I Drink Lava

This is a new Youtube project I'm starting to try and archive old, obscure MIDI files from the 1990s and 2000s that would otherwise become lost media someday. Since I first heard a number of these in Doom PWADs, I figured I'd share this project here to see if anyone is interested. The reason I started this project was because of a rather shocking discovery I made listening to the "Choro-Q Wonderful!" soundtrack. Two of the tracks were actually pre-existing MIDI files with seemingly no credit given: "Echoes" by Michael Walthius and "Mystic Travels" by Jeff Lawson. While the former had an official recording on Youtube, the latter Jeff Lawson track was completely unknown outside of an Internet Archive .zip and some now-dead websites. I rather liked this track when I heard it in Nathan Lineback's "Firefox Party", so I wanted the original composer to get the credit he deserved.

@AtimZarr1 I technically did release it on Discord. What happened was, I tried to join the replacement Kaiserpalast server after the original was nuked with false "sharing cheats" reports, but they had phone-level verification on. I DMed one of the mod's followers and told him he was free to share it on any server (including the main one). Given how Discord works, it's easy to see how it would just get pushed back by tons of low-effort mods as they came out. It's just one of the many, many reasons why the NuDoom modding community was doomed to fail: consolidating 100% of the modding resources in a community hosted on a forum that just wasn't intended to be used for file sharing. To clarify: I don't blame anybody on Doomworld for the lack of downloads. I don't blame anyone from Youtube or the Discord server(s), either. And honestly, that number is not counting the people who could be using the Mega mirror, which I don't blame them since making an account just to install anything sucks. The sad truth is, the NuDoom community in general is imploding from drama on all sides. The toxic "git gud" crowd attacking ID for TAG2, the Battlemode cheaters doxxing and DMCAing each other, the modding community turning into toxic gatekeepers; it's all interconnected. As I was leaving the modding server, there was a mass exodus going on. When PowerBall253 (admin and head of the Linux branch) left the server because they hated being on the server, I knew LavaMod's fate was sealed. I've always had a policy that as long as someone out there was interested in my creative content, I would be willing to create more. The Let's Play that was mocked here one year ago? It's still on-going, and I plan on covering Update 6.66 even if I have zero new things to talk about. The only reason the LavaMod patches were even made is because of the support of a Youtube subscriber who I believe has been there since that LP. He sent me some detailed bug reports of progression-breaking elements. While I can't speak for the unforeseeable future, I do promise to release a bugfix for LavaMod at some point after Update 6.66. Remember: every time ID Software updates Doom Eternal, every single mod in existence breaks and must have their file structures manually re-organized and certain new lines added to work again.

@Muusi I've publicly made the unfinished features known. They are as follows: LavaMod is still fully beatable with Famine Mode+ with the new weapon pack. So what if there's no Gold Doom Hunter at the end of Taras Nabad, or no optional Slayer Gate in Sentinel Prime that repopulates the short level with enemies, or no meathook nodes in the last third of the game, or no new Ripatorium rounds? They were just minor add-ons to the overall experience. The fact of the matter is, LavaMod in its current state has been available to download for nearly two weeks now. If you haven't downloaded it and played it in all that time, then you were never going to download and play it at all. In the end, it's my life and I decide what I want to do with it. If less than 100 people even bothered to play this mod in nearly two weeks since its release, of which only 9 have bothered to install the patch that actually makes the campaign fully beatable, that tells me that no one ever really wanted to play LavaMod except myself.

I promised to release LavaMod in a state where the campaign can be beaten, so these patches basically only exist to fulfill that original promise. Given the complete and utter lack of a playerbase LavaMod has gotten after its release, I can't say it was a mistake to not finish every promised feature of the mod.

LavaMod for Doom Eternal 0.992-Beta Update: Fixed softlock in Urdak that prevented enemy encounters from loading. Removed some spectacle cameras I missed in Urdak. Hopefully fixed Mars Core Sentinel Crystal that wasn't working. Nerfed LavaMod Heavy Cannon so it does the same amount of damage against Khan Maykr, Icon of Sin, and Samur as the LavaMod Chaingun. Removed inventory refill from Final Sin. Added "No Inventory Refill between Gladiator Phases" component for Famine Mode+. Added "No Inventory Refill between Icon of Sin Phases" component for Famine Mode+.

LavaMod has been updated to version 0.991-Beta. This important update includes: Fixed Doom Hunter bosses not being killable in Doom Hunter Base with "No Enemy Stagger States" component. Fixed missing Sentinel Crystal in Nekravol Pt. 2 (it just respawns in the same place) Removed inventory refill from Nekravol Pt. 2 and Urdak with "No Inventory Refill in Hub" component. Fixed Super Shotgun (both LavaMod and 2016 versions) not having the proper modded stats.

LavaMod for Doom Eternal has been cancelled. What remains of the project can be downloaded here on NexusMods. The campaign is fully-beatable, it just might not be beatable with Vanilla or 2016 weapons in Famine Mode+. I will not be continuing this project any further.

@Muusi Don't be mistaken, LavaMod is still a work in progress and I'm really hoping to get it released by the end of August or September. In fact, I just finished my first pass of Sentinel Prime adding ammo to the pre-fight room and the actual arena. I have big plans for this level, actually. I'm planning on fleshing out Sentinel Prime in a way that's still technically lore-friendly and pleases both the vanilla+ and the Master Level crowds. I'm also reconsidering how I approach old encounters after getting feedback from Kaiser_will that my arenas were "too slow". @UnclePhil I'm honestly more afraid of the "git gud" crowd ripping me apart for adding more ammo to the levels than anything the modding server has done so far. Re-reading that "Ammo Holy Grail found?" thread and seeing Dragonfly of all people give a like to someone insulting me and my video was quite a low blow, I'm not gonna lie.

As a little bonus, here's a video of a failed feature that I always wanted to include but just did not work right in practice. It will not be included in the finished LavaMod.

look up "Death of the Author"

I like the one that had a great start in the late 90s followed by a polarizing sequel and then an arena shooter spin-off followed by some pandering lowest-common denominator AAA sequel in the late 2000s that completely went against the original gameplay and then ended with a mediocre game released just a few years ago that was basically abandoned by its creators not soon after release.

Why don't you just reach out to the creators of these games and ask them, rather than speculating with a bunch of randos on some Doom forum? edit: and lazygecko, sorry

There's quite a few Genesis homebrew games out there like Xeno Crisis. There's also some stuff on the Dreamcast and Neo Geo, although the Neo Geo ones I've seen are so prohibitively expensive that I don't even know who would buy them.

I agree, except I think his best work is in Rise of the Triad and Duke Nukem 3D. There are a lot of choices in Doom II that outright baffle me and make me hate playing episodes or megawads that don't have custom music. I can only assume he was under a strict deadline for Doom II's OST or something. Doom: The Lost Episode has some DemonStar tracks in it.

It's a design trope, not a cliche.

w-what kind of circular logic is this you could describe terrywads the exact same way

are you defending shit game design bro

might want to change that title to "official pre-rendered trailer", OP

Delta's work is actually kind of divisive in the community for going too far. At one point, Marauders didn't even flash green or make a sound cue before attacking.