baja blast rd.

First thing that comes to mind is that this could use way more spider masterminds. You only have 16. Smh what is this, e1m1 on HNTR?! Arxangels map12 is a good map to consult to learn how to fill a giant area with spider masterminds. Notice how it manages to use over 200 despite being substantially smaller than your map.

Just some extra advice from observing many community projects that have started with lots of energy but then fizzled out or ended up in some indefinite hiatus, sometimes with the project runner ignoring participants in the thread for months. There's been a common thing lately where less experienced people will jump into leading a project gung-ho, not realizing the back-end commitment it involves, so this post is so that those project runners know what to expect (or can decide to wait until they are more experienced, which is a good option too). All of this will be basic and obvious to people who've run a couple of successful projects, but many of those fizzled-out projects have been started without a lot of this knowledge. Basic truth: What might not be obvious is that starting a project thread and making your own map is often the easy part. One of the most important skills for a community project leader is being able to put the wad together and release it. That means: - compiling people's submissions into a wad file that runs properly - tracking people's updates as they post them in the thread in order to update that file -- this sounds simple but people have messed it up by not catching update posts - posting updated beta/RC versions of the wad as needed - eventually getting the finished version of the wad onto an archive like /idgames That isn't an exhaustive list of management skills or anything. There's also playtesting submissions, answering participants' questions, general communication, managing the initial resource wad or any modded changes if you choose to make those, dealing with people who try to commandeer mapslots because e1m1 doesn't look enough like what it says it is any conflict, and more. But managing the .wad file is super important, and you should go in expecting to learn how to do it well, rather than feeling putting everything together will be a quick, tacked-on hitch at the end. It's a major, usually ongoing part of the process. One quick useful self-filter would be to ask yourself if this is a part of the project you're willing to handle, or to learn how to handle. If the answer is "Fuck no, I want to lead a community project; I didn't say anything about finishing one!" then that's a sign to not jump into starting the project. If your response is "That sounds like it could be tricky, but I'm willing to learn," that's a much healthier mindset because that work is not exactly trivial for people who haven't done it before. - A suggestion would be to start acquainting yourself with how to manage and compile a wad before starting the thread, gaining some comfort with the basic tools and workflow you might use. A lot of good project runners seem to already have many of these skills from their own work when they first manage a project, so practicing more ambitious asset management in a release of your own (replaced music, custom textures, intermission screens -- or anything else you want to do) can be treated as building block to managing a project that aims to do all of that. I say building block because projects with other people involved have more complexity, naturally. This isn't meant to be a comprehensive advice post about how tos (every important subskill can be its own post, and maybe someone should write those), but here's a simple roadmap you can use to go seek out those skills: Get comfortable using SLADE (or DoomTools, or however else you might want to work). Regularly consult the DoomWiki, which you can use to patch certain knowledge gaps -- reading a page on a concept can teach you a lot about it and let you know what questions to ask. Seek out pinned threads because those have useful info, like about idgames. Ask questions in the editing forum if needed (no one is going to be like "omg you started a project without knowing how to change intermission screens, you're under arrest"); being willing to ask for help about what you don't understand is a good sign. Use some kind of spreadsheet or document (thanks finnks13) to track submissions, especially bits like "the most recently submitted version of this person's map" or "whether someone submitted an update," instead of just relying on downloading files and hoping to remember what the most recent versions are, which can be very error-prone.

Some extra notes on top of riktoi's: - The posting limit only lasts for an account's first day. It's just very rare for people to start community projects on their first day of being a member. - If you want to roll with the difficulty limit, it's very important to mention the upper limit of what you can beat. Use some wads as a rough example of "the hardest I can handle." Because even among wads that are not for "Doom gods," there's a very wide range of difficulty possible.

You might want to clarify this because GZDOOM doesn't have "complevel 4" and prB/DSDA-Doom's complevel 4 is the Final Doom iwad, and it's not clear what you're typo-ing :P

I punch every baron to save my precious single shotgun ammo so that I have ammo to wield in the Shotgun vs. SSG Debates

Digression but a really important tactic to have here with the back-facing ones in tiny rooms that are usually the most dangerous kind (yes it's such a common trope that it even has subtropes lmao) is intentionally missing your first pistol shot. If you hit the shotgunner while it's sleeping and wake it up, it will often auto-retaliate due to a coding quirk. But by missing a shot, it wakes up normally and its high pain chance allows it to be stunned reliably (not perfectly but still reliably enough) until killed. I know some Doomworlders might blanche -- "wasting one (1) bullet??? well I'd never!" "but m'ammo" -- but it's a pretty valuable tactic if you're playing a community project map that came out in 2008. Some bonus footage that shows the different approaches and includes one run where a shotgunner becomes a ghost.

Also deliberately changing someone's quote in a sincere attempt to make it look like they posted something unconscionable, or to create an incorrect statement that could be rebutted, or whatever else, would be a good way to earn a ban. (I'm not talking about the jokes in this thread.) There's a chance that fools someone for like a couple hours, because no one would expect someone to be so brazen, but the long-term risk-reward ratio of that is terrible. If you see someone do that, just report it. Arguing with yourself on a sockpuppet would have more longevity than that lmao. The shtogun is better than the SSG. (edit: who added that to my post?!!)

Shots look great! Looks like Doom Eternal! I'll make sure to play this! (^ that was in my autocomplete) My thoughts on palettes are: Concepts ("blue is slightly lighter", "green fades to purple which fades to orange", "imp teeth glow in the dark") and even exact colors can't be protected, and that would be silly. There are no restrictions on what you can do there. Naturally, using existing wads as a reference is fine while doing that. But that's contingent on you making the palette(/colormap) yourself. If all you're doing is directly copy/pasting and you know that, you're still benefiting from lots of saved effort, so you might as well be respectful of that and be honest with yourself and do whatever you think that entails (crediting in simpler cases, asking in more complex ones, or whatever). Copyright is beside the point here and benefiting from hours of someone else's effort without being gracious about that seems socially wrong.

Thank you for reminding me how to use shotgunner hordes while keeping ammo in check.

Okay: I find being surprised by revenant missiles fun. If I lowered lost soul HP, which is not a bad idea imo, I would make PEs more dangerous to compensate, like by having them spit two per attack instead of one. PEs being useful depends on a lot on lost souls being credible nuisances. One good thing to keep in mind is that the RL is good for clearing out bunches of lost souls (just avoid getting face-rocketed, and don't let "fear of face rocketing" prevent you from using an option). Wow that sounds like an interesting topic for a thread. 😈

Random theory. The RNG of SWTW map03 BFG fight in casual play is probably overstated (by which I mean even good players have felt it's RNG-heavy, but I'm not sure about that). In casual play you probably should kill a cyberdemon, which is hard to do but if you do that the encounter becomes easy. You can afford the cell use and you don't need all four cybs for infighting the balcony enemies. (In a fast maxrun you don't want to spend any cells here at all, but a casual pace of 35+ minutes can afford that.) Bonus three consecutive survivals. Only the third goes "cleanly" lol, but you don't really need attempts to be clean, and I have not really practiced this enough to feel "good" at it. Wouldn't surprise me if practice would make this 95%+ consistent with the safer approach of using some BFG, and going full pacifist feels like it could be 80%+. The skill ceiling of this encounter has likely not been reached by anyone yet. Kinetic and mhrz might be able to make it look easy. A lot of the real difficulty is probably mental.

Think about it: red can be distilled from demon blood; blue can be distilled from, uh, carpet. But to get ample amounts of green, that requires nukage, and since nukage is damaging it needs to be processed unlike the other substances, which alters its color somewhat. (edit: into yellow! if that's not clear)

it's very common for people to have that area off and he's always had it off

PR and BFG are redundant so their defining characteristics should be combined into one weapon.

I don't think sub count is related to "ratedness" in any way, but I'll go along with the "favorite YTers without really high subcounts" part. Quake YouTuber* Korendian199 is #1 at doing the "maxrun with commentary" thing when he does it, especially if you want to learn how to play better from him. *:^) Also love Vytaan's vibe/energy. Favorite recent find has been EduardoAndFriends. His commentary is a riot.

These might seem nitpicky but that's just how human nature works. If the early steps have a layer of effort that makes something less automatic, a lot fewer people are going to end up moving down the whole chain -- and there can be a 10-fold difference, easily. The website's landing page is not linked to in the original post so there's no guarantee everyone finds that. But that existing makes it really easy because you can go with something like: This would be a good idea. One simple tweak is that the order on the site seems backwards: formatting nuances, article guidelines, then review guidelines. But you probably want review and article guidelines to come first. It's more important to know reviews are "Between 300 words minimum to 600 words max" than a lot about fonts, spacing, ellipses, etc.

Here's another. The maxruns of e4m2 use skip tricks to get the BFG and thus pretty much answer the question, "What if the map gave you the BFG early, instead of the plasma rifle which you normally get?" And it's basically not even a map anymore.

What immediately pops out is that you have certain soft barriers in place. One is that despite mentioning that you accept submissions in the first post of these threads, there's nothing that plants an image in anyone's mind of submitting anything. Reading this, what I'm thinking is "What sorts of articles are okay? What subjects can they be about? What reviews are okay or not (recent wads? anything goes?)?" Don't answer those questions, just rhetorical. Compare that to: Now that gives people an prompt of some kind. They have examples of what an article might be about (for other readers, these are not actual Wadazine articles -- just filler for my post :P). They know what's in demand with reviews, and what reviews might be accepted. Maybe the more important part is they immediately know if they are capable of writing a review that fits. ("You know what, I write 500-word reviews all the time, I might take a crack at the Wadazine this month.") Another effort barrier in that the submission rules/guidelines in the Discord are a .docx document, which seems unnecessary. Not everyone has software installed that easily reads that. By default I get sent through some annoying MSWord trial. While I'm not really the target submitter anyway (having other obligations and wanting to keep those separated) I do think it is surprising that I didn't even know what the basic submission specs were; that's the sort of thing people should be able to become aware of without really trying. Writing is a less popular medium than video these days, so if you are judging interest by the standards of video formats you'll be disappointed. Like, Not Jabba and Woolie Wool are on par with basically anyone as far as reviewers go. But working in a written thread format their popularity pales in comparison to Doomtube -- and even with a more visible magazine or ebook format it would too. And that's just kinda how it'll be.

I'm shocked no one has said having a concert. The plasma rifle is not only much louder than the BFG9000 but it also uses far fewer cells, which means that over the length of a performance it saves a lot of ammo.

Merged all these threads to clear clutter. If you have future problems with this same issue, use this one.

1) don't start two threads for the same topic, just fix/edit the one (merged those) 2) it's rarely correct to start new threads for demos -- find out if an existing thread exists for that wad, and post there 3) non-record demos should usually be posted here: 4) read this thread for lots of useful info, including how to name demos, before that moving to demos discussion from the main forum, for less clutter

GZDoom is slow when there are a very high number of demons. I suggest using DSDA-Doom, which operates better than GZDoom when there are a very high number of demons.

There have absolutely been substantially more high-effort projects, like mapsets and megamaps that people really sunk a lot of effort into, which is probably what you're thinking of. And I don't mean just BTSX-ish "big names" but a pretty broad range of such projects that extends even to big speedmap wads that people lead and compile diligently. But we're talking an increase from ballpark of a few dozens of such projects (which is what it seemed to be in the mid '10s when I was first paying attention), to a ballpark of several to a dozen dozens (now). That's a pretty huge increase but that's still a minority of releases represented on that graph, which I'd bet is largely determined a lot more by the # of tiny and small uploads than anything. Old idgames also has a bunch of one-off DM maps, sound files, etc. I'd be disinclined to read much into that graph about the popularity of mapping. The same amount of mapping energy can lead to very different upload #s based on how it is distributed. (Also some the narratives in this thread created around it are overfitting just-so stories imo. :P)