⇛Marnetmar⇛

Plantar fasciitis has become my preferred go-to argument for why there is no god.

The clock has struck one hundred eighty three, perhaps they will finally awaken when it strikes one hundred eighty four.

This is going to get worse before it gets better.

I consistently find myself at a crossroads between looking for inspiration and holding out for a completely original idea that has never been done before.

If you try to texture a complex map in visual mode using only a trackpad, you're gonna have a bad time.

Now that's out of the way, come sit around the fire as Marn tells a crazy story from the Aztecs -- The Five Suns Myth.

The Aztecs believed there were four worlds before the present one, each with its own sun. The earlier four were destroyed in catastrophes engineered by the gods. The first sun was the god Tezcatlipoca, who was fought with his brother Quetzalcoatl, and was knocked out of the sky with his club. After a period of darkness, Quetzalcoatl became the second sun. In his anger, Tezcatlipoca turned all people into monkeys, and Quetzalcoatl blew all the monkeys away before stepping down as the second sun.

The god Tlaloc then became the third sun. Annoyed when Tezcatlipoca stole his wife Xochiquetzal, he sulked and refused to allow any rain to fall, creating a terrible drought. The people begged and begged for rain, and Tlaloc became so fed up with their begging that he sent down a rain of fire instead. This burned up the world, and the gods had to start all over again.

The fourth sun was Tlaloc's new wife, Chalchiuhliticue. She started out well, but then Tezcatlipoca somehow upset her so much that she cried tears of blood for 52 years without stopping. This completely flooded the world, and the gods had to start again from scratch.

The fifth sun, which was believed to be the present one, was the god Huitzilopochtli. His mother Coatlicue gave birth to him after accidentally being impregnated by...a bundle of feathers (another Aztec god was impregnated by a gourd in another myth too). Coatlicue's 400 sons were enraged that he had gotten pregnant yet again, so they decided to behead her. But she gave birth just in the nick of time to Huitzilopochtli, who was born fully armed and killed all 400 of his brothers. The end.

As far as I can tell, the original DoomEd has a fixed zoom level that you aren't able to change. In Doom Builder this would be at about 90%.

I wonder if the reason IWAD maps tend to make such good use of space has to do with this limitation.

ALBATROSS!

Misaligned textures, but it's a start.

Protip: Don't take melatonin to sleep unless you plan on having at least eight hours to sleep it off.

By the time I get going, I have to go to work. By the time I get home from work, I have to go to bed. By the time I get going, I have to go to work. By the time I get home from work, I have to go to bed. By the time I get going, I have to go to work. By the time I get home from work, I have to go to bed. By the time I get going, I have to go to work. By the time I get home from work, I have to go to bed. By the time I get going, I have to go to work. By the time I get home from work, I have to go to bed. By the time I get going, I have to go to work. By the time I get home from work, I have to go to bed. By the time I get going, I have to go to work. By the time I get home from work, I have to go to bed. By the time I get going, I have to go to work. By the time I get home from work, I have to go to bed.

Fun fact:

The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was six miles wide, impacted the earth at 45,000 miles per hour, and released the equivalent of a trillion tons of TNT. 

For weeks, the earth was surrounded with a cloud of red-hot rock, and debris was sent 200,000 kilometers into space -- that's halfway to the moon.

The amount of planning, revision and missing information needed to fill in the gaps in order to make this something that's even possible is absolutely insane. I'm a madman for doing this, but dammit, it's going to happen. It's too good of an opportunity to pass up.

Setting Turbo to 85 makes Doom surprisingly more tense while still being fast.

Steam is moved to tomorrow due to how late it is. Apologies to anyone who wanted to watch it.

I have an uninformed theory about black holes that's probably wrong because I'm not a physicist and get all of my information from space documentaries. I call it the "infinite pockets" theory

We know that the singularity at the center of a black holes probably doesn't exist in any meaningful way and only represents a hole in our understanding of physics.

As you "approach" the center of the black hole, it makes logical sense to me that space time would simply keep curving and curving as you fall forever into dimensionless space, meaning there is no center to approach at all.

I'm getting sick and tired of getting called into work every single day that I'm supposed to have off because we're understaffed to the point of having no backup employees and one missing person will result in the place burning down.

(Not my video)

Would someone be willing to give a more in depth explanation of the tall building effect and where it does and doesn't work?

Studying the effects of lighting using Xaser's map as my guinea pig

Anyone interested in a mapping stream Tuesday?

Something about this area seems off to me but I can't put my finger on what. The last two shots in particular are the most offensive, but I'm not sure how I should fix it.

Any suggestions?
 

Rick, there’s more, or perhaps less, to this man than you think.

When I was nearly finished writing my thesis on quantum entanglement, I was awoken one morning and manhandled away from my dorm by four security officers. They told me that I was being removed from campus and taken to a secure mental facility because I had informed several people on campus of intent to place a bomb in the mess hall during meal time, and they had all had called the police to inform them of this.

Obviously, I never did any such thing. However, they refused to answer my questions about where they got this information. My attempts at flat-out denial were countered with aggressive, repeated assertions that I did, in fact, commit such a crime, and that everybody knew about it. Pointing out the sheer absurdity in these accusations was met with cutting beratement and threats of a kind that I would rather not repeat.

My attempt at invoking Habeus Corpus is the last thing I remember before I woke up in a padded cell, with somebody else’s name on it, guarded at all times by one of the officers that had come to take me away. My attempts to explain to the prison staff what had happened were all met with myself being humored, or bluntly being explained to the sheer unlikelihood of my situation. Slowly, my steadfast denial began to give way to a doubting of my very perception of reality.

Eventually I came to learn that one of my research partners had presented the thesis I had written under his name before the Quorum panel when it was still in its relative infancy, and received his doctorate degree for it. In addition to me being deemed a nutcase, I had far less in the way of charisma and interpersonal connections than my partner. Attempting to speak out would not do me any favors. I was only able to escape my situation when, three months later, my partner, the guards who had arrested me, and several other researchers, were themselves arrested for banking fraud and I was called to testify.

University administration was never informed of any bomb plot on my behalf, and no witnesses to my alleged threats were ever found. The reparations I was given were more than enough to make my life comfortable, and every single one of the perpetrators now resides less-than-comfortably on [REDACTED].

No, Rick, you are not going mad, and nor are you the only one. You are seeing things exactly as they are, and yes, there is a “why”. However, that “why” is not something that you are going to like, or necessarily be willing to believe due to its sheer absurdity. With that hint, I think you can figure it out.

Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s anything that I can do to help. This man has got all of [REDACTED] and then some by the balls. All we can do is roll with the punches, because we are nothing but characters in a script and Franz Kafka is holding the pen.

Regards,

Antonio Scarcia, Ph.D

Some thoughts on Marathon:

-The floaty movement system is the most blatantly offensive aspect of the game. Unfortunately, it logically follows that the maps would've been designed around it, and trying to improve it will only break the game.

-I think half of the complaints about Marathon's level design can be traced to people trying to play Marathon as if it's Doom and paying little attention to the terminals, because in all of the maps I've replayed so far (and Marathon's maps are pretty big), I found myself essentially following a straight line from objective to objective. That being said, Marathon's level design does have some pretty serious problems.

-The most immediate problem that comes to mind is that there are virtually no recognizable landmarks in any of Marathon's maps whatsoever. In Doom, all areas of each map were very distinct from oneanother while still being part of a unified whole. In Marathon, all areas of every map had roughly the same color scheme and lighting levels with very little contrast.

-Marathon's maps were mostly hallways with little in the way of height variation, which offered little to no opportunity to engage enemies in creative ways in addition to adding to the visual monotony.

-The texturing scheme is downright horrific. Two completely different textures on the same wall with no transitions does not look good, especially when they aren't even aligned. This is a shame because quite a few of Marathon's textures are actually reaaaaaaaally nice.

-The enemies were all very boring to fight and ranged from cannon fodder to doors with health. There's little in the way of creative enemy placement, and the enemies in many areas feel like they were simply plopped down haphazardly to give the players something to do.

-I understand the mentality behind having save terminals scattered throughout the level rather than allowing the player to save wherever he likes, but I completely disagree with it.

-Overall, the combat and level design feel like they were done with the sole purpose of connecting terminals together in order to advance the plot. That being said, Marathon's plot is fantastic and in my opinion is enough to carry the game by itself, which is no small feat.

-In order to change settings, the player has to quit the game entirely. There is no excuse for this.

-I have no problem with Marathon's health system, but I think it's worth pointing out that Doom's "health-and-armor-bonuses-as-coins" item placement added an extra fun factor that Marathon missed out on.

Overall, I think Marathon is worth a play, but only for the plot and absolutely nothing else.