pilot"
==Downloads (Beta)==
Click here for the latest version (Beta 1.9r1 "Contra")

Re: The Edge of Time - The Producer's Cut

Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2017 8:11 am
by DoodGuy
Screenshots looks good, will try this out

Re: The Edge of Time - The Producer's Cut

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2017 4:53 pm
by FireSeraphim
https://streamable.com/xdbux

footage of E2M4 of my mod, don't mind the few seconds of blackness at the beginning. It's mostly a tiny bit of a recording lag hiccup that resolves itself.

Re: The Edge of Time - The Producer's Cut

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2017 8:42 pm
by PRIMEVAL
Screenshots look quite nice, and the footage looks cool. I'll have to give this a shot soon.

Re: The Edge of Time - The Producer's Cut

Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2018 12:16 pm
by FireSeraphim
https://streamable.com/se5ok
Footage of the intro cutscene for Episode 1. Don't mind the initial few seconds of black, wish most movie editors were simple and K.I.S.S compliant.

Re: The Edge of Time - The Producer's Cut

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2018 12:12 pm
by FireSeraphim
I have released a new alpha of my mod, I will be concise and list the changes real quick
  • A new chainsaw replacement has been added - The Eye of Ahriman. It's a weird one but it can be rewarding to use with sufficient mastery
  • all of episode 2 is ready to play
  • some re-balancing and more polish has been applied since the previous alpha
Please play it and gimme me some comments and critiques. I am also open to people interested in mapping and coding for this.

Re: The Edge of Time - The Producer's Cut

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 12:17 pm
by QuakedoomNukem Cz
Just completed Episode One: Venus Labs. Here's my thoughts so far:
Spoiler:
Other that that, I really enjoyed my time so far. The weapons are fun to use, each have their strengths and weaknesses, enemies are powerful, but beatable, maps are well detailed and expensive, and the score is a nice touch with its bonuses. Hoping for the full release. Good luck, man.

Re: The Edge of Time - The Producer's Cut

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 12:44 pm
by FireSeraphim
@QuakedoomNukem Cz: Your current copy of the Alpha is kinda slightly out of date, I kinda updated the alpha in dropbox (just click the link in the opening post to download the latest revision).
  • All the hitscan firing enemies now fire dodge-able projectile tracers instead, with their damage being rebalanced to be a lot more fair.
  • I'll see what I can do about the chaingun though.
  • Intentional, the Heretic Imp and Lost Souls aren't even enough of a threat to merit them dropping score items
  • Aye, I'll see what I can do about the windows in the E1 maps

Re: The Edge of Time - The Producer's Cut

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 1:28 pm
by Zhs2
I beat both episodes. I thought this was cool and fun, and it's not often I get to play a project where I can jump over ammo that will overfill me. :P And now for some feedback (tested on Ultra-Violence):

- Like QDN Cz above mentions, the chaingun feels like the exact same thing as the submachine gun but with a windup and less accuracy. I didn't check to see if it did slightly more damage or anything since using one over the other wasn't really a problem most of the time.
- There is way, way too much shotgun ammo. It takes thirteen shotgunners to bring you back to full shotgun shells, and that's with a backpack. The shotguns are weapons you can't really fire fast enough to warrant that much replenishment that fast, and even halving the amount shotgunners drop wouldn't detriment the supply. Compare to bullet weapons where bullets are fairly scarce until there are enough chaingunners to drop chainguns (10 of those fill you up, even less if those enemies also drop bullet boxes).
- The regen powerup seems criminally useless. Either you're above 100 health thanks to all of the other pickups in the world or you're dead, practically. I didn't even know what the score bonus powerup that turned your screen purple did until the later levels, and 3 health per regen period seems kinda low. Can I suggest changing this powerup up so that it is still useful when you're above 100 health, a la High Noon Drifter's Spirit Bottle? Using that item as an example: restores health faster when below 100 (e.g. 5 every regen period), but gives minimal bonuses above 100 (e.g. 1).
- This sector in E1M2 (the one with the torch in it) seems to be muted of all sound for whatever reason.
- The crate lift in E1M3 can be activated by monsters, which leads to some amusing results.
- Heretic Imp corpses apparently make stairs hard to traverse, as observed in E1M5.
- I practically stumbled into E1's secret exit without ever finding the real exit. Conversely, E2's secret exit is pretty well hidden. I guess this speaks for the difficulty of either secret level, though.

Re: The Edge of Time - The Producer's Cut

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 3:39 pm
by FireSeraphim
  • Already buffing it.
  • I'm doing what I can about it, it's just that in my playthroughs I often found myself sorta wanting for shotgun ammo. Can you tell me which maps have it really bad on excess shotgun ammo?
  • I have expanded the time on the Regensphere to 45 seconds and upped the healing to five per second.
  • Nothing I can do about that (E1M2 abuses the hell out of interactive portals and sound doesn't carry between the interactive portals).
  • I could have sworn that I fixed that.
  • Just now fixed it (I hope).
  • I'll see what I can do about E1M2's normal exit.

Re: The Edge of Time - The Producer's Cut

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2018 1:17 pm
by QuakedoomNukem Cz
Just finished Episode 2 - Ancient Egypt, here are my opinions:
Spoiler:
SECRET LEVEL SPOILERS:
Spoiler:
EDIT: Here are those two pillars I mentioned: https://imgur.com/te1lBF4
https://imgur.com/te1lBF4

Re: The Edge of Time - The Producer's Cut

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2018 6:54 pm
by FireSeraphim
  • There's not much I can do about the polyobjects in E2M1 unless someone can show me what I'm doing wrong exactly, At the time I didn't remember the existence of the Restart; acs command for the script running the polyobjects and as a result had to resort to an ugly franken-hack of a method involving using a bastard hybrid of "boom scripting" and an active acs linedef
  • two pillars? I don't know what you are talking about. Please send a snapshot.
  • I'll see what I can do about it. Personally I though I did a good enough job with the episode boss, considering that the Cyberdemon Lord is legitimately deadly
  • I'll see what I can do about the DPS on the Enhanced Arachnotrons
  • it's supposed to be that way, you're supposed to be quick about entering them but I'll see what I can do
  • strange, I'll just have to fix those

Re: The Edge of Time - The Producer's Cut (Alp. 4.8 Update!)

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2018 7:47 pm
by FireSeraphim
I have gone ahead and fixed several problems and implemented several things suggested by the testers so far. This isn't a huge update but it will have to do until Episode 3 is released.

CHANGELOG
  • Increased the firing speed of the heavy chaingun
  • buffed the regeneration sphere (by it's healing per second amount from 3 to 5 and by increasing the heal time from 30 seconds to 45 seconds)
  • fixed the crate lift in E1M3
  • fixed the bug with the death states for the gargoyles, did you know that the Gargoyles from Heretic actually don't call A_Scream or A_NoBlocking in their death states in vanilla heretic? apparently I needed to add A_ScreamAndUnBlock to both their Death and XDeath states and that is what was causing the problem with their corpses and the stairs in E1M5
  • added another regular exit in E1M2 that's much more easily found
  • did what I could about the crushers in E2M1
  • buffed the end fights of E2M4 and E2M5 respectively
  • nerfed the DPS of the enhanced arachnotrons
  • fixed some lingering problems regard E1SM1 and E2SM1

Re: The Edge of Time - The Producer's Cut (Alp. 4.8 Update!)

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2018 11:37 am
by Zhs2
As an empirical test, I changed Former Sergeants up a bit to drop shotguns containing half their normal ammo. (Map-placed shotguns still give a full eight shells, to mimic the vanilla behavior.)
Spoiler: code
After playing through the first episode again on Ultra-Violence I couldn't find a single map where I was seriously deprived of shells because of this. There are enough drops in all those maps and enough ambient shotgun shell pickups to keep your shotguns fed, and this is not including the fact that you have at least 2 other ammo types to spend from at all times if you do run out of all 100 shells. Still playing through Ep. 2 again, and off the top of my head only one map allowed me to run out: the Ep. 2 secret map.

It also seems prudent to mention that I rarely if ever find myself using the double-barrelled shotgun. The combat shotgun provides a steady, controllable DPS at better range, while the DB seems more useful only for a surprise attack (rare those are) or on tightly-knit groups of weaklings. In fact, I should mention that the ton of Frost Ovums around will take out a big foe much faster than any shotgun - in addition to being great grenades to toss into a pit below you...

The Edge of Time - The Producer's Cut (Alp. 4.8r2 Update!)

Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2018 1:46 am
by FireSeraphim
this is a rather small changelog, not enough for major revision change

CHANGELOG
  • reduced the number of shotgun ammo drops all over episode one's maps (I can't do much about episode 2's maps due to the way the pottery from Hexen is implemented, the underlying problem being that GZDoom Builder does not support arg0str outside of hexen for actors that inherit from the breakable pottery from hexen, so I end up having to edit the pottery and their drops in SLADE3. there's also a secondary problem where if I save a map that has the pottery with SLADE edited arg0str's in GZDoom Builder, GZDoom Builder will delete all the arg0str's I placed on the maps and it's a real pain in the arse to deal with since quite a few of E2's map have hexen pottery and/or actors that inherit from hexen pottery)
  • reduced the ammo of ammo gained from boxes of shotgun ammo from 20 to 16
  • tightened the spread of the double barrel shotgun to make it more useful
  • added pickup flashes for all the inventory items that didn't have em already
  • added special pickup flashes for the treasure