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I've been away for a while dealing with IRL stuff, but I was feeling the urge to put together another piece of music so here's what I have: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/kho7v2ha43o82couu3357/Skulking-Season.mp3?rlkey=fj3urxkuk3s0lhmr4w9du2b0j&dl=0

I am being brutally mauled 😀

(Inspired by this thread on the Accursed Farms forums) For context: If you've ever seen the youtube series Ross's Game Dungeon, you're likely familiar with his "awards" segment, where he gives a game upwards of 3 awards. These aren't something as basic as "good music", they're usually done to highlight aspects of the game that stuck out to him. Some of my favorites include- "Gold Ore" - the game has a concept brimming with potential that no game since has tried to refine. "Best Story by a Six Year Old" - The story throws everything at the wall without any attempt to tie the elements together "Dog Monarchy" - The game has the standout innovation of including a ruling class of dogs. "Best Exploding Cows" - Need I explain more? Sometimes the awards do contain more general statements of how he feels about the game, such as "Gaming Crack", "Love & Hate", and "All-Time Favorite". So this thread is just for anyone to create their personal set of awards for a game. Share what interesting or bizarre stuff you find noteworthy about some of the games you've played. Here's some that I made to get started: Far Cry 5 [Coziest Game Where You Still Get to Shoot Dozens of People] - I've never played a full-on shooter game that felt this comfy before or since. The whole game, from the environmental design, to your interactions with NPCs, to the ability to relax and go fishing or hunting, everything just gives a sense of hominess and community that almost reminds me of Animal Crossing on a certain level. But the core gameplay still revolves around shooting people and beating them with a shovel. I guess "Cult of the Lamb" is something that more deliberately tries to replicate this dichotomy, but in that game it almost feels like the division between "comfy community builder" and "murderous cult leader" is played up for laughs. Meanwhile, FC5 merges the coziness with the combat pretty seamlessly. [Love & Hate] - Far Cry's formula (at least post FC3) is kind of like comfort food to me. It's not likely that anything using this formula will break one of my all time favorites, but it's very easy for me to like. It doesn't take much for me to get absorbed in the gameplay loop and environments. Unfortunately, FC5, seems really opposed to me doing that. Not only does the game stop you dead in your tracks to force you into the story missions, but as you make progress in each section, the game repeatedly adds more and more hazards to annoy you. Especially the planes. Once you're close enough to a boss fight, you start getting hounded by planes circling the area 24/7, and no matter how many you shoot down, they'll always keep coming. But once you do clear a sector, then it goes too far in the other direction and nullifies ALL random enemy spawns, which just makes exploration feel a little less exciting. This all leads to a gameplay pattern where every chapter of the game starts at its best and ends at its worst, which almost makes me dread playing the missions and making progress. [Diabolus Ex Nuke] - The game's become kind of infamous for its ending, and spoiler alert, it sucks. It just sucks. If you decide to keep fighting the cult leader, which you are obviously going to do given how much work it took to get to him in the first place, nuclear war starts. For some fucking reason. There might be radio broadcasts about political tensions being high, but that still doesn't explain why you only get hit with a nuke if you decide to kill this random cult leader in Montana. F.E.A.R. 2 [Whiny Game Engine] - You might recall in Ross's video for Revenant, he called it one of the most temperamental games ever made. Well, FEAR 2 is definitely up there.. Instead of behaving differently depending on a series of tiny differences in your system, FEAR 2 has two modes of behaving- it runs or it doesn't. And all too often, FEAR 2 chooses "It doesn't". I suspect this is less prevalent on other machines, but man, there are SO MANY things that can cause the game to just refuse to launch. I've had times where it just works without a hitch, sometimes it only runs if I set the game to my native resolution ahead of time, but other times I'll try reinstalling both my graphics AND audio drivers, and it STILL won't work. There is such a long laundry list of things that can cause this game to boot up to a black screen that this alone makes it hard to recommend someone buy the PC version. [Minority Report] - Most people seem to regard FEAR 2 as an inferior sequel... I am not most people. I mean sure, I agree that some things aren't as good, such as bullet time being a bit less polished, and the horror elements not being as strong. But on the whole? I think it's a tighter and more enjoyable experience than its predecessor in a myriad of ways. Environments feel much more varied and interesting, the combat is still a ton of fun, the slide kick is way, WAY easier to pull off and therefore is infinitely useful. Hell, I even like the inclusion of proper aim down sights (Although they still should have added an option to disable it). And even if the horror elements are less prevalent than before, I didn't really care since I didn't think the first game was even remotely scary. There was a handful of moments in extraction point that creeped me out a little, but other than that, I have no fucking idea what people are talking about when they say FEAR is a superb horror experience. It really never was. So having the sequel recognize that and use the horror as more of a thematic anchor felt like the right direction for me. And all that makes the "Whiny Game Engine" award all the more frustrating, because I WOULD play it a lot more if it would let me. [What?] - Yeah, I'm not gonna try to defend the ending. Whoever drafted that is a crazy person. Call of Juarez: Gunslinger [Death of the Author] - I've seen games and movies where the narrator is telling the story in past tense as we watch the events transpire. I've never played a game where the narrator slowly has an existential crisis while telling the story, watching the gameworld fall apart as he drops everything to ponder his mortality for a moment before someone gets him back on subject. [Drawn to the Horizon] - The vistas in this game are absolute top-notch stuff. Even if this game's sketch-outline aesthetic isn't your favorite, you have to respect the artistry that goes into these landscapes. I mean just look at these mountains here, the sense of scale is stunning. [All-Time Favorite] - I did not in a million years expect this to become one of my favorite shooters. Like, it's a budget 4-hour title that uses the common modern shooter tropes of regenerating health and ADS (not that those are inherently bad, just often slapped into games without understanding what makes them work) and has a very slim selection of weapons. Now I have played Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood and enjoyed that quite a bit, so I was at least expecting this to be good. But sweet friggin' christmas... When you successfully dodge a bullet before being thrust into bullet time, turning the tables and clearing out everyone in the room, followed by the main character pausing the story to go take a piss... You'll understand. Everything in this game just fits together perfectly in a campaign that is all-killer, no-filler. Go play this. Xenogears Just one for this game, but it's a good one: [Best Game that I Never Want to Play] - Do you ever look at a game, appreciate the aesthetic, tone, characters, and story, and then think to yourself: "Too bad it's in a genre that I don't give a flying shit about actually playing". That's the vibe I get from Xenogears all over. Even as someone who doesn't usually like this game's brand of super metaphysical narrative, I found myself supremely interested in the game's world and characters. Not to mention the overall art direction is just fantastic across the board. Unfortunately, it also uses just about every JRPG gameplay trope that I don't care for. Static turn-based combat, random encounters, bad pacing between cutscenes and gameplay, all of that sort of thing. While there are some people who do enjoy or at least tolerate this style of gameplay, I'm not one of them. But hey, if someone were to make a fan game in this universe that plays completely differently, I'd be all over that like frosting on cake.

Ah, yes. Thank you for reminding me to update that.

Here's another one I just cooked up: I call it "Tactical Superiority" https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mkigru0bf1ntvyns29tzy/Tactical-Superiority.mid?rlkey=ncyqgvx46gfj0q7pc6qaf33df&dl=0 I was going for a sort of "planning our next move" kinda vibe, and I think I got it in a cartoonish sort of way.

Another one, this one just an untitled C Minor Track- https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/144p6zw6chvbevx0nrcxv/C-Minor-Song.mid?rlkey=6pcvd4vsod5xnpawb34runt8q&dl=0 I started out trying to make something inspired by the track Holy Forest track from King's Field 4 (See video below), but it kinda wound up going in a totally different direction.

After suddenly getting the urge to try and compose music again for the first time in a year, I decided to setup one of these "a place to post music I made" threads. I'm still very new to composing music and I'm interested to get feedback on what I've made and how it can be touched up / improved upon. So far, here are the one's that I'm currently willing to share: "Back to the Grindstone" (This is the one I made most recently after not doing any music stuff for a year) "Filleted and Confused" "Home Free" (This is probably the best of the lot, but only because it basically copies the structure, tempo, and drums of Questionable Ethics 1 from the Black Mesa OST) "Thinking About Tomorrow" (I forgot I composed this one with something other than the default Windows soundfont so the "Bowed Pad" instrument sounds like crap, here is an MP3 of what it's supposed to sound like.) I'll post more of these as I make them below. Right now, I'm not planning on uploading these to any particular platform or doing an organized release, I'm really just doing this to get feedback and pointers.

Quake. I honestly cannot fully explain why. I have a lot of respect for the game and I do like the lovecraftian atmosphere they're going for, but something about the complete package just fucking bores me. I didn't even care for the expansion episode that came with the remaster, which had a bunch of varying level themes that break up the brown monotony. Something about the combat just does not do it for me. I mean for one, there's the really spongey enemies, but I've played games that had a similarly tanky roster that didn't make me want to stop playing. I think it's a combination of that with everything feeling generally primitive in a way I don't get from Doom.

Little bat bean fella

Okay, I need to ask one very important question: What is the easiest method of playing this mod with any kind of freelook? I understand why freelook isn't supported in the remaster since it's officially considered cheating and also it can cause some graphical problems, but full stop I cannot play without it. I get something akin to simulation sickness where I start to feel out of sync with the character and it makes me really, REALLY uncomfortable for some reason. I can't get used to playing with it turned off. I've heard about a fan patch that adds freelook into the remaster but I couldn't get it to work. Now I know that the mod was created for the original Doom64EX port, which... I think is compatible with GZDoom? (You'll have to bear with me because I know very little about the various Doom 64 ports. I've only beaten the game through a mod made for the ZDoom family and I've since forgotten what it was called.) But I'm fairly certain that version is out of date with the newer stuff added here. Although I've heard that the EX+ port is compatible with the remaster version? Or did someone make a separate version of this mod for said port that I need to download somewhere else. I don't know, if anyone can just point me towards what I need to download I would massively appreciate it.

-MaxResDefault -DoomedKiddo -Decomposable -Grafted Zach -Dave -Jonathan Merciless -Crusty Rustington -Walter's Party Hat -Office-Sil -Immortimer -Broken Cobblestone Generator -TWELValive

Some custom Doomguy status bar faces I made recently. I'm almost certain that people have made the first 3 rows before, but here's my version, I guess. The one I'm most proud of is the new "OUCH" face, since I always thought the original one looked kinda cursed. Also instead of Doomguy having eyes that randomly shift from plain black to blue to brown, I just made it an ambiguous grey. But I'm not posting the other faces that had that change since it's literally a 2 pixel difference.

There's a lot of different possible answers to "How do you design a level from the ground up?", and is hard to give advice on because that's primarily based on how your own mind works. All I can really advise mappers in that regard is to try a bunch of different methods that people use and stick with whichever one works best. Perhaps a better question to ask is "What makes a level layout engaging?", because there is a much deeper discussion to be had there. However, not too long ago I heard a very useful piece of advice that I will paraphrase as: "Unless you are trying to introduce a new idea to the player, make sure they always have more than one problem to deal with." This video by Josh Strife Hayes is what got me thinking about it: The basic idea here is that if a player has only one problem happening at any given moment, gameplay becomes a very basic process of "if X then Y", which gets boring very quickly. You need to have a good understanding of what each enemy or hazard expects from the player and then create your encounters by letting these elements intersect with each other. In Doom 2, it's very easy to do this without even realizing it, just pit the player against differing combinations of enemies on a regular basis. But consciously thinking about how each enemy can create unique challenges, and what those challenges mean when used in tandem with another enemy or environmental hazard is the recipe for creating fun gameplay.