Capellan

Believe it or not, after a two year gap, I have actually returned to Unholy Realms! Videos coming early next month - at least three of them. Probably more, as I've been enjoying the maps.

E4M3

E4M2 Nowhere near as polished as some of the other maps, but a fun romp. E4M9 Not a favourite of mine.

E4M1 Not a fan of this, either.

I actually released maps in 1994, but they have not survived the transition from the old ftp.cdrom.com archive to archive.gamers.org, while others have been misfiled (e.g. talons.zip, a compilation of some levels I made and released individually well before before dfear1, ended up filed under deathmatch for some reason). Overall, this is probably fortunate, as there was little to recommend the wholly 'lost' levels. After darken2, I didn't map at all for the best part of a decade (the part map in AV was recycled material from the 90s).

Median, mode or mean? There's no real way to know. Membership of Doomworld and making Doom maps are not a 1:1 correlation, and there's a whole lot of mapping activity that has nothing to do with visibility on the forums, or even with releasing maps. Is someone who spends six months tinkering with various map ideas but never shares them with anyone else a mapper? I think so, but we'd never know about them. And of course, almost everyone takes breaks from mapping. Romero made maps right at the start, but then he didn't publish anything until 2016. It seems likely that for much of that twenty year break, he was not actively mapping. However "actively mapping" might be defined.

E3M8 I didn't like it.

On the day itself, not much. My wife and I go out for a meal, and I will visit my mother and sister for coffee. However, my wife's birthday is only two months after mine, and at a time of year that is much better for travelling, so we'll often go on a short trip then that we consider a combined birthday experience. e.g. around her next birthday, we're doing to Adelaide, but that trip is for both of us, not just her. Though she will admittedly get a lot more out of South Australia's wineries than I will, during the time we are there :)

Maybe he thought Votterbin was cosplaying Xisuma.

I've heard enough stories from my female friends and family to say that it's no picnic to be one IRL either.

E3M7

Ambitious Doom projects have been struggling with getting "ready for release" since pretty much the start of community mapping. All that's really changed is what constitutes "ambitious". Given the amateur, hobbyist nature of the projects, the challenge generally tends to manifest in ways other than Crunch Time. No-one's livelihood is on the line, after all. Feature Creep certainly does happen, sometimes. The most common manifestations though are missed deadlines, extended periods of silence, reduced scope ('we have 11 maps and we're fed up, so that's what we'll release, instead of the originally planned 32') and even collapse of the entire project as enthusiasm wanes or real life gets in the way. cchest4 dragged on for years, for instance. Which is probably why we still haven't seen a cchest5. Demonfear took a 4 year break before the slacker that made the maps finally did the last five. Requiem got shipped with filler because otherwise it would have only had 28 maps. Mordeth E2 still isn't out. ROC2 is now 18 months beyond it's originally planned release date and has been 'almost done' since about 6 months before that (there are some very good IRL reasons for the delays, but delays they still are).

This is hilarious. (also, it is ridiculous that people are still actively playing these maps 28 years after they first came out)

E3M6

Somewhere around 8, I guess, tending toward 9. I play without vertical mouselook, with infinitely tall things on, but I do use modern resolutions, not 320x220. I am generally reluctant to play anything with significantly altered weapons or bestiary. However, I don't mind a few tweaks to the monsters, or even 1-2 new monsters, in an otherwise mostly-classic project. I have lots of other options if I want a more modern, sophisticated shooter experience. I don't need or want it in Doom.

E3M5 E3M5

E3M4

Zarkorr! The Invader

E3M3

E3M2

E3M1

You should share the WAD if possible; hard to know what is going wrong without it.

My wife and I have been watching the miniseries "Pistol", so I've been listening to some punk and new wave stuff again of late.

A lot of people seem to get locked into the idea that for map07 since they can to use the 666/667 tags, they will ... but then they don't do anything novel with them and end up just making Dead Simple again. It's such a problem that I once got praised for originality for doing a map07 that went "arachnotrons then mancubi", instead of the other way around! I actually have a map07 in an upcoming community project where I have tried to make a level that feels nothing like Dead Simple while still using the 666/667 tags. Looking forward to seeing how well people think I have succeeded.

I'd agree that this is worth a look. Note that there is a pretty significant change in the visual/design flair over the set - the early maps are significantly more basic in appearance than the latter ones. It's also supposed to have a sequel coming out sometime soon (though as ever with such projects, the last 1% of the work is taking what feels like just as much time as the other 99% to get done). @Steve D may have more concrete info on that