Aurelius

I’ve got a roof over my head, a comfortable bed, a family I love, good friends, and plenty of fun games.. guitars I love to play, that kind of stuff. I’m an extremely lucky individual who should be nothing but grateful (and I surely am grateful). I shouldn’t feel low and shitty. I should feel fine. So why don’t I?
 
The knowledge that others out there have it harder than I do is no consolation at all, it just makes me wish that life would cut them a break. My misery doesn’t want company, it’s just a feeling I want us all to be free from. I guess you need the bad for the good to mean anything. Or something like that anyway.
 
I’ve got PMs and discord messages backed up out the ass, I’m sorry for not responding to all of them sooner. I absolutely intend to. Just want to feel a little better before I do. Sorry for dragging my feet, seriously. I don’t want anyone to feel negative reading this, everything is gonna be alright for me and I want people to enjoy their time here, not get depressed by it. I just feel too low to do things with the care I’d prefer to, right now anyway. I’m just waiting til I can do the things I need to do/that people want me to do with the right energy and state of mind.
 
I hope anyone who reads this has a good day. Life is worth living and worth enjoying, there’s just times where that fact becomes harder to see. The important thing is to not give up, and remember that taking a little time to cool off is not at all the same as throwing in the towel.
 
..Does this post still make sense by now? Did it ever make sense? Does it matter if it makes sense? Well anyway, I really hope you’re doing ok and if you’re not, just try to stay strong. I know it’s hard to do sometimes. Some days, or sometimes some weeks are just shittier than others. I’m hoping it’s just been one of those weeks. I’m eager for new frontiers and a new state of mind..

My little kitten died just over 12 hours ago. I miss that little purr so much already. It’s crazy how fast 13 years has gone by.. RIP my small furry friend.
 
 

Well, looks like another few months have passed without me realizing I hadn't made a visit. I know this has become routine for a while, so for those interested or concerned, here's the main things that have been going on:
 
 
So, that's why I've been continually absent the last few years, and why I'll probably remain sparse for another chunk of this year. Even though I'm at the PC a lot of days, I'm finding myself easily overloaded by large-scale projects and interactions due to the amount of RL things still up in the air, so idle chat in smaller Discord servers or PMs is about all I've been good for lately.
 
Anyway, the point I'm trying to get at is that it's been the perpetual dilemmas of daily living that have kept me away, and not a lack of interest in Doom or the community. In fact, I've been genuinely enjoying the time I've been able to spend working on maps and other resources, as well as doing testing for other people. In particular, being able to go at my own pace with no public releases or deadlines looming has been quite relaxing, and helped turn all this back into a hobby. It's been fun exploring Eternity Engine's possibilities, and I'm getting so many fresh ideas now that I've set aside time to learn the new features, tools, and formats that have become available over recent years. I really do look forward to the time I can return as a regular participant around here, and hopefully that comes sooner than later. Until then, feel free to tag or DM me on Discord - I might even reply within a week.

This is a map called Skintryway. 
 
It is a remake of Doom 2 map01's layout from memory. It is also a 15-minute speedmap. It turned out surprisingly playable considering those constraints, so I felt like sharing it. 
 
A mistake I found amusing: I accidentally placed a chaingun instead of a chainsaw because "chain" and I didn't have time to look closely. 
 
Hope you enjoy. 
skintryway.zip

Hey peoples, I’m gonna have to duck out of my community projects and stuff for the next couple weeks, just temporarily of course. My house has gone from normal to “completely fucked” - 2 of the 4 power circuits aren’t working, walls have been mutilated searching for an unfindable fault only to find termites, of course a tree in the back yard figured this would be a good time to fall onto the neighbors property (no excessive damage.. just a crushed fence and removal expenses..) but of course this is all during the hottest time of year, 100% greatest time for all my ceiling fans to no longer work, but ohhhh no that’s STILL not enough, 11 year old cat gets sick to the tune of a $200 vet bill (a few of her teeth are fucked and will rot out of her head but I simply don’t have the money for removal). You think that’s enough right? It’s not, there’s even more but I’m just sick of typing about it. All of my money is gone, my house is fucked, my time is all accounted for, I’m just sad and drained. Part of me wants to just neglect everything, admit defeat and spend the next few weeks buried in Doom projects to forget this POS existence for the time being. But my survival instinct is overriding it. Sorry for all my complaining.. I just want you all to know I’m not heartlessly ghosting the whole community for the next couple weeks or whatever. I’ll still be popping my head in as a much needed distraction from everything I’m sure..!

Review of 1000 Lines 2 - Community Project 1.0:
 
okay so let's look back at 2020 so far in terms of how many megawads released (at least on idgames): Interception II, BTSX E2, NOVA 3, Akeldama, MAYhem 2020, OOPS All Techbase, Modest Mapping Challenge, Deep Into The Massacre, Texture Extravaganza, Hellforge Speedmapping Session 1, Short Maps for Short People 2, Death in Excess, SINERGY, SlaughterMAX, and Czechbox.
 
HOLY CRAP. that's 15 megawads so far, and 12 of those are community projects. now we have the thirteenth of those community megawads for 2020 bringing us to sixteen 2020 megawads. good lord. and with several more projects finally getting releases there will inevitably be more. anyways, I probably missed a few or something, but in any case, the title of "year of the megawad" has to go to this year by now. maybe a future year will usurp that? maybe not.
 
here we have the sequel to the first 1000 Lines Community Project, so the levels will still not be as huge as they appear, well for the most part anyways. we have 34 of them, and to make things sleeker, these mappers all used VOTEX. what the heck is this VOTEX well it's a vanilla-compatible texture pack version of OTEX which people should be familiar with by now (and if you're not get the hell out of the rock you're under). also included are plenty of music tracks, particularly several new ones by @AD_79 who composed the majority of it.
 
so as you'd expect, this being a community project of course quality varies, however consistency is nicely done so that no map (well apart from one) feels expurgated in a way. things scale nicely and there's distinctions between short maps, long maps, slaughter setups offered in spades, traditional death exits, yes. well I was only disappointed in MAP30 but most IOS fights in megawads are pretty bleh anyways.
 
as for that one map. I think after people play it it'll be the one map to be talked about for months. let me give you a hint. revenant rockets

I've mentioned here before that some years ago I invented a way to construct a moving subway, able to carry a player between two different stations. This was way before the introduction of polyobject-portals to the Eternity Engine, and an even longer time before the inclusion of ACS.
 
It worked by switching portal views. The actual cars and stations were connected by non-euclidean linked portals and didn't move at all. Anchored (visual-only) portals were connected to door ceilings, which as those raised or closed would reveal or obscure the linked portal and instead show a different view.
 
With the gates to the platform closed, a player would see the view of a standard polyobject dummy train arriving to its current station. The gates would open, revealing the in-game cars. If boarded and once the gates closed again, a different set of anchored portals would show the view of the subway departing the copied-as-polyobject station, and the destination station slowly approaching. This worked in multiplayer too; even sound cues were linked to the correct portalgroups so as to only be heard when in the appropriate in-game location.
 
In short: a perfect illusion. Well, "was", because I'm currently removing it.
 
It's all going to be replaced with a bog-standard moving polyobject-portal construction. Technically it's the right thing to do, since the result would look exactly the same as what I had before minus this very complicated setup.  But it still pains me to replace it, since I was so proud of this trick.  It feels like inventing mikoconveyors way back in 1997, only to be superseded by Boom's standard conveyor feature before you could show your achievement to the world.
 
Still, let's show off this trick. Here's the subway arriving at your station:

 
Now ready to board:

 
Subway 'leaves' with you onboard, seeing the (polyobject) station receding:

 
Almost arriving at your destination:


 
Once disembarked, watch the subway go about its return trip.

In the off chance that anyone (especially a new mapper) sees this review and my status update, the implication here is silly and harmful. Smaller mapsets, and standalone maps, are 'complete wads' too, and 17-map megawads are perfectly fine. 

Note to self:
 
Trying to launch an OP that is comprised of "6,178 words 34,209 characters" is not a good idea.
 
Also note to self:
Split that stuff...

Usually when I make textures its just enough to convey whatever theme I'm going for at the moment. So many have been made over the years though that hey, I thought I may as well start a resource pack. Will update it as time goes on. As it is right now you'd pretty much have to pick and choose stuff from it or load it with a secondary pack for it to make any sense. Check out the textfiles for details:
 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hnst1h17i7b2le1/LKTexV1.9.zip?dl=0
 
Edit: Updated to 1.9. See post here for more info.

My review of Remnant by @Aurelius