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Espi Award - For lifetime achievement
Xaser "@Xaser" Xaser
Xaser, as Alfonzo aptly put it in 2017, is "the Doom community's truest polymath." Over the years, I have seen him endearingly likened to a supercomputer, have seen many people wonder exactly what supernatural wellspring his ideas come from. Readers closest to Doomworld likely know him as a mapper of limitless creativity first, and then secondly as a renaissance man who makes other things too: like compositions for BTSX's OST, helpful gadgets like DamNums, and lately, Heartland's new arsenal. But the full picture of why he is receiving the Espi award starts in the ZDoom community all the way back in the mid 2000s, with his trailblazing work as a gameplay modder.
The release that put him on many old-timers' radar in 2005 was the classic partial conversion Zen Dynamics, framed around a story loaded with zany ideas, outfitted with an expansive weapons mod. Notably, it hacked together a weapon reloading system years before ZDoom itself added that functionality. This served as a model many other modders would rely on in the interim, and would begin a pattern that could be summarized as "Xaser thinks of something cool, implements it, and everyone follows suit."
In 2009 came Psychic, which paired unorthodox weapons like energy nailguns with an extensive set of psychic abilities you can level up during the course of play. Designed alongside talented friends, it was a trendsetter in many ways, with its buttery smooth animations and effects, and with the GUI overlay system used for its in-game store. That overlay system was—once again—implemented long before overlay systems were natively supported in ZDoom. Even after all this time, Psychic is held in the highest regard, with esteemed gameplay modder TerminusEst noting in 2018 that "Nearly every aspect of the mod has been imitated or referenced or expanded on...but to this day, nobody can quite match the bar Psychic has set." In many circles, Psychic is still namedropped as a great example of you-name-it—hand-sprited motion blur, magic systems, dual attack systems—despite being quite streamlined, very far from an omnibus "contains everything" type of mod. Using a gravity wave to hurl a horde of revenants off a bridge is even more fun than you might imagine.
For a time, just about every major development in gameplay modding seemed to propagate from either WildWeasel's mods or Xaser's—one famous example being Parkour's oft-imitated "synthfire" hack for independently operated duel-wielded weapons—and Xaser is commonly thought of as one of the spiritual forefathers of a thriving GZDoom modding scene, with countless standouts like DRLA, Lithium, Guncaster, High Noon Drifter, and SWWM-GZ that have his fingerprints in some way. His work consistently pushed boundaries, and as friends can attest, the impact spread past the specifics; there is much to be said for proving that breaking limits is possible in a general sense, for those who ground the feeling of "this shouldn't be possible in Doom but it is" in real-life examples and inspire others to take on their own bold, improbable experiments.
This is also one of those extreme cases where namedropped examples lead to understatement, if anything, like measuring Alien Vendetta's influence by counting homages; by now, it's just in the water.
This carries his timeline to his ascension as a mapper, which is nothing if not a microcosm of his greater versatility. If you split Xaser the mapper into a few separate Xasers—don't get any ideas—each belonging to a distinct sphere in which he has thrived, each copy would have gained a dedicated fan following of its own at some point, despite the limited output. There'd be the Xaser who contributed to throwbacks like Doom: The Lost Episode, the Doom the Way id Did series, and the much-admired No End in Sight, which corrupted the moonbase and hellscape stylings of the original games with wildly imaginative brain-melting madness. There might be the Xaser of enigmatic standalones like Sharp Things and Dead.wire and Dead.air—the latter two being hi-tech counterpoints to No End in Sight, as cutting-edge convergences of hi-end GZDoom features and sleek modern visuals. (Sharp Things is also cutting edge because, well... .) There would be the Xaser who could be counted on for his spellbinding work in ambitious team projects: such as "Transcendence" from Eviternity, "Wild Bleu Yonder" (alongside MTrop) from the Adventures of Square, and quite a good deal of Back to Saturn X Episode 2. And you can't really forget the Xaser of inspired ridiculousness like TurboCharged ARCADE!
Then there's also Xaser the multiplayer mapper. I mean, there might be a strong correlation between developed knee arthritis and remembering Xaser from the Skulltag community, but did you know that over the ages he mapped for: duel and free-for-all, Capture the Flag and its three-way variant, or even Ghouls vs Humans? This is a relaxed Xaser—one less haunted by the spectre of perfection and more content with just drawing pretty circular architecture, one often straying into outright comedy as with SpaceDM5—yet some of his 32in24 contributions became popular mainstays even in the notoriously picky competitive deathmatch community. Speaking of, there's also Xaser the community project journeyman. For almost a decade he'd seemingly browse speedmapping sessions and open project threads to randomly drop a map or three that would feel like an outlier and a highlight of the set all at once, be it the adventurous Doom 2 In Name Only secret Wolfenstein map, 32in24-17's "Twisty Business" with almost irrationally pleasing layout cleanness, or the complex but playful contributions to the Plutonia Revisited Community Project.
There's a certain manic quality to Xaser's production. His participation in PRCP back in 2010-11 seemed random at the time, but it was a pivotal point for his mapping career, since it was his self-admitted first attempt at aiming for pure vanilla. Despite his cries about transitioning from the absolute freedom of ZDoom to the universe of strict engine constraints, he still managed to knock out the most complex vanilla-compliant layouts this side of Mechadon in a project that was completed under a year's time. And then the dam broke loose. In the span of several months, Xaser was involved in Doom the Way id Did and got recruited for Back to Saturn X. Later he joined his mapping idol NaturalTvventy in the spiritual DtWiD expansion No End in Sight. And then Xaser was a vanilla expert.
But this anecdote doesn't end here, the tree of history continues to branch out. Xaser won't be stopped at mere vanilla mapping; there are DeHackEd boundaries to be conquered. You owe it to yourself to check out Doom 2 the Way id Did's secret maps. The art and hackery effort that went into these Commander Keen–themed levels is on par with the savant wizardry of Batman Doom. This is no lazy nostalgia skinjob (like, say, doom2.wad), it is a lovingly transplanted partial conversion suddenly appearing in an otherwise straight-shooting project. Unfortunately, some of these radical tricks complicated cross-port compatibility, but Xaser was always the paragon of how to address it—and his xMAPINFO work on the DtWiDs (particularly the massive B-sides & outtakes Lost Episodes he co-led) and BtSXes eventually led him to a credit on John Romero's SIGIL. It seems like every time Xaser picks up a new skill, he inevitably translates it into a flurry of creativity.
This breadth is mirrored by the range of players' impressions too. Over the years, if you've had an ear on the vine, you might have heard players praise his gorgeous architecture and gift for efficient design that paints arresting scenes with surprising economy; or his penchant for atmosphere that can conjure primal horrors, awe, or even rapture; or his superlative ability to breathe life into worlds that are rooted in lore and concept, where the physical manifestation of the environment is just the surface of some deeper logic. For example, there is "Acheron's Needle" from Syringe, where reality's essence is siphoned out of one plane of existence to save another and, through repeated trips, the world around you progressively disintegrates in heartrending ways; or "Transcendence," a once-idyllic skybound utopia beset by an immense hell fortress spilling rot into the surrounding landscape, with triumph involving breaking the chains and sending it plummeting in an unforgettable final scene. That gift for spectacle is yet another thing we love about his works, whether operating in dramatic moments or in slow builds—as in the gradual tower approach at the heart of BTSX e2's journey, first seen through the beautiful hub maps, ultimately reaching its tempestuous climax in the finale.
When people jokingly name him as their three favorite mappers, there is an undeniable kernel of truth to that. As with his mods, there is something deeply inspiring about this work. Playing something of his can create a feeling that I've been abducted into some wild Imagination Zone, full of fresh, unconsidered ideas, as if a whole new schema of creation has revealed itself, with alluring new logic.
Reading that, you might envision a sort of mad scientist—maybe even an Angry Scientist—who dabbles in remote and unrecognizable experiments. But even with his stylistic flexibility, he's also one of those authors endearingly known for a distinctive set of fingerprints: towers, spirals, wild angles and shapes all the way up to dodecagons; even Stovepipes, a love of silly stories, and the Xaser Release Cycle™.
All of that is rounded out by work in domains like art and programming and music—his energetic, rhythmic style has made fans of many—and since his push into map design, he has kept up with modding, in lightweight weapon mods like Necrodoom and the Doom 4–based ARGENT that pair a baseline of superb gamefeel with a sprinkling of devilishly fun ideas, and which I kept making excuses to play and take clips of over this past month. Not too long after the powerful language ZScript was adopted in GZDoom, Xaser leveraged its flexibility for the utility mod DamNums, which does a simple but useful thing: displays your damage output. As a handy, universal tool for getting up to speed with unfamiliar arsenals, it has become a mainstay in many players' loadouts.
DamNums in action
Recently, he entangled himself with the new prboom-plus/DSDA-Doom maintainers and became a go-to confidante and expert on both top-level design and gritty code implementation. So far, that effort culminated in this year's MBF21 format specification, which you can think of as a broadly extended version of the Boom and MBF formats used by wads like Sunlust and Valiant respectively, and which is shaping up to be a big step forward in Doom mapping.
To top it all off, Xaser is the type of person who, back before he was quite as busy with life, would participate in the smallest community projects with no pretense of "I'm too big for this"; would lend his skills in times of change, like when the awards expanded in 2012 or when Doomworld overhauled its forum software; would sometimes play a peacekeeper role during project disagreements in the community...would sometimes just be there for people when they needed it most. That sort of humility and personability is refreshingly normative in Doom creators we've come to love, but over the years, he's left a mark on people even there.
Every creator who might deserve a lifetime achievement award has had a rippling effect on the community in one way or another. Among the last few recipients with a substantial creative body of work, Erik Alm laid the groundwork for a whole school of mapping dogma to come after him; and Jimmy provided us the soundbed to our escapades, along with so much else. But you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who has been as deeply inspirational as Xaser—for so long, and in so many ways.
Xaser, thank you; you are a Xaser.
