Emperor S P O O N

Where's a good Clint Eastwood quote when you need it? Anyways, GGs to everyone in the project!

I saw this thread a while ago but got busy and forgot to say thanks for playing tPoGW! I should try out some of the other wads listed here. They seem very cool.

This April Fools joke is so good, it's no longer a joke. It just looks like a genuinely cool mapset. Can't wait to dig into this one!

I concur with many of the points made here. There are a plethora wads out there with visuals and architecture that'll blast your balls off just as hard as it will literally, and sometimes it's worth it to adjust the game to your own liking so that it's enjoyable for you. I would like to offer my perspective as a mapper. I can only speak from my own experience, so take my word with a truck of salt. I made a map not too long ago that I felt proud of, yet for a not too insignificant number of people playing it blind was hell. I was fine with how the map turned out overall, yet a part of me felt as if I could've done better for the players that had a really bad first impression of it. A lack of light for almost the entire map is a good starting point, not to mention the literal maze that makes up the first half of the map and the scalding final fight that takes a while to chop down and if you squandered your resources for the fight you're basically starting over from the top. Yet, most of these elements, as pointed out by a few players after I first posted the thread, were integral to its atmosphere and horror. Subverting that for the sake of accessibility would jeopardize the entire point of the map. (The Parasite of Good Will is the map I'm referring to for those who hadn't picked up on it yet) "That's fine," I think to myself. "I'll just provide information on the map in the thread and text file about what experience is intended, what won't work, and several slightly-cryptic hints about how you're supposed to approach the map and hope players will take note of that." Yes, that sentence is as naïve as it sounds; confirmed when I later watch players trying to blast through the map like it's literally any other map getting lost in the maze for longer than their patience can withstand before giving up at the final smack-down because they didn't grab any of the supplies from the areas leading up to that. "That's... Fine..." I try to tell myself internally. "It's intended for you to get smacked across the face by the final fight if you don't prepare beforehand. Surely they'll go back and rea-" They didn't. "Well, maybe if I was there to guide the-" Don't backseat players unless they ask. I learned that the hard way a long time ago. It was at this point that I had to internalize something literally everyone will tell you when you feel like you didn't succeed as well as, or in the manner that, you had hoped: You cannot control how players enjoy your work. You will put up every warning, every contingency, every safeguard you can possibly imagine and maybe more, but it will not change how the player will play. You aren't gonna play leashed, and neither will the players. What I, as the mapper, had to process was that I have one goal and one goal only: Make a baller map. Whether or not it was baller is not for me to declare. My word isn't anyone's gospel. It's frightening, at first, realizing your work could be neglected or misunderstood and you have no right to change that. But, then again, why should that matter to you more than doing the work itself? The point is if you, as the mapper, feel okay with how it turned out artistically. Not culturally. I hope that all makes sense (and is relevant). I know at some points it felt a little off-topic (or insane), but I tried to make this as cohesive as I possibly can. TL;DR People will play your maps how they want, and that's fine. It matters more of what you got out of its creation rather than what the players got out of playing it.

Midi for MAP22 is "Torso Liquify" not "Liquify Torso". Not a huge deal, just though I'd point that out.

Sweet. Me and @ProfBloom will be working on a MAP07.

I'll take MAP07 for the special action perks, but real quick: how are we pairing mappers?

My god. 2 hours in and all the slots are already filled. If there's an opening in Episode 3, @ me and count me in. EDIT: Hell, If there's an opening anywhere in the wad, @ me and count me in. Preferably Episode 3, but I think it's best if I'm not picky.

@Lorcav fixed the slimetrail. LiquidHeat_v3.zip

Oh, hell, yea, so glad to be a part of this wad. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Frostbite Express is now available through Idgames! https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/themes/xmas/frstexps

A train level inspired by Build Engine vehicle levels (see Blood E1M3) and The Polar Express (movie). Some Context: You may recognize this map if you've watched @sandwedge's YouTube streams, or have been watching @LVENdead's YouTube Channel about sometime last year. Yes, this is that same map. No, it was never released until now. Here's how that happened: About more than a year ago, many of us in Civvie 11's public discord server decided to do another wad together after The Civvie 11 Massacre. Suffice to say many of us wanted to get our hands dirty with Doom Builder again, but this time with a holiday theme and a bit more of a challenging map format than UDMF. We set a deadline for release of Christmas 2022 with the target Complevel of 9 (Boom), and got to work. We dubbed the project "Civvie's XMAS Electroshock", although it had gone through some other titles before then that I can't seem to recall. I finished my map up pretty quickly and got some others to playtest it as well (That was where LVENdead and Sandwedge came into the picture). Things were looking up for the project. Come December of 2022, and the wad was getting pretty close to done with still some hurdles to jump over: We needed a finale map, a custom boss (Mecha-Santa), and a whole lot of playtesting. But this is where many of us lost a lot of steam for the project. Christmas passes by, and not much was accomplished. We set another deadline for the following Christmas, but by this point the project was steadily losing motivation. Even I wasn't immune to it. Months pass by, and the wad is pretty much abandoned. No one was to blame for it falling through. That's just how it goes sometimes. I may have silently left the project, but it didn't leave me. The thought of my map steadily gathering dust crossed my mind every time I opened up UDB. The growing eyes of judgement passed its gaze upon me every time I opened up my Doom wad projects folder. November of this year hits, and I'm carefully guiding the development and release of my latest horror map, The Parasite of Good Will, and I look through my many Doom wad project folders and I couldn't help but stare at the folder containing the XMAS map. Figuring I'd have the best opportunity to release it now, and with the permission of the original Project Lead, I chose to clean up the map for a release. Sadly, I am not able to release all of the other maps that were made for the project. Even if I remembered where I had them, I really don't have the motivation to clean up all of the maps made for it. In addition, I wouldn't know who to credit who for the maps and I'd be sorely face-palming myself for just putting them out there without mentioning the map authors. Thankfully, the map itself isn't all of what you'll be seeing here. With permission from the person who made the Mecha-Santa sprites, @SkeletronMK666, I'll be leaving those Mecha-Santa sprites in a folder within the dropbox link. I'll also include some other unused/unfinished content that didn't make the final cut. These you are free to use so long as you properly give credit to those who made them. I'm a little sorry that I didn't do much more to help finish the project itself, but at least now I can be happy knowing something survived until the very end and that you all can get to play even a small portion of it. Screenshots: Wad Info: - Singleplayer - Complevel 9 (Boom) - IWAD: Doom 2 Tested Source Ports: - DSDA-Doom 0.26.2 (Recommended) - PrBoom+ 2.6.2 - Eternity 4.02.00 - ZDoom 2.8.1 - GZDoom 4.10.00 Now available through Idgames Archive!: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/themes/xmas/frstexps Dropbox Download: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/2c7tbcjsw85wu83lc95o4/h?rlkey=iabz8s0f51gvi4z4dgekhwc8v&dl=0 Let me know if there are any issues with the Dropbox link. Thank you all, and Happy Holidays!

Aight, @Lorcav here it is fixed: GraveSquatter_v4.zip

The way I usually do it is to add dummy sectors in the level (preferably far away from the other dummy sectors and the actual level itself) and apply the other animated textures and flats' frames to those dummy sectors/linedefs. That way, SLADE doesn't flag them as unused, and once you cleared the actually unused textures and flats you can then safely remove said dummy sectors.

Pretty sick trailer, ngl. Might want to do another one once this wad gets its Idgames release. Maybe do something a bit more in-your-face like an actual TV commercial you'd see back in the day...? Something befitting of Super Smash TV, a brutally cathartic arcade game centered around a lethal sci-fi game show of ludicrous proportions. We'd need a good narrator to do the job, but I'm sure there's plenty who'd offer their voice for it. If you want inspiration, Just look up any wacky TV commercial from the 80's and 90's. Battletanx and Battletanx: Global Assault had some really great TV commercials. Some local places had to do some REALLY crazy stuff to get a spot on air, so looking to those for ideas wouldn't be too bad. Some ads might not have aged well, for better or for worse, but the core concept is still to go big or go home which is definitely in the spirit of Super Smash TV and subsequently this wad.