MyHouse.wad

[Gez]

14 minutes ago, AlSmith said:

This seems like a cipher. I haven't made any headway on it.

ESSEL, JIMMY, THANK YOU

[Catpho]

Haha, I wish there wasn't a vandal messing up the wiki page, which led to it being locked for the time being. I was considering editing it to add all the progress on the mystery made so far, so our enthusiastic new investigators won't keep tripping over 40+ page of forum posts

The cipher is a thank you to essel and jimmy, btw.
 

edit: what's with my reply speed srsly

Edited May 24, 2023 by Catpho

[roadworx]

13 hours ago, aloysiusfreeman said:

I'm sorry if all the brand new accounts due to myhouse is getting annoying and what not (fwiw, I've been a big Doom fan for 25~ years)

what? why would it get annoying lol, the more people the better. it means that there's a higher chance that at least a few of you will stick around and start making your own stuff for doom :)

 

12 hours ago, Dan_kowalski said:

I actually think there is something special in how there is no monetization of this whole thing. reminds me of the early days of the internet when people just made things for the sake of it. Not to become famous or get money or thank our sponsor or build some brand and branch out. The innocence of this project was part of its charm.

Fuck.. now that I think of that there is nothing on the internet to really hold me back. I mean yeah there are few niche forums and communties but as a whole this place just became too commercialized. every thing is googled/facebook/microsoft/apple. opening a browser makes me feel like Im getting into a skinner box.

tbf, 99.9% of this community is just that: tons of people making stuff for doom out of a passion for the game rather than for any sort of social or financial gain. it's been that way for 30 years now, and it's unlikely that it's ever gonna change.

[DanmakuPunch]

After months of lurking, I decided to sign up, mostly to say "thank you" to creator of this mod, and to @Jimmy and @esselfortium for providing music for it. Amazingly done!

 

I've strated playing Doom only recently, after release of PS4 port and even didn't played on PC. After I've played original Doom 1 and 2 and a couple of "add-ons", addition of another several fanmade mods to PS4's port of Doom was enought for me to satisfy my desire to play some Doom every now and then.

 

Until roughly 1.5 months ago MyHouse.wad came along and appeared on several YouTube channels to which I was subscribed to, so I could't ignore it any longer - I installed gzdoom and played it, first time I've played blind, after that - with hints from this thread.

 

Spoiler

 

I'm a big fan of this type of horror - psychological and surreal, akin to Silent Hill and I'm amazed how well this kind of horror is done here. It's probably one of my favorite WADs by now, I even started reading House of Leaves (which was on my radar for some time, this wad was my last push to read it, I'm currently around 290 pages in, it's great!)

Several people mentioned use of Liminal Spaces/horror in this and in my point of view, this WAD took this spaces and put it's own spin on it - enough so it wasn't cliche (like in brutalist house it used more like a background, with unreachable exit portal and barely reachable TV-room or in poolrooms it's theme utilized for interesting enemy and underwater section; these vusial references have a purpose). 

 

 

Overall, it's an awesome wad, I even played it a second time with a friend, who doesn't play Doom, but enjoys this kind of games. It was fun.

Edited May 24, 2023 by DanmakuPunch

[aloysiusfreeman]

2 hours ago, roadworx said:

what? why would it get annoying lol, the more people the better. it means that there's a higher chance that at least a few of you will stick around and start making your own stuff for doom :)

 

 

 

Most likely just my own anxiety of how abrasive some internet cultures can be, and from what I can tell this mod has just completely blown up beyond the Doomworld culture 

 

But yeah, I'd definitely hope to stick around! Last time I played Doom 2 I've had mod ideas, and this is certainly inspiring me...

[aloysiusfreeman]

Edit: nvm, I'm an idiot lol

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited May 24, 2023 by aloysiusfreeman
Im an idiot

[DavidN]

It's fantastic to see so many more people getting interested in oldstyle Doom due to this and potentially getting into making their own content :) I've always found the Doom community surprisingly welcoming for a game that was so infamously violent when it came out, perhaps due to the average age being a bit older than many other internet communities.

Edited May 24, 2023 by DavidN

[LordEntr0py]

18 hours ago, Dan_kowalski said:

I actually think there is something special in how there is no monetization of this whole thing. reminds me of the early days of the internet when people just made things for the sake of it. Not to become famous or get money or thank our sponsor or build some brand and branch out. The innocence of this project was part of its charm.

Welcome to the Doom community. We still do it that way!

[Dynavolt97]

I don’t even play Doom but this map has been stuck in my head for a few days now.  
At first, I thought this was some kind of creepy pasta and stuffs like that, but the more I observed, the more I got immersed into it. I can’t stop thinking about the mystery and meaning behind all of which I’ve experienced.

It was such a sophisticated and great piece of work that I’ve never seen in a while. Heck, I don’t even know what I’m talking about.

I simply want more. That’s it.

 

 

[Devalaous]

2 minutes ago, Dynavolt97 said:

I don’t even play Doom but this map has been stuck in my head for a few days now.

 

The labyrinth and hospital have lived in my head for a while now. The two things totally useless to the progression, and almost never covered in videos no less..

[Dynavolt97]

28 minutes ago, Devalaous said:

 

The labyrinth and hospital have lived in my head for a while now. The two things totally useless to the progression, and almost never covered in videos no less..

For me, the map is never about our experience, but it’s about *their* experience instead.

Spoiler

Surely we don’t make any progression with the labyrinth and hospital room. But let’s see the whole thing in a bigger picture, it all doesn’t make any sense. Some took inspirations from the book House of Leaves, while other  via his nightmare/paranoias. All from V/S’s perspective.

While I do believe that since V rebuilt the map from his old friend’s work. The house is T’s work. The place that you first enter is the origin.  All the grieving  and madness from V/S’s which morphed and distorted the house into an entire different thing. It doesnt simply exist, it is an entity. Thus, the house, as V/S warned us in the text, is an entity that has the ability to allure us in and slowly devour our mind through the hunger of wanting more.

 

Edited May 24, 2023 by Dynavolt97

[ComedyGold]

40 minutes ago, Dynavolt97 said:

I don’t even play Doom but this map has been stuck in my head for a few days now.  

 

 

You cannot get away from the house.

[Dynavolt97]

42 minutes ago, Devalaous said:

 

The labyrinth and hospital have lived in my head for a while now. The two things totally useless to the progression, and almost never covered in videos no less..

 a mysterious coincidence. The two places, which don’t quite resemble the original house or seemingly out of place, are the most terrifyingly unforgettable. Those the truest form of the house/entity, which, we don’t quite understand.

Edited May 24, 2023 by Dynavolt97

[Devalaous]

2 minutes ago, Dynavolt97 said:

 a mysterious coincidence. The two places, which don’t quite resemble the original house or seemingly out of place, are the most terrifyingly unforgettable. Those the truest form of the house/entity, which, we don’t understand.

 

Spoiler

The hospital rooms seem to match the bedroom in the house where the labyrinth door is

 

[Spocks_Beard]

Decided to pop back in to join the discussion. Great WAD you've made here, whoever you are.

 

It's been 6 years, damn.

Edited May 24, 2023 by Spocks_Beard

[Dynavolt97]

7 minutes ago, Devalaous said:

 

  Hide contents

The hospital rooms seem to match the bedroom in the house where the labyrinth door is

 

That’s true. Perhaps I was overthinking afterall haha. Fuck this map is so good.

Edited May 24, 2023 by Dynavolt97

[aloysiusfreeman]

So I was doing a playthrough and ran into an interesting bug(?) 

 

Spoiler

I went to the mirrored house, did stuff there, and triggered the balls to lead to the daycare. But, I did not go to the daycare - instead I chose to go to the bathhouse. Once there, there was no nightmares in the bathhouse (the fish were there), and when you go through the pool and into the sky area, there were no cacodemons and the monsters from the burnt down house. Was able to get the ring easily and into brutalist. From there I went to drop in the endless staircase because I wanted to go back to the daycare. Did that and from there I couldn't go into the bathouse again, couldnt go to the airport without burning the house down. 

 

But, I could go through the fence and onto the road in the gas station. I had to stop since my lunch break was over. I highly doubt I'm going to find anything new, but still thought it was interesting

 

[Misha Tarkus]

On 5/23/2023 at 9:35 AM, Misha Tarkus said:

Made an account solely to reply here - hadn't gotten into wads for nearly a decade now, butI wanted to offer my two cents and interpretations before it's buried entirely. To tl;dr, I disagree with any "Steve was dead all along" interpretations, and I feel it's a failure to grasp what the mod is truly about. While of course everyone's take is fair and valid, given how much this draws from the Liminal Space communities, I went at it with a mindset that interprets liminal spaces as the edges between possible realities.

Full spoilers below.
 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

To tl;dr I think this work is actually about the possible ways Steve and Tom's lives have and could've gone, the house (and the wad) working as a sort of gateway or reflection of those possibilities. Through confronting elements of Steve's past, we see those different endings play out for him, although at the moment I am unsure of several details - but more importantly, which is the original Steve and Tom, the one from 'our' reality, who made the post. Let's call them Steve 1 and Tom 1, numbers connected to the 3 endings (1 - Burnt Down Sold House, 2 - Mirror Beach, 3 - Real Beach).

 

I believe it's clear Tom 1 died in a house fire. He died in his house, a house that burnt down and took him with it. It's clear to me Tom and Steve had been childhood friends that in high school possibly engaged in an experimental romance, maybe fueled by a night of D&D (Roll for Intercourse?) and later went their separate ways ... for a while, maybe. See, that's where I hit a snag, because in the original obituary for Tom I made notice of the vague genderless pronoun for the childhood crush he'd reconnected with, referred only as 'they' and 'them'. At first, like most, I assumed it was to deliberately throw us off as to this being Tom, but what if it's vague to account for multiple possibilities?

 

I'm unsure if Tom 1 and Steve 1 were together as adults or if Tom 1 had actually married a woman, instead. The importance of this is that I'm unsure if Steve 1 regretted never reconnecting with Tom, or if they had and felt guilt over it. The reason I bring this up is because it did feel wrong to me, in retrospect, that he'd refer to his partner as 'his childhood friend' so often, in the journals and such, even as a deliberate audience misdirection. It felt overly callous. Regardless, I'll be commenting on both possibilities going ahead.

 

So Tom 1 died in a housefire, but whatever the case, Steve 1 survived. It's unclear if he was in the house or not (as per above), but he receives the incomplete wad and sets about finishing it. I think at this point the possibilities start to unravel with the wad as a nexus, given the dreams and the game completing itself - but Ending 1, the burnt down house, that is the 'real' reality, unchanged, raw. The house is gone, and time moves on. The items, in my opinion, reflect a struggling to overcome elements of Steve (and maybe Tom's) past to achieve a better life or rationale after his death, and possibly even refer to rearranging how they feel about the past to change the decisions they took in life. Like they're picking how to process these memories and seeing the different results that come from them.

 

I'm always unsure which items refer to which, but for the sake of this original argument, let's assume all of them refer to Steve. I won't go through every item, but I think it's obvious he had a rough childhood (I believe the black room and the pepsi room are from Steve's past, not Tom's) and also possibly struggled with Psychosis, or a family member with psychosis (more on this later) - a mother that constantly divorced and remarried and other ills. Collecting all the items, in my eyes, reflects on being able to struggle past all that, although I'd like to point to one item and one dream in particular: the baby bottle. 'It wasn't meant to be'.

This is why I brought up the possibility maybe Tom and Steve 1 never got together, or maybe in separate world, the one that will be fermented by the Ending 2 (Mirror Beach), he did so, as Tom 2. The possibility of a biological child of Tom's, or possibly a child of Steve's if he pursued a heterosexual relationship, that was 'never to be' (either not present in reality 1, or not present in 2, whichever is the one Tom and Steve get together again) - essentially, a cursed child whose existence is predicated on the failure of their love. It is why it 'haunts' him, in the form of a nightmare that to me belonged to the child when it existed (Shrek fits as a nightmare more to  a child born in the late 90s or early 2000s than men that would've been born in the late 80s).

 

So either Ending 2 World is one where Steve is owning up to his feelings towards Tom and reconnects with him, born out of a regret he never did so in World 1, or vice versa, one where he refuses to reconnect with Tom to try and save his life (so he isn't home when the fire burns down, possibly?). I also think the 'immaculate' house is connected here, as one where he simply moves away rather than die there in the fire, out of possibly being warned or partially reconnected with, but not gone all the way. I'm unsure of which I believe in for Worlds 1/2, as both are compelling - in one, Steve never reconnected with Tom and is burdened with a deep regret, while in the other, they did and he regrets that it led to his early accidental death, wishing he could take it back.

 

I think World/Ending 2, the Mirror World end, is one where Steve confronts all his past traumas and rearranges the past memories, but what is happening depends on your interpretations of the above. If Steve 1 and Tom 1 were an item and World 2 is one where they aren't, it's a world where Steve saved Tom's life but it is a hollow victory, one where he feels no joy or happiness despite him being alive. If they weren't, and World 1 is where they never got together and 2 is one where they connected and got back together to assuage Steve's regret, I then interpret this as not a world at all, but an illusion, Tom thinking of what could've happened, some metaphorical and illusory ideal. Not his 'real' life, so to say, and not the path he truly took.

 

Thus, World 3 - either this is Steve in a world where they were an item back in World 1 accepting reality and choosing to move past it, confronting all the demons and traumas after a car crash (possibly alcohol-induced?), adopting a dog after getting over his personal trauma to deal with the hole left by Tom (as per the journal), or in a world where they were never together, similar accepting that reality and choosing to live on anyway. I truly believe this is a 'happy' ending, in which Steve is alive and well after those traumatic experiences at the edge of reality, experiencing what could've been.

 

And then, of course, the QR code Ending. I think this is one where rather than moving past all this, either through World 1 already being one where they were together or by remaking the world into one where they are together, Steve chooses to die in the same house fire as Tom. They die together, and thus share an obituary. I do not think this is the case in every reality, and I do not think Dead Steve made the map.

 

Alright, some lightning round stuff:

• If you want a tl;dr, I side more with Steve and Tom in World 1 (Reality) being a couple that was briefly together, Tom dies in a house fire and Steve becomes overcome with grief and guilt. He experiences the edges of reality through the wad, including a world where they never reconnected (and Tom was safe either due to luck or they never moved back into his childhood home) and thus he'd be 'safe', meaninglessly. Instead, he chooses to keep being together with him even if it means processing that grief.
• There is a possible negative bend on the above where accepting being by Tom's side always kills Steve 100% of the time and Dead Steve is the true ending, but I feel that clashes with the beach even if fits the contrast between the infinite void dream and the beach ending slightly better. The true end at the true beach feels too decisively good for this, and if it was true, I think the dog would only show if you killed it rather than spared it.
• I interpreted most items as tied to Steve - a psychotic father or mother (the pills by the chair could mean either), a constant switch of stepfathers, childhood traumas and some sweet memories in teenagehood, a trauma of dogs (and maybe a reason to approach Tom, a cat lover), with only the bottle being a confusing one. Given the crib is in the attic, an attic that doesn't seem to 'belong' in the real house, it could be that the marriage of Steve's parents fell apart due to a stillborn younger sibling.
• The 'maybe woman' in Tom's life I said here is mostly a reading on the vague pronoun of the obituary's partner being a deliberate clue rather than just misdirection, and an extra layer of interpretation to the 'wasn't meant to be' baby. A baby that'd only exist in the reality Tom and Steve never connected with each other again. However, this isn't strictly necessary an interpretation.
• To me, the Backrooms/Liminal Space zones reflect the edges of reality and possible outcomes being explored and nudged against. They aren't part of their memories and its why even the dreams don't quite describe them (it calls the pool rooms a 'cave').
• The plane to me is Steve's anxiety at moving away from Tom the first time, possibly due to their parents splitting up or his dad's death.
• There's a secondary theory to me that encapsulates the items as more of a mixed Tom-Steve theme, and I want to preface it by saying this isn't born out of any hate or discrimination, on the contrary. But I have a pet theory that Tom was secretly a trans woman living as a man in secret, deeply regretful of this fact. We've known about the S + A, and while it could be just a pet name for "Allord" in Tom Allord, it brought to mind a Trans friend whose name is a gender-adjusted version of her middle name. 'Allie, Allison' in this case? Although I'm actually unsure if Tom would be FtM or MtF - either a trans man post transition, or a trans woman living as a man unable to transition. In this interpretation, Tom would've faced a long struggle with their gender identity over the course of their life, possibly undergoing hormone therapy (the bathroom in the airport makes sense here - the blood inside, being 'attacked' as if being judged by bigots, and after the pills the gender plaques being swapped around), and the baby would symbolize either the child they wish they could biologically bear with Tom, or one they didn't have due to their decision to transition. This is mostly to make sense out of the swapped plaques and S+A specifically, because switching their gender around after the episode is so specific.

EDIT:

• Also forgot to say outright, but I do think Steve dies in a car accident in some realities. I think maybe they die in World 1 or 2, separate from Tom, out of either grief or plain circumstance, but the 'Hell' Gas Station is too much to ignore. I don't think this is his QR Code death, which I feel by the joint obituaries to solidly imply he dies with Tom in the house fire, but I also think it happens after posting the wad, which could explain the OP's absence since. Like a premonition, which would show why the car is there in every memory leading up to it.
• Going through the game again, I remembered the car is safely parked on the mirror world gas station, but also only the mirror world has S+A. To me this would imply their relationship didn't blossom in reality, changing my mind a bit, but only in the mirror - avoiding Tom's crash, which I think might not have been fatal given the open door. I'm unsure what to think about the bloodied gas station, though - the bathroom is a nexus point, so other than another point to the maybe transgender theory (but that's Steve in the station, not Tom?) I have no clue here.

 

Anyway, feel free to discuss specifics or just pass this entirely, I just wanted to share my thoughts before they faded from my brain. Hope it was entertaining if nothing else!

 

 

 

To add to this, I was checking Veddge's activity that as several people point out match the dates in the doc with IC details, and something caught my attention: 

 

I think this completely adds credibility to my whole theory that
 

Spoiler

Steve and Tom never got together at all in 'reality'. World 1 then is one where they never got together, while World 2 is one where they did and that Steve somehow accesses or 'touches' through the game's events. In the end, he can delude himself with fake happiness, die with them on the same housefire or finally move on past his regrets.

 

So in essence, this deals a lot with the regret of never having formed that relationship and imo the backrooms and the wad concern themselves with the alternate realities where they could've been together and moving past those regrets to true happiness.

 

Of course, I feel none of us are considering the wad itself might have caused Tom's death somehow, given its somewhat 'haunted' status, but I don't think that necessarily clashes with that interpretation.

 

[kepone]

just played through myself. made an account just to say: didnt ever know doom could even do things like this! really impressive and amazing work, the technical skill here is just insane.

[Gabetheman]

this mod in slade makes me wonder what im even looking at.

[Sergeant_Mark_IV]

I feel like only the few first dozen people who played this wad were able to experience it as it should be experienced. The very fact there are people telling you to play it blind without reading the treads already ruins the surprises.

[DeafPixel]

Personally I think knowing the general idea beforehand can't harm your experience.
Knowing specific details will obviously make them hit less hard, but when I played this in April I read most of the google drive beforehand, which made me go "oh so its gonna be like House of Leaves" but I still couldn't have expected everything that happened

[Devalaous]

Well, I looked at Wikipedia's page for House of Leaves, and..

 

Spoiler

Just a quick readthrough shows that a *huge* amount of the backstory for this wad is heavily taken from House of Leaves, to the point we'll probably never know what is actually real. The Journal is particularly guilty. In the journal and other backstory, 'Steve' seems to be entirely based on Johnny Truant, and 'Thomas' seems to be a loose amalgamation of Zampano, Lude and Tom Navidson.

Johnny is left with a manuscript to piece together and publish by the recently deceased Zampano, and spirals into the exact same increasing madness as the book is worked on, that Steve goes through working on Thomas' wad. Johnny's best friend Lude suddenly dies, and Johnny's life goes in a large downward spiral. Tom Navidson 'had barely any contact' with Will Navidson for over 8 years, which is close to the above post of 'havent seen him for almost 10 years', Thomas Allord's obituary says he also went by 'Tom', and Tom died 'in the house' (the last one is nebulous at best, but still..)

 

Quote

Truant's footnotes frequently segue into personal digressions, documenting his descent into obsession, delusions, and paranoia as he compiles the manuscript. He recounts tales of sexual encounters, his lust for a tattooed dancer he calls Thumper, and his bar-hopping with Lude. Truant also writes about his childhood living with an abusive foster father. Even as he grows increasingly unstable, Truant remains steadfast in his editorial work, neglecting all else.

Truant's story ends with chapter XXI, interrupting The Navidson Record just before Karen discovers the hallway. Entirely written by Truant, this chapter recounts the conclusion of his downward spiral after Lude's death. Truant invents two different accounts of positive turnarounds, only to disavow both. He then describes setting fire to the completed manuscript, and, after a struck-out passage in purple – the only such passage in the entire book – Truant tells an ambiguous story about a woman who loses her baby in childbirth. The remaining chapters conclude with no further text by Truant.

 

That is remarkably similar to stuff in the journal and wad, isn't it? I don't own House of Leaves or The Whalestoe Letters, but this is just small stuff I noticed off the page.

also, the wikipedia description of the labyrinth is absolutely spot on, the one in the map is exactly like that, right down to the growls.

 

[LukeJR]

I'm trying this now with hope that I'll be able to finally understand why my house was posted on doomworld, yes my house :D

[bones mcgee]

I finally made a Doomworld account to say this map is insane and I love it! Such a simple idea so creatively built upon. Not sure why I didn't make an account sooner, being a longtime Doom fan and all. Who knows what else I've missed on here...

[Not Jabba]

1 minute ago, bones mcgee said:

I finally made a Doomworld account to say this map is insane and I love it! Such a simple idea so creatively built upon. Not sure why I didn't make an account sooner, being a longtime Doom fan and all. Who knows what else I've missed on here...

Here's a partial list: https://www.doomworld.com/cacowards/

[Scuba Steve]

https://www.doomworld.com/cacowards/

 

We've been writing about the best Doom projects each year for the past 20 years... it's a great place to start. I'd probably recommend starting with 2022 and working backwards. What I find fascinating about the MyHouse phenomenon is just how many people find the map to be technically impressive. Most people haven't followed the Doom modding scene for the past 20 years so they're unfamiliar with the capabilities of modern source ports, so when they see a hugely popular map, it's their first exposure to what programmers in this community have added to Doom. Many of the mods listed in our recent awards are far more technically impressive—Elementalism for example is an almost unparalleled achievement in complex mapping, scripting, and modeling—but, like most Doom mods, never really escaped the Doom community. MyHouse is best described as imaginative in its use of advanced features as opposed to a technical marvel.

 

Edit: sonuvabitch, Jabba!

Edited May 25, 2023 by Scuba Steve

[MemeMind]

Finally played it.

Pretty cool.

 

I then watched a video about the map and that I only saw about a quarter of the content in this.

My mouth DROPPED when the "Most Mysterious Song" started playing. That song fits so well!

[Gez]

5 hours ago, Devalaous said:

Well, I looked at Wikipedia's page for House of Leaves, and..

Just as a fun sidenote, this is currently the pinned tweet for House of Leaves' twitter profile:

 

[thomasthetankengine]

6 hours ago, LukeJR said:

I'm trying this now with hope that I'll be able to finally understand why my house was posted on doomworld, yes my house :D

so like, it's YOUR actual house? We've been mucking around in DOOM, playing in YOUR house? That's what I'm getting from your post.

If so, pictures 4 proof or you are lying!! >:D (jk u dont have to)