MyHouse.wad

[WasatchWind]

I'm sorry y'all that I'm one of the new people here that are just absolutely swamping your thread xD

Despite my certainty that anyone here will almost certainly be already aware that this has funny business going on with it, I will spoil the rest anyway -

 

Spoiler

I don't even play Doom or even FPS games in general - I'm simply a fan of gaming history, exploring the technical work that went into making things like NES graphics or Doom's rendering -

And just gosh, I've been obsessed with this thing. It goes beyond my interest in the creation of fan content for games, and how people can create fun things in the limitations of a game's engine, but just like... it's what other people are saying. It is a work of art. It transcends Doom's engine, and becomes something beyond. I am not sure I would call it a horror game - if anything, I feel like it is a constant, unsettling experience.

Most personal for me, is that I have had dreams that literally feel like the "dark labyrinth." I've been reading back through the thread, as people discovered the ins and outs of the pk3, and I can just feel the dread as people are saying "f*** that place." Too many dreams I've had where previously nonexisting rooms appear behind my dad's dark basement workshop that scared me so much as a child. So many dreams of impossible, never ending looping corridors. It is a kind of primal unease that you cannot explain - you can only nod in silence to others who have witnessed the same experience. I am not sure if I am astounded by the author's uncanny ability to create something that is the house of leaves, and my dreams brought into horrible existence, or whether I am filled with great anxiety because I know that it is only a matter of time, with all the endless react and analysis videos I've been watching, that I will start dreaming about those dark labyrinths...

So yeah, while I am not a member of your community, and I don't have much interest in playing or modding Doom myself, I just wanna say, mad respect first to the original creator of this (whoever that, in the end is) and secondly, great respect to all the people in this community developing tools, and making new stuff! While I'm not in this community, I am in another fan community, that of Open Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 (which I'm going to be playing a great deal of to cleanse my mind). I see many common features between us, a more than 20 year old game, yet a thriving community of developers and creators. As someone who is active in building in that community, I can get some amount of understanding in the effort it takes to make something that wows people.

I'm so grateful this "simple map" exposed me to the much wider amount of interesting stuff going on with Doom - and I hope that it brings many new people into your community.

 

[Chesspionage]

19 hours ago, DavidN said:

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 :)

Like so many others, I've been drawn back into Doom (a game I played on release in '93) and the rabbit hole of community WADs because of MyHouse.  I discovered all of this purely by mistake through the YouTube algorithm recommending David's MyHouse videos and I am so glad I decided to watch them instead of ignoring... like I do with 99% of YouTube recommendations.  

 

In terms of MyHouse , what an amazing experience and a fantastic demonstration of what is possible with the GZDoom source port.  The maps, and particularly the way they are constructed and linked, is mind blowing for someone who has a had a break from the Doom community (or only played vanilla for the past 4-5 years!).  

 

I can't wait to dive into other WADs now.  I've downloaded OneHumanity and Sigil as a starting point, and will be using David Does Doom as a guide for what comes after that.  ;-)

[Kroc]

51 minutes ago, WasatchWind said:

I'm sorry y'all that I'm one of the new people here that are just absolutely swamping your thread xD
Despite my certainty that anyone here will almost certainly be already aware that this has funny business going on with it, I will spoil the rest anyway ...

 

Yes, new people joining this thread, please share with us your personal experiences, this is what we want to hear -- there is nothing new to discover in the WAD that hasn't been already plumbed since the beginning of the thread. If you want to know how deep the rabbit hole goes, please read from the start of the thread, refer to the [Wiki page](https://doomwiki.org/wiki/My_House), or watch [YouTube videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq1-TZXz9xo) on the subject!

 

P.S. @DavidN Could you create a playlist for your three MyHouse videos please?

Edited May 25, 2023 by Kroc
P.S.

[thomasthetankengine]

you know how there's Doom WAD subgenres (run and gun, deathmatch etc)? can we just agree to make a whole new subgenre of Doom WADS, this subgenre being called "Fun-House"? Essentially, the whole level is confusing and is packed with interesting things that are designed to creep you out or to confuse you, pretty much what MyHouse.WAD does. Or maybe there's already a subgenre for this kind of stuff and i'm just el stupido again.

Edited May 25, 2023 by thomasthetankengine

[Misha Tarkus]

1 hour ago, Kroc said:

 

Yes, new people joining this thread, please share with us your personal experiences, this is what we want to hear -- there is nothing new to discover in the WAD that hasn't been already plumbed since the beginning of the thread. If you want to know how deep the rabbit hole goes, please read from the start of the thread, refer to the [Wiki page](https://doomwiki.org/wiki/My_House), or watch [YouTube videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq1-TZXz9xo) on the subject!

 

P.S. @DavidN Could you create a playlist for your three MyHouse videos please?

 

While this is a fair comment I do feel there's a lot to discuss about the 'meaning' of the map and such still, even after having read 43 pages :p

[CheesyPeas]

Hi guys! Sorry, another new sign-up here; last time I touched Doom was on a shareware floppy prior to this week.

 

Have been absolutely blown away by this for the last couple of days.

 

Just posting a fresh link that may or may not have been investigated before... So everyone here is familiar with the game Control, right? Because the sister (peforming as Poe) of the author of House of Leaves has the track Control on her album (and that album has a lot of great tracks on it - Haunted is another one, which explicitly mentions the House of Leaves). Anyway, the album accompanies her brother's work. Control (the game) is based on the concept of The Oldest House, with lots of liminal ideas, and notably brutalist architecture. Alan Wake creeps into that game as well - along with the concepts of Campbells Monomyth, and I believe somebody else has made the connection of the rhizome philosophy (basically two adjacent works that point out the interconnectedness of human mythology). There was an ARG about the House of Dreams that contains hints explicitly calling out this as a theory, and the game itself and it's mythos was heavily inspired by House of Leaves.

 

Anyway, just curious if anybody else is picking up bits and pieces from that angle? Very much enjoying the artistry of this! Don't mind me, just thought I'd spend five and a half minutes banging this out.

[Devalaous]

7 hours ago, Gez said:

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

 

Yeah I noticed that, sadly didnt see any actual comments about what he thought of it though.

[ComedyGold]

19 minutes ago, Devalaous said:

sadly didnt see any actual comments about what he thought of it though.

Assuming he thought it was quite good, as he probably wouldn't have posted it otherwise

[Eurisko]

Finally got to play this yesterday during a night of pizza and Doom wads at a friends house. 
Very unique and I know just from reading this thread we did not see everything. I expect it to be in the Caco’s for some sort of award.

Loved the “Doom Cute” in the form of a PS1 console being featured. 
Coincidentally  we went on to play some ‘Thatchers Tech Base’ afterwards which also has a PS1 in it. 

Edited May 25, 2023 by Eurisko

[LukeJR]

8 hours ago, thomasthetankengine said:

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)

I'd happily show you but there's just one problem. MyHouse has now moved.
That's right, you heard me correctly. MyHouse has moved by itself.

[Anguitte]

Adding my voice to the choir of support.

 

I've never played doom until now, not even the newer doom games, but I've always been a big fan of horror. I've become desensitized to most horror, but this mod successfully gave me chills as I played through it, and brought back a feeling of discomfort I haven't felt since I was a teenager listening to MrCreepyPasta at night. It's incredibly well made, as I found the pacing was slow enough to hold tension but not so slow it became boring. The music that has been remixed is nice, and will likely serve many a reading session. This is an inspiration inducing work.

 

As the reactions to the mod are what garnered the attention of many, I believe that the early hype produced by a few of you have gone a long way in popularizing the mod. Thank you, author(s) for making this mod and I thank the doom community for the work they've done in publicizing it so it would reach the corners of the internet.

[Devalaous]

1 hour ago, ComedyGold said:

Assuming he thought it was quite good, as he probably wouldn't have posted it otherwise

 

Not necessarily; the mod is causing sales of his book to absolutely skyrocket, so regardless of how he might feel about it, its in his best interest to advertise it. Would be interesting to hear his thoughts on the mod in general, especially the labyrinth part which follows the descriptions so accurately

[AlSmith]

I presume everything has been found because people have unpacked the game-files, but...

Spoiler

...my game-map doesn't match the game-map on the Wiki. I landed in the daycare and pressed tab to look at the map. I have textures switched on. (With no textures switched on, the map doesn't work.) This is what I saw on my map. There are houses with roofs in the bottom-left, top-left and top-right of the map. These don't appear on the Wiki's game-map.

 

What gives?

 

 

[DoomGuy2023]

Obligatory: loved this mod, reason I reinstalled Doom, created an account etc.

 

Spoiler

In the same spirit as analyzing the PK3 in developer tools to peek behind the curtain a bit, there is a wealth of metadata that can be extracted from various files, particularly images. I used a tool named "ExifTool" by Phil Harvey to examine metadata for most of the images, including photos from the OneDrive and textures from the PK3. I've attached a text file containing file paths from the PK3 for anything which ExifTool could locate a create / modify metadata information, sorted by the creation date. This can give a feel for in what order development of various textures might have occurred, which is at least slightly interesting.

 

The title / credit texture was initially created on the 17th of March 2020, which is far earlier than I expected.

 

After that the earliest textures created for this mod look like they started with three textures on the 2nd of May 2022. The first, in the early hours of the morning, was the Navidson realty sign. Then 20 hours later the reversed Navidson realty sign, and a reversed EXIT sign. This suggests that House of Leaves / the mirrored dimensions were part of the plan right from the very beginning.

 

The most recently created textures were the static for the TV textures, on the 20th February 2023, suggesting this was perhaps the last new idea added.

 

Not included in the text file are results from the OneDrive files. Some of these include Photoshop metadata, including ancestor document IDs, which suggests they involved compositing of multiple images, as several people have pointed out they can see by eye. The photos with such metadata are those which show both faces in a picture frame, the polaroid photo of the gas station and the funeral notice.

 

Some of the photos include extra timestamps as part of GPS metadata, but do NOT contain any location metadata.  These timestamps are useful for the sketchbook photos as they show that the two pencil sketches were possibly photographed on the 25th of January 2023, while the watercolor of the key suggests it was photographed on the 24th of February 2023. The two pencil sketches also include Photoshop metadata, again suggesting composited images, so they might be digitally created with a sketch filter rather than true sketches, while the watercolor has no Photoshop metadata.

 

Finally, just an observation from eye by looking through the photographs of the photo albums. The photos of the house feel like they are artificially scattered throughout an otherwise ordered album. In between photos of a parade there's one house photo, then another amongst sports photos, I feel like this would be less likely than a couple at a time. Additionally, all the photos from the house include horizontal banding / lines which are not present on any other photos. Not sure if this could be part of some filter to try and age the photos, or maybe an artefact of using a bad printer on regular paper instead of on photo paper. Or perhaps another reference to House of Leaves (I read this far too long ago) if the house is meant to somehow corrupt photographs slightly.

 

Finally, finally, a lot of the timestamps do include time zone information. GMT-5 most of the time, then they jump to GMT-6 over a gap between October and December 2022. This is consistent with CDT in the summer and CST in the winter of the United States, which aligns with Illinois / Minnesota whatever is referenced in the mod.

 

MyHouse_pk3_exiftool_create_modify.zip

[aloysiusfreeman]

10 minutes ago, DoomGuy2023 said:

Obligatory: loved this mod, reason I reinstalled Doom, created an account etc.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

In the same spirit as analyzing the PK3 in developer tools to peek behind the curtain a bit, there is a wealth of metadata that can be extracted from various files, particularly images. I used a tool named "ExifTool" by Phil Harvey to examine metadata for most of the images, including photos from the OneDrive and textures from the PK3. I've attached a text file containing file paths from the PK3 for anything which ExifTool could locate a create / modify metadata information, sorted by the creation date. This can give a feel for in what order development of various textures might have occurred, which is at least slightly interesting.

 

The title / credit texture was initially created on the 17th of March 2020, which is far earlier than I expected.

 

After that the earliest textures created for this mod look like they started with three textures on the 2nd of May 2022. The first, in the early hours of the morning, was the Navidson realty sign. Then 20 hours later the reversed Navidson realty sign, and a reversed EXIT sign. This suggests that House of Leaves / the mirrored dimensions were part of the plan right from the very beginning.

 

The most recently created textures were the static for the TV textures, on the 20th February 2023, suggesting this was perhaps the last new idea added.

 

Not included in the text file are results from the OneDrive files. Some of these include Photoshop metadata, including ancestor document IDs, which suggests they involved compositing of multiple images, as several people have pointed out they can see by eye. The photos with such metadata are those which show both faces in a picture frame, the polaroid photo of the gas station and the funeral notice.

 

Some of the photos include extra timestamps as part of GPS metadata, but do NOT contain any location metadata.  These timestamps are useful for the sketchbook photos as they show that the two pencil sketches were possibly photographed on the 25th of January 2023, while the watercolor of the key suggests it was photographed on the 24th of February 2023. The two pencil sketches also include Photoshop metadata, again suggesting composited images, so they might be digitally created with a sketch filter rather than true sketches, while the watercolor has no Photoshop metadata.

 

Finally, just an observation from eye by looking through the photographs of the photo albums. The photos of the house feel like they are artificially scattered throughout an otherwise ordered album. In between photos of a parade there's one house photo, then another amongst sports photos, I feel like this would be less likely than a couple at a time. Additionally, all the photos from the house include horizontal banding / lines which are not present on any other photos. Not sure if this could be part of some filter to try and age the photos, or maybe an artefact of using a bad printer on regular paper instead of on photo paper. Or perhaps another reference to House of Leaves (I read this far too long ago) if the house is meant to somehow corrupt photographs slightly.

 

Finally, finally, a lot of the timestamps do include time zone information. GMT-5 most of the time, then they jump to GMT-6 over a gap between October and December 2022. This is consistent with CDT in the summer and CST in the winter of the United States, which aligns with Illinois / Minnesota whatever is referenced in the mod.

 

MyHouse_pk3_exiftool_create_modify.zip

 

Nice - I think with this being part of an older media (Doom), and the ARG side of things, I'm getting reminiscent vibes of the online riddle game notpr0n, particularly with analyzing the exif of the images

[AlSmith]

Just now, aloysiusfreeman said:

 

the ARG side of things

 

Just to repeat it again, some of the people involved with the map have clearly stated that this is not an ARG and we should not think that the identity of whomever made the .pk3 is 'part of the mystery'. It's not.

 

The EXIF data is interesting, but it's basically internet snooping.

[aloysiusfreeman]

Oh no doubt, I didn't mean to imply that learning more about veddge has anything to do with the game. I guess I just loosely put in ARG due to the google drive and even the in-character(?) posts from veddge before the release, or I assume ARG == multi-media projects 

 

 

 

[Devalaous]

49 minutes ago, AlSmith said:

I presume everything has been found because people have unpacked the game-files, but...

  Hide contents

...my game-map doesn't match the game-map on the Wiki. I landed in the daycare and pressed tab to look at the map. I have textures switched on. (With no textures switched on, the map doesn't work.) This is what I saw on my map. There are houses with roofs in the bottom-left, top-left and top-right of the map. These don't appear on the Wiki's game-map.

 

What gives?

 

 

 

Those rooftops are visible on top of House 2, as part of GZDoom/UDMF features, they appear on seperate parts of the map due to how they technically work under the hood. The textured automap has a habit of breaking the technical magic of how things happen, and also often spoils things.

 

Spoiler

Its showing the true ending, a piece of the brutalist house, the roof of the regular house and the mirrored house and another version of the house, the daycare, the impossible rooms added to house 2, and a few parts of house 0/1/2. Some automap areas tend to completely black out for some reason too.

 

[Gez]

17 minutes ago, AlSmith said:

What gives?

Maps on the wiki are usually "cleaned-out" of sectors that exist only for technical reasons but that the player cannot visit, in this instance there are three "copies" of the house that are only used to make the portal slice of the roofs. There's also a whole lot of 3D floor control sectors in the north-west corner that were removed.

[Wub Nub]

Hello, recently I started playing this map and after playing for a bit I wound up stuck. I can only seem to get to the concrete section and the burnt house. I've opened every door except for one that says I need a blue key. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

[aloysiusfreeman]

Wub Nub, if you want a vague hint, enter the IDDQD cheat for a hint to the next step, as well as compare the kitchen and bathrooms from the first and second house and find what's different. 

 

If you want a spoilerish hint: 

Spoiler

Use button in the attic and on every sink

 

[r09Lucas]

Saw this on youtube and i was like "hey i might try to fix gzdoom lag to try and play this"so i went to play it,but, i remembered a mod that added pizza tower chars to doom and wanted to play with them in myhouse.wad but when i tried to load the mod with myhouse.wad the game gave me an error saying:

Called from ChainsawRemover.RenderOverlay at myhouse.pk3:zscript,line 206

if anyone knows how to fix this plase tell me,if there isnt a way to fix this i'll just play it normally

(also yeah i created an accout just to comment this dont hate on me)

[msx2plus]

1 minute ago, r09Lucas said:

the game gave me an error

this project isn't designed for compatibility with any other mods. it makes significant changes to, or replaces, a lot of the base game's things, which is what other mods are already looking for. if any other mods do work, consider it happenstance. i would recommend reading this for information: https://www.majorarlene.net/new-doomers-etiquette-guide-mods/

[ComedyGold]

8 minutes ago, r09Lucas said:

Saw this on youtube and i was like "hey i might try to fix gzdoom lag to try and play this"so i went to play it,but, i remembered a mod that added pizza tower chars to doom and wanted to play with them in myhouse.wad but when i tried to load the mod with myhouse.wad the game gave me an error saying:

Called from ChainsawRemover.RenderOverlay at myhouse.pk3:zscript,line 206

if anyone knows how to fix this plase tell me,if there isnt a way to fix this i'll just play it normally

(also yeah i created an accout just to comment this dont hate on me)

Please, DO NOT play with any mods at all. It is intended to be played vanilla (with GZdoom of course) Also, do not load the.WAD file, load the .PK3 file into GZdoom instead.

Edited May 25, 2023 by ComedyGold

[Rick Vitamin]

Weird question, but does anyone know how to achieve that pixelated effect on the picture of the house?

I tried using a pixelate filter but it doesn't result in the same effect.

Edited May 25, 2023 by Rick Vitamin

[mrthejoshmon]

Spoiler

 

Great news gentlmen, I've got the good mods working.

Edited May 25, 2023 by mrthejoshmon

[Gez]

11 minutes ago, Rick Vitamin said:

Weird question, but does anyone know how to achieve that pixelated effect on the picture of the house?

I tried using a pixelate filter but it doesn't result in the same effect.

Well, for one, it is actually pixelated because it's in low 320x200 resolution (well, the actual image in the pk3 is in widescreen-friendly 560x200). It's also crunched into an 8-bit palette, with dithering applied to try to fake back in some of the lost color depth.

[Youda008]

Honestly, after watching some youtube videos about it, i'm little scared to download that file to my disk, fearing it'll be some kind of rootkit that will start doing weird things with my operating system :D

[Wub Nub]

Spoiler

Howdy, I have collected all of the items but when I try and open the fence I just see a grave with a qr code on it. How do I make it to the gas-station? Thanks in advance!

 

[TangoBunny]

I've been churning this map (and its story) over in my head for the past few days, and I figured I'd post here asking if anyone could disprove some thoughts rattling around in my skull. They're the kind of storyline thoughts that are likely false, but I can't think of a good reason why they're false, and that always bothers me!

 

 

Spoiler

At this point, we all know about Steve and Tom A's adult identities, but I'm more concerned about the baby references:
The baby bottle 'it wasn't meant to be' collectable and the stillborn baby in the daycare dream.

First, just to note, I'm talking about the baby part. There are lots of child references like "I want Pop" from the Pepsi, and "Ma, aka, Help Me" from the airport, and the smaller/larger sized areas where the dog is, and tons more that aren't springing to mind, and those are explained by either Tom or Steve being a child at some point at an age where they can talk.

But the baby part!  The bottle and dream indicate a stillborn baby is involved somehow.  But how is babby formed????

The guts and blood-creatures (on easier difficulties) in the airport bathroom that occurred following a delayed flight could also reference an early baby delivery - especially if the pills are birth control pills - but that's speculation. The hospital bed could also be representing someone being at the hospital to give birth, not because of injury.

So now, I'm thinking...
Steve and Tom are the two main characters, but they're not being haunted by each other.  They're being haunted not only by the stillborn child, but the stillborn child's now-deceased mother. And that's where I'm starting to doubt myself at the addition of two extra unmentioned unknown characters, but I can't think of a reason to disprove it.

If it's the mother of the unborn child that's adding things to the map, that'd explain the empty crib and baby bottle, the early delivery at the airport, the birth control/pain relief pills, and the haunting dreams about wanting a child to grow older. Plus, if Steve and Tom both died at the same time as the QR code shows, then they could be all connected in death - something like the mother delivering early in the bathroom before boarding the plane, and then the plane crashes with the distraught mom and Steve and Tom all aboard it, resulting in all three deaths somehow combining in the afterlife and mixing up with each other.

Ghost of Steve dying in the plane crash while thinking, "Aw dang I love Doom and I love Tom!!! I want to make a Doom map about Tom!!!"
Ghost of Tom dying in the plane crash while thinking, "Yeah I was making a Doom map of my house but holy crap I'm scared of planes it reminds me of all the times I was scared as a child and now the plane is crashing"
Ghost of Stillborn's Mom dying in the plane crash while thinking "Oh my god everything is going very badly, and I want to document the horror"
...and those three thoughts all converge in death.

(Plus, if you want to get even crazier, add Ghost of Stillborn Baby into the mix too, thinking, "My entire life involves being stuck in a very dark place filled with liquid while hearing people screaming around me.")

So yeah... that's where I'm kind of at right now. It seems implausible. But I can't disprove it.
So I invite people to find my flaws, else I will become a MatPat, and that would be terrible.