i fully agree with all the other 2 reviews, but id like to add some critisism as well.
the map objectives are unclear especially in the first map. but after some time you get to know what to do. in essence its just VISIT everywhere. not KILL everything.
i did like the inclusion of the cheat room. minor texture mistake, in the cheat room there is a 3x recharger but its a 2x recharger with the wrong color.
the ambushes wre unfair, especially in the last map (third map) but i geuss thats what an ambush is supposed to do. but at leasst the ambushes in the third map werend at all predictable.
also i liked the terminals in the third map, realy made it like there was once live in the city.
P.S. if you use the cheat room to get the assault rifle and you use the HD HUD you will get an eror message at the top left of the screen saying invalid ammo type.
other than that the lack of a story was a little off putting for me but if you dont care about that you will most likely like this.
the 3 maps will take about 2 to 3 hours depending on your dificulty and if you use the cheat room or not.
first of all, i agree with mopypoppy. but i expand on it. the story is interesting and is the only thing that will keep poeple playing this conversion.
the creator choose to make his maps in a way that new area's opens up to the player is by way of presure plate. now you wont be told that so you will be running around all the time thinking you were stuck.
also in some levels you have access to all the area's in the map but if you go from area 1 to, lets say area 3 without visiting area 2, you will be stuck without going back to area 1. so safe every start of a level and use a seperate safe to proceed in the levels after that. or you will have to start all over again.
also because of some unknown reason some doorways apear to be open but are unpassible. i suspect a editing fault. and on that note; allthough i cant remember what level it was, but it was on only one of the levels. the enemy firghters instead of teleporting in mid air they just float there.
and then the biggest mistake this scenario has EXTREMELY bad pasing with dificulty spikes throughout. it starts out fine. good level disgn and the first 5 or so levels are pretty straight forward. but around the middle of the scenario you will encounter a level in wich you are confronted with infinetly spawning suicide enemy's. in the level itself there is even a terminal in wich you are told by a editors note that you shouldnt shoot in a section of the map, so not to proc anything or you will die. (hence the miltyple safes)
so in sumary: you will run around for at least 10 to 20 minutes on many maps trying to figure out what to do. there are points in maps wich sole purpose are to trap you and make you stuck (restart will be needed). and the game is suffering from bad editing.
also the eniding is extremely anti-climatic.
but good story overall.
this scenario will take you between 6 and 10 hours depending on you dificulty level.
EDIT: use your map, it contains many written clues on what to do.
Checkpointed the instant before death.
No way to take back.
No hope.
This plugin seems to generate the 3D objects in all the wrong places with the latest version of infinity (1.2.1 as of this writing). One example is in Poor Yorick, Some of the 3D objects will appear on the side of the cat walks you're on.
The latest version of this HUD doesn't display bar-graph ammo meters (for weapons such as the fusion pistol and flame thrower). It merely remains a blank bar regardless of shots fired or number of reloads. The HUD works fine otherwise.
realy enjoyable, realy nice scenario and good placement of the terminals.
not too easy because of the lack of shield rechargers.
also realy good that you wont get transporter ganked because of teleporting enemy's. realy enyojed it.
P.S. if you run any plugins at all the game will work but some things will be inviseble. (like the underwater gun if hd textures is on)
Not too bad however M3 also has an HD sprites/monsters plugin as a separate download, which I would rather have.
This file definitely improves Eternal's visuals, however I would have loved to see a full HD Eternal.
This should be included with Rubicon by default if you ask me.
Not enough pointless corridors to make a Morrowind reference.
I enjoyed this. I really dig the level design and the touch up on the B.O.B.s. Also, those background battle noises on the last level were really cool. I look forward to the finished product!
Its the most played mappack on the meta-server right now.
can you believe it?
What a crazy world we live in.
I got named Hortator by house Redoran
I'm not so sure these can really be called "HD". They're just blurred, over anti-aliased versions of the originals.
These are out right the highest quality landscapes for infinity available. Although the 2048x1080 version of this plugin is included with infinity, you can easily download and replace it with this one if you think your computer can handle the extra load.
Updated: 6th December 2015
First off, I'd like to thank philtron/skraeling for getting into singleplayer mapping. Multiplayer is fun and all, but I personally prefer marathon's campaigns. This includes the originals and the fan-made.
I'll start with the difficulty. I think philtron did a great job on this. I was actually a little surprised, though, since I honestly wasn't expecting such a challenging... experience. The difficulty steadily increases throughout the first two levels (at the time of writing this scenario only has 2 maps), but I feel that at some points having only a pistol with some grenades made defeating the enemies a little irritating. By this I mostly mean when you get ambushed by 4-8(+) enemies at once, or when the player encounters the major trooper in the hallway. Anyway. Great job overall, it was difficult (for me at least) in a fun way.
Next I'd like to mention the new shapes file and what exactly it does. I was pleasantly surprised when I noticed pretty much every monster had been at least moderately modified, which offered a nice, refreshing experience. I was very surprised the first time I encountered the major trooper; a flame thrower AND a furious hail of fighter bolts?? Awesome. Invisible hunters have also been added; really neat. Most noticeable was the change in speed. Pretty much every monster could run around as fast as the player could, which I thought was a great touch. Definitely made things a lot more interesting. Philtron also took the liberty of reusing the sound files from the lava ticks for the s'pht compilers. I really liked that. It made the compilers a lot creepier!
Moving on to the texturing, shading, architecture and general aesthetics. I was a little disappointed here. A lot of the textures felt a little overused, making it hard to see where I was going, especially since most of the map was essentially a maze. Now I'm a huge fan of mazes and labyrinths, so I gave a big plus for that anyway. I felt like philtron really rushed this crucial part of mapping; a lot of textures were unaligned and it just generally felt sloppy. Good usage of the legendary water wells/fountains! At least they weren't overused and misplaced. However. I ADORED the shading. The first map had me hooked right away when all I could see were some flickering lights and a BOB staring at a terminal. I really liked the shades, it did a good job of hiding the misaligned textures and gave off a great, spooky atmosphere! I mean really, props to philtron for this. I only noticed one location where the lighting seemed a bit awkward, but otherwise, well done! Probably the one of my favourite things about this scenario so far. Now the architecture wasn't god-like, in fact, it was no where near Ryoko's maps, but to be honest it was good enough. It didn't really influence any of the combat which was a shame, but the new shapes file made up for that. Not to mention the fact that I do not expect to see any astounding landscapes when running around inside a maze. The terminals were nice, I liked the fact that there were so many of them. They really did a good job of making me feel like I was at Tau Ceti. The colour choice of the text was iffy sometimes, but overall satisfying. I did however miss the AIs; they were always a core component of the marathon series. Where's the poetic, sarcastic, mad and yet hilarious AI we all know and love? It's possible that the player, which seems to just be an ordinary security officer, encounters an AI later on.
Just some random notes: -Some of the ambushes were unfair and very foreseeable. Decreasing the amount of ambushers would be a good first step.
-I hope to see some more weapons! I really liked the new pistol.
-I honestly couldn't really notice any difference with the new fusion pistol. (aka. fusion cannon)
-The terminal pictures do not work. They don't show up. Fix this!
Anyway. All in all it was a very fun experience; very unique. The issues were minor, but they got very annoying very quickly. I think if you were to fix a couple things it'd improve gameplay dramatically. I hope to see some more height variations in the coming maps!
Thank you for these maps, philtron, and please don't stop until you've finished this fun little scenario! :) I'd rate this scenario 5/5 stars if you fixed the unaligned textures and made it prettier in general.
This plugin has the highest quality textures of any texture plugin. Fair warning, it's a bit laggy on older systems (specifically older GPUs). Also note, it doesn't have built in landscapes. Consider using "High-res Landscapes Plugin (M2)" with this plugin.
Works well in dark locations. Haven't noticed any glitches with this script. I can confirm it works in M1, 2, & 3. It tends to make the scenery flicker inside Rubicon X however.
Certain GUI elements look odd (out of place) with this theme however it's very functional. It also works with other scenarios including M2, M3, and Rubicon X.
All of these tracks are phenomenally great remakes. My only complaint is track 06. The original of that particular track had a soothing effect that your remake just doesn't have. Regardless I think this is one of the best audio remakes I've ever heard, not just in the Marathon universe but gaming in general.