Nine Inch Heels

This is hands down one of the least efficient ways you could possibly imagine... You don't "guess" how much ammo you need... You place a player start where you need to do the testing, you IDKFA, you beat the fight, and then you look at your remaining ammo... A cup of coffee and some napkin maths later, you put down the weapons and ammo your first test showed you would need, you run the fight a few more times to see how consistently it behaves, adjust if needs be, and you move on to the next fight to repeat the very same thing another time... Playing the entire map up to where you need testing done, several times over, is a tremendous waste of time, and nobody with a shred of sanity would consider this a decent work-ethic... You do a full run of the map (100% kills and secrets + IDDT to check teleport closets for stragglers when you reach the exit) with and without secrets (in case your secrets hold crucial goodies) once you've checked each important fight and ambush separately. Once that run has been done you add or remove supplies, if you feel like something's too tight/loose... Beating the map doesn't necessarily mean there's no more testing to be done, depending on how serious you want to get there's always room for more polish, texture alignments, lighting, and so forth... Nobody is going to just "reshuffle" their map geometry once they have the layout in place. Adjustments are fine, but "erase and rewind" has got to be a last resort instead of a response to "I suppose this is ridiculous"...

Nobody minds pelting a few midtiers with a shotgun as long as it's interesting in some way shape or form. The question to ask - as it's been pointed out already - is "does this somehow make the map better?" The line between "okay, I suppose I'll kill these cacos or HKs this once" and "you know what? I'm not interested in this kind of slog" is tenuously thin sometimes, especially when it's something you could consider a "conventional map", and not a challenge gauntlet built around some sort of engaging gimmick.... As a rule of thumb, revenants in relatively close proximity are the most fun to tackle with a standard shotgun, because their homing rockets paired with the fact that they might fire one off in retaliation after a pain-chance occurred makes them a bajillion times more entertaining than a boring straight line shooter like HKs or caco could ever hope to be, and their slightly lower HP-total also makes them feel less chewy than a hell knight, mancubus, or arachnotron...

Depends on how I want the map to be like. If I want an easier map I place more pickups, if I want it harder I place less.. Not sure what kind of answer you were looking to get for this one, tbh... No. Any and all attempts to establish some manner of formulaic distribution of goodies and baddies are an exercise in futility, because how much ammo and health players need depends for example on infight-potential which varies greatly depending on the lineup you employ, layout and distance to monsters in general, how bunched up they are if you place a RL or BFG, etc.... I have an idea for a fight, I build it into the map directly, or I make a vignette, which I then insert into an existing map... If it works roughly how I want it to, it's ready to be playtested by someone else, until then I test myself and adjust if I deem it necessary... No, also that question has been answered already...

http://slade.mancubus.net/index.php?page=wiki&wikipage=How-to-Import-Textures

I know this might come across a bit disheartening, so I'm sorry in advance, but I think there are some issues here with regards to what you think you have, and what you expect to happen elsewhere... Let's start with what you have: Let's be realistic about this... I'm not one to consider visuals as the most important aspect of a map, not even close, to be perfectly honest, but even I can see quite clearly that there is not a lot of meat on the bone when it comes to how your maps present themselves... When you look at most projects that new mappers around here share, yours are lagging behind visually, so your screenshots won't draw a lot of attention to your projects, and when that not-so-great first impression is then paired with your lack of punctuation, which makes your release threads as well as your general forum posts somewhat difficult to read, you can't really blame people for downloading and playing something else... Now that we've got this uncomfortable part of the conversation out of the way, let's think about expectations... Yeah, I'm pretty sure there are some other sites out there, and if you go out of your way to promote your WADs on more sites you may garner some more attention, but considering how your work presents itself, I'm not very hopeful that you get the kind of response you are looking for elsewhere either... If neither DoomWorld nor the ZDoom forums manage to get people interested, which are the 2 largest sites that I'm aware of, chances are that fishing in a smaller pond won't do much for you, if anything at all... What I am trying to hint at is that I don't think the forums you're currently registered to are the cause of the problem that you are looking to find a solution for...

Yeah... quick update time while I'm suffering from lack of good sleep for no apparent reason at all... So, my map as it stands is still in a mostly finished state, and I'm fine with a deadline at this point... The only things that are still going to take some work is diorama detailing, which turns out to be a rather ungratifying endeavour for this one, and I happen to be kinda stuck with regards to MIDI selection for the map... I have one that I think works fine for players who know what the map is asking for, but for somebody who plays the map and doesn't realize they're on a timer and may need to start over, well... It could turn out to be pretty exhausting to listen to over time. I'm not quite sure what to do about it, other than slotting in a different MIDI, but I haven't been able to decide which one just yet... It's not a big deal, but it's also the first time I've ever had this problem, so I figured I might as well rant a little bit because why not..? EDIT: Also, as for difficulty, my E3M8 isn't anywhere near as tight or difficult as the E3M6 I've built, the only thing that really needs to be accounted for is that the map will be impossible to beat if players happen to be too slow, and the timer is rather generous, too, because the win condition of the map may have a fair bit of intrinsic variance to it...

I like my source ports with a nice golden brown sear, decent caramelization on the outside with a crunchy centre is where it's at. Perfectly seasoned with salt and pepper, as well as some lemongrass and some added chives for the extra kick when you really need something elevated... Typically I will have a nice side order of demo compatibility, paired with fluidsynth MIDI... Extra points if tracker formats are supported for some added depth to give that a little je ne sais quoi to the audio side of things...

What's the harm in placing monsters such that the player can't reach them for some length of time? Nobody here is talking about making something impossible to reach for the entirety of a run. It's perfectly valid to perch something outside of the player's range, in some way shape or form, as long as it's possible to eliminate these monsters later, for example because they teleport somewhere else, get crushed, or the player is able to reach them from somewhere else - and these methods have been employed over the years several times already, not just by a handful of maps, for that matter... One such map that comes to mind is Xaser's 50shadesofgreytall contribution (perched cacos that get crushed), another one would be dimensions map 31 (perched revs that teleport into range of the player later)... Here's the problem: If someone were to play such a setup for the first ever time, provided enough ammunition as well as freelook enabled, they're perhaps gonna be sitting there with a sour face while they chip away from a distance until everything's dead, while they completely rob them themselves of the realization that the monsters would be much more convenient to take out at a later point in time... That's why it's by no means an unreasonable suggestion to make that players should give that respective map a shot with the settings it has been designed for... And I'm not talking about the "REEEE UR n0 TrU DeWMuR" kind of "suggestion", mind. Most mappers who have at least a slight clue about what they're doing will most likely make sure that players can get rid of these supposedly unreachable threats eventually, unless of course the map is just not meant to be maxable (which is also valid, but should be stated from my point of view) and I wouldn't be surprised at all if some players opted to take advantage of freelook instead of letting the map do its thing... On that note, as much as I disagree with cynical on certain subjects: Have you even played anything he made? It seems pretty daunting to me to tell someone who made a map as decent as impure offering that they may or may not need to reconsider their combat design.. Talking about "bad design" while going under the assumption that the monsters would be impossible to reach forever is throwing the baby out with the bathwater...

I think we have either a language problem, or you think this game's combat is a heck of a lot more demanding than it actually is in regards to pinpoint precision. This idea that precise and time consuming aiming is required for anything that is within the range of the auto-aim is complete nonsense. And let's not forget that the vast majority of combat, PWADs included, is nowhere near the stunning degree of fast paced action that you've built your argument around. The mental RAM which you think is spread so awfully thin becomes a non-argument for practically all of the valiant-esque, or speed of doom-esque WADs out there, as well as anything that is easier. The only maps which require some manner of cognitive presence are the hardest tier of maps, aka later sunlust, dimensions, that sort of caliber. Most things are done on autopilot anyway, including but not limited to pattern dodging, projectile herding, and such like. And none of these activities interfere in any way shape or form with the player's ability to look up or down. Target prioritisation is exactly what I meant when I talked about singling out one target by way of freelook in my given example, so it is happening at the same time anyway, unless you want to tell me that focusing fire on a particular thread isn't target prioritisation. You may not like it, but moving the mouse while running away from a cluster of revenant rockets isn't an art form, most certainly not when you try to invoke a need for precision where none is required to begin with. It's a core-skill, and nowhere near as demanding as you would like to make believe. These very small differences you mentioned are all fine and dandy, but small differences straight up don't hold a candle to the ability to trivialize fights that would give players with auto-aim a much harder time.

If you go for precision aiming while you have more pressing matters to attend to, you are making a bad judgement call. Obviously you go for precise shots when you have the time to spare, so APM (this isn't starcraft, btw) are not a factor. Fast and hard fights typically mean that there is something close by that needs dealing with in some way, so you're not going to see any player worth their salt going for headshots on the arch vile that is zipping around 2,000 mapunits away to begin with. The example I provided was based on the circumstance that doom's auto-aim would still function, meaning a "tangible" disadvantage compared to freelook. So, when looking at these kinds of distances, the precision-line of arguing is moot at best, because anything perched at such a range is most likely a mere flick-shot for better players, if even that much of a feat. Besides, any gun in the standard arsenal will provide you with a time-window to aim at a different target anyway, unless you are using a rapid fire weapon. Most fast and hard fights employ rockets, plasma, and BFG, so for the plasma rifle with its relatively large projectiles there's really no need for precision down to a few pixels either.

Literally every game ever meant to challenge the player in a PvE scenario employs its own rules such that the supposed player has to overcome some manner of adversity, and the more demented or basic the AI is, the bigger the advantage that needs to be given to the player's enemies... That's a very simple and straightforward rule, which applies to more games out there than I could ever care to count... From rubberbanding in racing games, seemingly overwhelming odds in games like advance wars, to even blatantly "cheating" AIs with constant vision of a battlefield in RTS games, it's part of the package... Id built the icon of sin such that you need to ride the lift to be able to kill the damn thing, they played the game's mechanical limitations as a card against the player in the most literal sense imaginable, but when another mapper pulls a similar stunt in another context it's suddenly "bad design"? Yeah, it may be your opinion, but I'm calling that a double standard and nothing else...

The icon of sin would like to have a word with you... Look, I'm not going to get my pants in a twist over "purism" when it comes to casual play, but there are examples of how freelook can either break a sequence (doesn't happen very often) or make the combat easier than it would be otherwise (happens a lot more often). For example, place an arch vile behind a wall of perched revs on a pillar, and the auto-aim will always gun for the revenants if the engine "finds" one in front of the arch vile on a lower level. Play the same setup with freelook, and the oh-so-threatening and hard to kill vile is nothing but easy fodder for the rocket launcher. Freelook also makes shooting down flyers easier, because you get to aim-ahead instead of having to wait for a drifting caco to come to a halt. Another thing worth noting is platforming, which gets a lot easier at times when you can look at your own feet instead of having to rely solely on your general sense of orientation and movement - extremely tight platforming sequences merely exacerbate the point made. It's not about sequence breaking anything and everything, it's about a great many subtleties, which is why freelook and free-aim are not allowed in speedrunning as far as classic WADs are considered. Whatever you do when you play at your leisure is not my business, but let's not pretend that freelook doesn't change things in favour of the player when it quite clearly does.

I'm not particularly fond of the vegetarian options that many fast food chains have been trying to establish in order to gain a slice of the market comprised of vegetarians and vegans... More often than not, when it's an actual fast food chain, you can just taste that it's cheaply made, never mind that fast food chains gunning for the vegetarians and vegans is an exercise in futility just on the basis that many vegetarians and vegans know about the ever so lengthy rat's tail of "follow-up-costs" that comes with the fast food industry... On the other hand, there's the restaurant quality stuff, handmade with care, and cooked to order... And I would have to agree that a fine veggie burger is a fine veggie burger is a... You get the idea... On that note, if you're in the market for vegetarian fast food, try falafel if you can get it at a restaurant where it's made from scratch, you won't regret it... Falafel, as well as börek filled with feta cheese and spinach are some of Turkey's best "food exports", and I think more people should try those...

Look... All I'm trying to say is that being new to mapping, and not knowing where to start, doesn't make you special, and I mean that in the most positive sense imaginable, because thankfully there are tons of resources out there that you can have a look at... All you need to do is to use this forum's search function, or browse the editing tutorials subforum, or use google, or etc...

Didn't you talk about wanting to become an author for cacowards at some point? How are you gonna facilitate that when you're perfectly fine with lacking in substance? To me personally, this seems to be an attempt at somehow making excuses for something that you know you could have done better, because the respective feedback has been provided to you a couple times by now. It's like you're not even trying. Not even the negative aspects you talk about are substantiated in any way shape or form, let alone the positive ones. Seriously, are we even speaking the same language here? Yeah, sure, you can point out problems if you find any, but pointing out that one episode of something sucks isn't saying why that episode is bad from your point of view. Do you not see the difference? I mean, how hard can it be to outline just a handful of issues about an entire episode of maps, just to give the reader a general idea? If you have to deal with an episode that rubs you the wrong way, for argument's sake, there is no harm in describing a range of issues you have encountered, rather than going into great detail. Hypothetical example: "From ammo-starvation, over hitscan-overdose, as well as bland visuals, to generally uninspired layouts - episode 1 of this set is a mixed bag". Add a few more concrete examples to that, and you've done your job for the purpose of a brief review as far as that particular episode is considered. It tells the reader everything they might want to know in order to get a general sense of quality, and that's what reviewing is about. It's not just a stage for your opinion, or an opportunity to vent your frustration - reviewing is about giving someone, who knows nothing about something, at least a vague idea about that respective something. What doesn't work is "This offspring of an already mediocre project has a shitty first episode", and that's what your latest review started off with. If you were pretty sure you've done something along the lines of my hypothetical example: No, you did not - certainly not in your latest review. Conversely, the same principle applies to reviews of other, supposedly better episodes. If you don't want to get into too much detail, you point to a couple general things about an episode, spruce it up with a few examples, and that's that episode done as well. Reviewing isn't difficult if you keep the obliviousness of the reader in mind, and that's what's missing here. Your reviews aren't interesting for anybody who knows nothing about the maps in question, because they are that damn insubstantial. Anybody who knows these maps, and reads your reviews after the fact, will be able to piece something together, because they have a recollection of the things you are writing about. But why write reviews only for people who have already made up their own mind? So, you need to substantiate your opinion pieces, because the alternative is being told that your review of 300 or whatever words can be boiled down to a single phrase.

@NuMetalManiak since you've asked for feedback on your style, here's some food for thought. I'm seriously at a loss when it comes to figuring out what to highlight in the snippet above, because it's jam-packed with issues several people - including yours truly - have pointed out already: - instant negativity - poor and, actually, vitriolic choice of words - generally devoid of interesting content You could have saved yourself a lot of time if you just stated that "This community project is off to a less than ideal start, but it picks up some steam in later episodes". It's to the point, and far less vitriolic than your opener. And don't even get me started on how you bash a previous project as "mediocre", which is completely unnecessary as it adds nothing of value to this review. I've said it before, and I will say it again: Stating that "things exist" isn't "reviewing". So, there are "standout maps" for the right reasons? Okay... What are those reasons? What makes these maps better than the rest? There's a "decent level"? What makes it decent? So there's something good and creative here? Why not spend some time writing about this good stuff, instead of wasting time on bashing something else? See what I meant when I said that you gravitate too much towards the negative things while doing very little in the way of pointing out what works and most importantly why it works? Oh, wait... We're right back to negativity again... We get it already, you didn't like the first episode, you already expressed as much, why do you need to mention that yet again? Do you feed off of negativity, or what's the deal here? Are you writing these reviews while you're being pissed off? Make your point once, and leave it at that. Redundancy is not a virtue. Tell you what... I'll give you a TL;DR of your so-called review: "It's 37 maps for ultimate doom. The first episode isn't good, but later episodes get better and have some cool stuff by certain mappers." That's literally all your review says, right there in front of your eyes. I know absolutely nothing about these maps after reading your review, save for a few bits and pieces you could have and should have elaborated some more. And if this is what you manage to discern over the course of 37 maps, you're not putting a lot of thought into your reviews as far as I'm concerned.

it doesn't matter if this thread is a hoax or not... Romero's whims and wishes hold no sway over anything that falls in the category of intellectual property on the side of id software. So... even if this thread is fake, which we can safely assume it is at this point, the reality that romero isn't going to dump more unused classic doom content without getting a massive slap on the wrist by a legal team very much stays the same..

Why don't you give the following maps a shot, and tell us how it went when you've beaten them all on ITYTD, deathless runs and demo files included:

My map in mayhem 2020 uses that bug on purpose... Be warned, the map is a bit of a bitch on UV... One of my contributions to NoYe also uses something similar...

How about some solar jetman? It had some pretty trippy tunes, IMO...

Withholding weapons isn't something that turns a fairly normal map into a gimmick map. There are plenty maps out there, even in the original game, that withhold weapons for one reason or another, and I'm not just talking about E2M8 or E3M8 exclusively, but most of the maps in OG Doom. So, where are the many people praising or complaining about just how gimmicky OG Doom was due to how it gave out weapons? They don't really exist, if you take "boss fights" out of the equation, because limiting the player's options in some way has always been a design staple for classic doom. One of the first gimmick maps people might think of would be Doom 2's barrels of fun, and that map's gimmicky character had close to nothing to do with withholding weapons. Almost every map out there withholds weapons for some length of time, or even entirely. Does that mean the mapping scene is rife with gimmick maps? Probably not. Your line of arguing falsely assumes that a map without access to the SSG implies that it's either a gimmick map, or a "normal map" which doesn't behave the way a normal map should - from your point of view - while it ignores absolutely everything else on the spectrum of design choices, such as providing alternatives to the SSG, monster placement, and other options that don't qualify as a gimmick. Nobody would shake a stick at E1M1 if it were the first map of doom2, because nobody shakes a stick at Doom2 map 01 either. It's perfectly possible and valid not to provide certain weapons or power-ups while still ending up with a map that isn't "gimmicky" in a way "hunted" would be considered gimmicky. To keep this tangent short, pivoting to gimmick maps to defend or oppose arguments that haven't even been made contributes nothing to the discussion. The attempt at elevating something you prefer to a supposed standard - or default - while even IWADs exhibit quite a few supposed "eccentricities" with regards to withholding weapons - isn't something I want to get into, because I'm not interested in lengthy discussions about non-issues today. TL;DR: Limiting weapon choices is not to be confused with "gimmicks", it's a normal process when designing maps and encounters. The absence of some weapon(s) does not imply that a map plays in a "gimmicky" way.

The start off properly, mappers don't need to listen to you. You're in no position to tell anybody how they should do something in their spare time. Now, in hopes of turning this into a thread worth reading, let's take a look at a scenario I ran into: The map in question was a small to medium sized map, the difficulty was below that of the earlier maps in Valiant, so nothing too harsh. Most people should be able to beat it on UV first try. That being said, the map did feature a good number of mid-tier monsters, such as revs, mancs, and somewhere in there was even a vile. The load-out was limited to pistol, chaingun, rocket launcher (with less than 2 crates worth of ammo), shotgun, and SSG, the latter of which was hidden in a secret, which I missed. The mapper placed monsters and ammo (in particular shells) under the assumption that players would find the SSG eventually, which, again, I did not. The consequence being that I ran out of shells over the course of the map, with the added problem that fighting the mid-tier line-up of the map turned from "okay, I'll do this once or twice" to "well, now it's getting tedious and boring". Let's look at ways to compensate players for missing the hidden SSG, and a couple of the pros and cons: The obvious one: Place more shells (and/or bullets). A so-so solution. Keeping players limited to CG and SG over 90% of the map will result in monotony, so it's far from ideal. Conversely, players who happen to find the SSG will invariably find themselves swimming in shotgun shells later on. While the map might feel a little less tedious, it's still a very same-y play-style. Overall, not a good solution in my book, but easy to implement in a pinch. Place a second (non-secret) SSG later in the map, around the time when players are prone to running out. IMO, a decent solution, balancing ammo and monsters will be less of a chore, and the "endgame" of the map will still be possible in the exact way the mapper envisioned. You'll have a little bit of slog, but players will be glad for the bigger boom-stick. Alternatives to the SSG. Adding more rockets to the map for players to take advantage of, in secrets or otherwise, can help with the tedium. The good news here is that this solution will provide players who happened to find the hidden SSG with more options, too. It's a win-win in either case. Likewise, a hidden PR can have a similar effect, but it comes at the expense of messing with weapon progression over the course of a set of maps, so that might be worth thinking twice about. Implementation may not be easy, in case more secrets need to be added, and small - medium maps with over a dozen secrets for example could come across a mite strange as well. Melee weapons: One of the ways to keep the map more interesting was to place a chainsaw, or even a berserk. That way, it would have been feasible to save some shells for the odd difficult to melee monster. Unfortunately, the berserk pack would have sent the signal to play more cautiously, and melee anything that's feasible. Not a great solution for a blind run, but perhaps good enough for a second run - assuming the SSG won't get found again. Overall, not good for the map in question, but perhaps good under different circumstances... There are more ways to handle the side-effects of hiding important weapons instead of presenting them to players right away, these are just some very general ideas... For all intents and purposes, you could also make most of the fights "escapable" or "optional", which is nice for speedrunners, but perhaps not very enticing for the more casual player, or completionists...

Not a fan of discussing things that could get sorted out via PM in threads, but since this seems to be way this is supposed to be going, let's clarify a few things... If you make a nitpicky comment about what's an argument from authority or popularity (not to mention that both arguments are similar in nature pretty often), and immediately follow it up with "the blind leading the blind", you set a tone that makes it very easy to assume the follow up is directed at me as well... The reaction I gave you, which was a very direct albeit not a particularly hostile one as far as I'm concerned, was a pretty clear signal that the way I read your comment did not go down very well. At that point, I would have liked it better if you actually reached out to me directly, instead of publicly framing the exchange we've had in a way that makes it seem like I was the aggressor, because to me it seemed to be pretty much the other way around... I was scratching my head at the sight of being lumped in "with the blind" in your post there, and then seeing you complain about a response that I felt was adequately tempered - assuming my interpretation was correct... Look, if all this is in the end is a misunderstanding, that's A-okay... I'm not one to hold grudges because communication in text only can be problematic... If you wanna talk more about this, by all means, I'm cool with that... If not, and I explained why I reacted the way I did thorough enough, let's just move on and do better next time. I'm sorry that I got this backwards in any case...

I just skimmed over a couple reviews of things that I've either played myself, or was involved with in some capacity... So let's look at the slaughter spectrum for starters: Not something I was personally involved with, I just played the maps when they came out, and that's it... If I ignore my gripes with these maps (that being very easy to pull off skips and cheese-strats in the earliest released version, as well as, IMO, undercooked but still rather lengthy fights), I would still be able to discern a heck of a lot more that I'd consider worth writing about than your single paragraph there manages to do. There is no mention of themes and settings, no standout fights, no bits and pieces about technical aspects of these maps. The actual content collapses down to: -rejected from another project (an okay-ish factoid) -looks pretty (pretty how, pretty why, pretty where, what about themes?) -fun to play (fun for what type of player? is it spammy gung-ho slaughter? is it tight set-pieces? is it freewheeling?) Even to somebody like me, who didn't enjoy these maps a whole lot, it's a very lean, if not anorexic "review", to employ a slightly morbid term... Let's look at Mayhem 2019: You open with "people being lazy or something", which makes you come across like an asshole pretty much immediately. How long it takes for these maps to find their way to the archives is irrelevant for everybody who wants to play the set, because the thread with several release candidates and updates exists... Furthermore, going right in to bash a project sets the tone for what people will expect further down the line in your review, and it turns out that you absolutely deliver on that implied promise by way of adding more salt to the already very swedish licorice... Adding insult to injury, you also point to the one Mayhem you contributed to as the best one there ever was... When I stack all these things on top of each other, then it looks to me as though you didn't write this to actually review something. In fact, there is very little reviewing going on at all: "This is what's in the WAD, and I hate the WAD except for this one map, by the way." is about the sum total of your reviewing for this one... It's a thinly veiled vent paired with a slight pat on your own back - which is genuinely annoying to read. Just listing the new custom monsters you say you are so annoyed by (which you later pseudo-retract by way of stating the maps suck even more) isn't reviewing... You provide no insight about how and why the new monsters may be better or worse than what's in the standard Doom2 roster, and you completely fail to make any remarks about "good or bad" monster usage in these maps consequently, which also comes across as though you didn't really give these things much of a look at all... Mayhem 2020: Another opener with a very negative tone: "Community projects are all over the place quality-wise, this one tries (but fails) to do better." that's how your opener reads, and I already can't wait to not read any more of it... Thankfully, this "review" is a rather short one, as it ends with a list of observations you don't care to elaborate beyond stating that "things exist"... So, the review style I see here reminds me of those "mildly enraged" DWMC write ups that annoyed me in the past when I still participated in that. More salt than I can care to cope with, and a vent-to-review-ratio that does not inspire a lot of confidence... Your fixation on what's "bad", and how you set that tone of negativity very early on, while you completely stray away from virtually anything good in any of the projects that rubbed you the wrong way somehow, puts these reviews into the "not worth my time" bracket, because they're in no way shape or form pleasurable to read. Your style is permeated by petulance and elicits a general lack of enthusiasm for what you're reviewing, which shows in some form or another, be it negativity right off the bat, or an almost demeaning degree of brevity...

I can comfortably invoke the "mainstream" as an authority if mass-appeal is used as an argumentative basis for the quality of something. So, your point here is moot at best. My argument is not a special pleading, as it isn't making assumptions about the supposed reader's qualifications, credentials, experiences, moral values, or lack thereof... It's simply about personal preference... There is no fallacy you are able to shake a stick at, because the fact that people have different tastes - some of which can be "niche" - isn't something anybody would scrutinize - it's a given... I also didn't inflate that "niche thing" to something "better" by way of arguing that only "a chosen few" are "able" to appreciate it - as if the quality of something were inversely proportional to the quantity of people who enjoy it... If anything, your fallacy here seems to be that something only relatively few people are interested in can only be "defended" by way of logical fallacies... I'd also like to add that the post you took just that one tiny little snippet from (I wonder why that is), didn't aim to "disallow" anybody's opinions on anything. You can have your opinions and your personal preferences all day long for all I care. However, the moment said opinions and preferences are being passed off as an objective metric for how something should be done (or even worse: what should be created or not), you're greatly overplaying the value of your subjective metrics, even if a relatively large number people might agree with you...