Obsidian

I'm gonna pop a lock on this thread for the sake of keeping things above board and decently civil, but I will say that I agree with the general consensus that life has as much meaning as you give it. MtPain27 gives some excellent advice in terms of stepping outside of your comfort zone and I'd add that removing yourself from your regular surroundings is a good way to clear your mind and reflect as you need to: some places end up as reminders and reinforcement of your own negative emotions if you stay in them for too long and it can potentially hamper your efforts to change. And of course, don't be afraid to ask for help from the important people in your life.

Well, my mental health's sound enough that I'm not terribly willing to discuss it on a public internet forum.

Cheers very much for the comprehensive feedback @ByRntStarOEI. I've been focusing pretty heavily on schoolwork over the past two weeks, but progress has been made on tweaking the gameplay and what you've put here is very much appreciated. 👍

This really doesn't need to be an entire thread. Try using your status updates next time.

A quick feature request that arose from some conversations earlier today: transparency/translucency on player weapon sprites and/or muzzle flashes. It's curiously one of the few places where the concept hasn't been implemented and, while somewhat niche, it could make for some interesting visual effects. GooberMan trialed a method for achieving this in their Rum and Raisin Doom source port by introducing an additive transparency map to their state table, so there is potentially some precedent for this working in DSDA-Doom as well. (Any more details and you'd have to ask Goober specifically, I'm not terribly learned on this subject. :P)

Welcome to the forums! I'd recommend providing some examples of the work you've accomplished so far to pique people's interest and make them more interested in participating: people want to know what they're getting into, after all. Best of luck with it! 👍

In relation to what Kappes Buur said, I'd love to see more doors that take advantage of Boom's scrolling functions: if anyone wants some examples of what I'm talking about, try prising open the maps in VooDoo Guns and Dimension of the Boomed and seeing how it's done. It's a very fun effect.

Full disclosure, if I was in a position to do as the OP asked I would have done so in conjunction with me linking the tutorial: that way they could've perhaps gleaned how to do it from having a clear example in their possession and gotten a better understanding of the tutorial as a result. What I wouldn't have done is immediately resort to condescension in response to someone who is clearly just starting out on their mapping journey and doesn't have a firm grasp on the fundamentals yet. If y'all want your advice to be taken onboard, learn to coach it in encouraging language.

That's a nice opinion you've got there. It'd be a shame if someone were to recognize it as such.

This is all well and good, but if you want people to hop onboard it's a good idea to give them some solid reasons for doing so. A prime way to do this is to showcase past accomplishments of the studio or its individual members: this can be in terms of art and level design, but it also encompasses concepts like management and marketing (doubly so for any prospective commercial products). All of these things are important and people need to know that you and your studio have a good track record before they'll commit their time and effort to it. Ideas alone won't get you there: I say this as someone who could've been an "ideas guy" once upon a time. :P

I'll go ahead and link Doomkid's tutorial on how to add map names to your work: while it focuses primarily on making name graphics and DeHackEd, there's a bit in there about MAPINFO and you can add a MAPINFO lump in the same way that you would for DeHackEd ones. Hopefully this is helpful.

The MAP04 beta is up! Some notes: Alrighty, the names I have for MAP04 are The Iron Price, Provisions, Metalworks and Cadaver Carnage. Pick yer favourite! The wad contains five potential MIDIs for the map: just like before, the ones not used in the map occupy the next few music slots and you can use IDMUS## to listen to them. Made a couple of tweaks here and there, mainly in terms of flow consideration and accessibility. I also started doing external detail before jolting out of my mapping trance and realizing that I should probably share the map first, heh. You can see a little bit of extra detail in the northern section of the map. Gameplay still needs to be balanced and difficulty settings need to be universally implemented. Suggestions on both of these things would be greatly appreciated. As for me, I'll start hacking away at a polished release. I'm tempted to wait until September 9th to release it, but that might be a bit much. :P

I DID IT I'll need a bit of a breather before I can get stuck into tweaking the maps for a proper release candidate, but I will at least try to get a rough beta of MAP04 out in the next couple of days. Ladies and gentlemen and everyone in between, we made it. ✊

OKAY, so good news and bad news. The good news is that three of the last four participants have gotten their work to me! The bad news is that the fourth one didn't. And there is no time left in the month to do another round. ... Sighs and rolls up his sleeves Looks like I have to finish the fight. See y'all in June.

I assume that would necessitate the finished product being in .pk3 format, which I did address in the rules. Apologies!

It's definitely a bit more doable if you're using UMAPINFO and can define the regular and secret exits yourself. Heck, you could even have the exit be tied to a voodoo doll crossing an exit linedef outside the map and have the key determine whether or not it goes over the regular or secret one: that way the exit architecture doesn't even need to change. It's all admittedly a tad hacky, but I definitely like the concept.

That would require the game to check whether or not the player has picked up the key in a previous map, which unfortunately runs into the same initial problem.

Mind telling us what that is? Considering this is literally your only post and it links to an external website, it might pay to make it look less suspicious. :P

FINAL ROUND FIGHT! ...not really, heh. Here's your last four mappers! @Boss @Salmon @DoctorNuriel @NeedHealth Check your DMs for details and your 48 hours starts about now. If you aren't able to contribute for any reason, please let me know as soon as possible so I can organize a replacement before the month is out!

Yep, both you and VICE used red keycards. :P

More specifically, it's what happens when people dredge up threads from close to a week ago that have already run their course. And this one's course was already not terribly amazing to begin with.

Oh heck yeah, go for it!

I'd say that's the best way to go, although it is admittedly a rather unique challenge for multiple disparate parties to manage the difficulty settings on a single map. It might be a good idea to nominate someone to go over the map as a whole and make changes with the blessing of the other participants...or I suppose I could just do it myself. XP Whichever works for people. As for changes, I'm fine with little tweaks to the gameplay or removing bugs. Not too sure about larger changes, but then again I did pitch the idea of me remodeling the scenery to make it more coherent between pieces: maybe I've got no room to talk in that regard, haha. I suppose it'd be best to just run the change by me if you think it's suitably large enough.

Time's up! I've only received three map pieces, so I'm passing on the opportunity to make the fourth to @Timilyo80 (by my understanding the last person to be selected from the candidate list): details have been sent and your 48 hours starts now. Thankfully we have 2 days of wiggle room before May ends, so with any luck we should still get all the mapping done by the end of the month.