ApprihensivSoul

They killed my Into the Badlands for that one. How could they. That said, I didn't start Into the Badlands until it was done, because I missed it too. XD You've probably made a semi-right call on One Piece. I love it to death, but if you didn't start during the hiatus last summer, waiting for the end is the right idea, and probably a couple years for everything to die down after that. I think that it's one of the best things ever written, (and I read ALOT of classical literature,) but it is still a children's story, not to mention I still hold to my earlier position of "Let things be judged exempt from their cultural impact." I got into it before it broke into the mainstream during Covid, so I had some protection from the online discourse, or I would have been burned out for sure, OP is a behemoth of a conversation starter.

I'm glad I didn't miss Harry Potter since it got brought up, the books aged crazy well, the more I read the more brilliant her writing seems. But the worse the movie versions seem. I definitely wasn't old enough to appreciate them when they were new, though, going back as an adult improved them. But I do miss most other things. All of Walking Dead, nearly all the MCU, all of Breaking Bad, the idea of catching it new just isn't that appealing to me. I like finding stuff retroactively more than I do being part of a zeitgeist, I find that it helps me form an opinion based on product in a vacuum and less as a piece of cultural history.

The version of the timeline that makes the most sense to me is this: The "Hell" of the setting is more or less the hub for several different worlds, and when the DoomGuy of the classic games wound up in there, in his wanderings he stumbled across several others, including the current one. Doom 3 takes place then in the past of the current setting, before he arrived in it. I tend to be the sort of person who is willing to change my theories on a moment's notice for most canon revelations, but that's what seems to fit what I've seen thus far in the plot. Thus I figured any Doom 4 instalment would be in that mold as well. (I've also long held a premise in my mind that adapts the Doom RPG to a system shock mold, that would be in the same setting, but it certainly wouldn't be Doom 4.) (Bear in mind, I have not finished the DLC for Eternal due to, of all things, a change in computer, rather than any issues with the content, so there are obviously possible spoilers I've avoided thus far, though that's more or less my responsibility,)

Doom 3 already had the premise of you being a regular human in a way the other games did not, so the Doom 4 premise does work better in that context. That's one of the reasons I treat Doom 3 as a fundamentally different setting than the old games: "What if there wasn't a Doom Slayer?" I'd be happy to see that expanded into a earth-based shooter, but, while I think linearity overall is underrated, I dislike the tube formula. It didn't work with Doom 3 particularly well, and it would work in sprawling cities with squad-based tactics even less. But a kind of Rainbow Six-lite system (more simplified, actiony controls, but still weighty combat and consequences,) I think would be a great model for a Doom game, and using skyscrapers, warehouses, factories and sewer systems as the dungeon model for that kind of gameplay and demons as the antagonists could be both a power fantasy and truly frightening for more careless players. So yeah, a sandbox, but in the ImSim, not the Open World, context, with stand alone levels similar to Thief, and a mission structure similar to something like either Freedom Fighters (on the low end) or XCom (if you really want to get detailed) and the premise being taking fireteams in and completing objective-based raids on infested locations would work very well.

In your younger self's defense, the smother colouration of n64 games WAS the original vision. I have no limit of complaints about Mario 64 and its visual design, but it's understanding of smoothing is not among them, and that was not limited to that game. If you force off blending on games like Ocarina of Time, boy howdy are you rewarded with a mess. The entire texturing process was designed with the expectation of the blending in play. Now, this isn't universal. Obviously mutliplatform games couldn't afford two different texture schemes, but the real problem with blending isn't it being used at all, but it being slapped onto something like Quake where the art never accounted for it.

The map has to tell a story, everything else is optional. Cheap, fair, stressful, claustrophobic, grindy, all are viable when you specifically want the player to have that specific experience, but it has to be knit into the journey you're making. I tend to start by mathematically calculating out the monster count and ensuring I have enough ammo to kill everything with any of the guns I want the player to main, but then I will remove it or add it piecemeal to ensure that the encounters feel the way I want them to.

As far as deal breakers, I don't care much about demo compat (though I certainly will account for it when rating for personal use, having the menu demos play adds alot for me,) but I care a great deal about monster-over-monster movement (must be included as an option) and slowdown (new versions of DoomRetro and GZDoom have been struggling with this more than they used to.) I also play in 640*400 a great deal, and not having that option makes me less likely to use the port, though it's not really a breaker. Support for Midi customization I guess? All in all Nugget calls to my soul.

I recently deleted all my work on a megawad I was building when I ran into a nodebuilder glitch that cost me a week or so of work. My reasons for doing so had less to do with anger at the situation, and more taking it as a sign, however. I simply felt I was letting too much emotion ride on the approval of others, and the project had crossed into vanity. I still think of the layouts I had planned sometimes, but I'm glad I did it. Now my only goal is to finish reworks of the main doom levels for personal use, too many other projects outside doom that were getting neglected.

Conversely, lock people out of secrets as often as possible, and make multiple sets of secrets mutually exclusive, so that optimizing collection on multiple playthroughs becomes a treasure hunt.

Ammo needs to not be cells. Also I'd update the projectile paths, as "spreadfire laser" is kinda bland.

Secrets, yeah, but I deliberately hide the counters on first run when I'm playing for fun. I explore a hell of a lot, but mastering a level takes the fun out of it for me. The only real enjoyment is in the progress.

No lie, I genuinely didn't think of that, because I always play with blocking turned off. Where are the Ghost monsters getting created? I might have to look into that, it was certainly not intentional. @Zesiir: Never enough Archviles. XD. I had to reign myself in honestly.

E2M8

In spirit of my other reworks of times yon past, I decided to give a whirl to this one. Most of the differences are better felt than looked at, but I have a few screenshots just in case. Mostly I fleshed out the lighting/atmosphere (though I tried to restrict myself to what was likely at the time) and fights, though I very slightly increased the width of the walkways, though in some cases possibly not enough to notice. Realistically, some people are just not going to like this level because of which level it is, which is totally fair. I definitely made every effort to not remove it's identifying nature, and made no changes to layout. But I thought I'd toss it up here just in case some people liked it enough to switch it out in their normal Doom 2 rotation. All in all, I really like Sandy's ideas, and wish he had more time to work on them. I hope this feels a little more like he had pulled it off. It works fine in Nugget (my test), no idea what other ports it should work in. Download link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18xbgsC5NSMv0a1jWyS5PLz7qAhqDY79u/view?usp=sharing

I just reread your previous comment (which I hadn't before) and got a chuckle, because you group a map I've understood to be one of the most popular with one of the least. Which just goes to show how much of a mixed bag it is. (I also very much like Limbo, but on that one I'm an outlier. And I don't find the complaints invalid.)