Maribo

@Xyzzу I can finally be pinged like this without hassle; worth the year-long wait.

In other news, I'm a kb+m player now; I've far surpassed my skills as a keyboarder and can't go back anymore. To think this all started by "L" key being broken (I used IJKL for movement), growing impatient waiting for a replacement and deciding to play all of Dark Forces and the Build Engine trinity in the meantime... I accidentally red-pilled myself into realizing the tremendous power gained from full control of my movement, aim and widescreen resolution!

Completing 34 laps around the Sun today. Yaaaaaay

Happy Chrimbo, guys!

Honestly not very sure what to do with Earthless. Happily accepting suggestions!
 
There's only a handful of maps missing, but a small amount more that are lying at half-finished. So I still have time to change the direction of the project without an inordinate amount of redoing, but the question is do I just need to push through to the finish in the direction I'm gone? Or is it worth taking an about turn? Ignoring the sunk cost fallacy for a moment.
 
My goal was for it to go on the Unity port, and therefore keep it Vanilla. But I think the rigidity of this format is making me feel creatively stymied.
 
I could repurpose it for MBF21/DSDeHacked/UMAPINFO, and that would (a) help it stand out a bit more on its own instead of feeling like "just another Vanilla megawad" and (b) remove all the biggest stumbling blocks and let me make the maps I wanna make, but then it wouldn't be accessible on the Unity port when Earthless: Prelude (the first 12 maps) already is. The problem is, I'd probably find it even less fun to work on repurposing the maps for this format. I've been mucking around with this format to create new assets and that's been fun - so I do have stuff already made that I could conceivably add in, but whether it would fit in with Earthless or not is a different story.
 
I think at this point I really wanna branch out and do something I haven't done before, but I feel like I've done... a bit of everything. I've done vanilla maps, Boom maps, UDMF maps, Heretic maps, even maps for my own game(s), and most recently something for my sibling, which employs their custom weapons mod. (That's releasing on Christmas Day.)
 
Maybe I need to bounce to another WIP project, or find a good collaborator who I can bounce brand-new ideas off of, or do something for a new IWAD altogether like Hexen or Strife. Or maybe I just need a break from Doom altogether. I dunno, it's not that I don't want to create, it's just finding where to put  that creativity. The drive to map for stock Doom has been largely absent for about a year or maybe two, now. Only time pressure from external sources seems to be able to discipline me to do so, and the intrinsic motivation to create, even though I have ideas, has waned quite a bit, with tiredness and distraction becoming a daily thing I have to deal with.
 
Gotta figure out how to get my mojo back.
 
Ideas appreciated!

hmm I am properly back into this. just stared at a map for 90 minutes, then moved a radsuit a short distance and then saved the map

Grungo at the function, Me brought a shotgun from future to show off hunting, however all cavemen ran away scared and shocked my Grungo's new weaponry. Grungo isn't smartest caveman 

This was foreshadowing, by the way.

despite being on a gamer arc rn with replaying celeste and trying to learn the mechanics better, none of that game awareness really transfers over to doom for me. i just can't seem to play doom as anything other than a casual game - it might be that there's too many variables to control, from in-game factors like monster movement, dodging things you can't be looking at right now and kill order to out-of-game factors like comfort and game equipment, that stops me zoning in and becoming teh doomguy. my flailing has just gotten slightly more systematic over the years and even that I kinda resent. lol
 
with celeste, uh, a lot of people here have probably played that game so they understand when I say 7C... a challenge with (almost? there's subpixel stuff i don't understand) no rng and no need to be looking anywhere except directly in front and which requires you to input a strict series of commands, probably a whole minute where all you can do is tackle the thing as intended or die and I get such a rush from that! i get madeline eagle vision and press the buttons more precisely than I normally would and I know regretably  I will never experience that in any 3d action game, and that's a me thing rather than a limit on any particular game genre
 
things like plutonia which I've always softly criticized for being "do the intended thing or die" maps still don't put me in that zone of concentration and I can't really work out why

Word of advice: always be kind, Grungo grew up around mean cavemen like Warg and Flegg, They both brute, but Grungo not mean abd brute... at least not anymore. Be a grungo to those that hold you dear.

looking at dw made me revive a map just as a hobby, not intending to release
it's funny to see the minimal path through the map, its areas bereft of detail
and then the all-mportant optional sewer tunnels which get all the style linedefs and real calculation
crawlspaces rule gameplay is sorta four outta ten

Found this gem on today's idgames upload 
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/d-f/elysium
 
Description:
 
The map itself turned out to be quite good, visuals and combat are very solid. Kudos to @riktoi for actually trying it out, it was was worth my time (ingame playtime was about an hour).

Alright, here's my amazing plan/roadmap so i actually don't forget what to do in the next few years (also assuming i don't get bored from this video game).

Started another Ambrosia speedmap using the 10x10 randomizer. Wasn't super fond of the textures I pulled initially, and had to spend 10 minutes or so splattering different mixes and of the flats and textures in a sector to develop an aesthetic and type of map I wanted to run with, but found a nice one here. 
 
5 hours in:

I'm working on a new D64 Revolution DM map. This is gonna be some kind of hellish base? Lots of lava? Fire? Something like that.




Went for some different geometry in this one.
 
This is my 7th layout for this project. 3 layouts including this one are untextured right now.
 
3D floors are a lot of fun, I think I'm getting used to them - they open up a lot of new possibilities.
 
Hope everyone has been doing well, I'm in a major mapping mood today - I might whip a couple more layouts up today.
 
 
:)

We found a new route for vagrant% in Ato today and I used it to cut about a minute off my pb time to take back 1st on the src leaderboard 🤓 Not bad when my previous attempt was blown out the water by >45 seconds on a 12 minute run (13 for my previous pb)
 
Map:

Objectives:

Old Route:

New Route:

 
The boss vagrant is a late-game boss and requires several things to be able to fight. There are 4 vagrant locations spread throughout the game in true metroidvania fashion, each needing to be visited in order. The first two times you find vagrant, he can't find his sword and thus decides to flail his arms wildly while wilhelm-screaming and walking slowly towards you... as one does when one forgets their weapon in a sword duel. He deals next to no damage and dies in one hit. Truly the bravest of bois. The third time you meet him, he's powering up dbz-style like he's about to go super saiyan and also dies in one hit. The fourth and final time you face him is the real fight and he puts up a tough one, making for a fun "final" boss of this category that grabs next-to-no powerups throughout the run.
 
Along the way to grabbing these 4 main objectives, we also need to finish the prologue (which requires fighting 4 other bosses) to get the ability to break crystal barriers in our path, gather 10 coins for a coin gate, and fight another boss, geisha, in order to reach vagrant 3, for a total of 6 bosses in the run. This of course leaves a lot of room for routing, such as what coins to grab, what fast travel points to get or use, and what checkpoints to hit for safety or for save+quits. In the "Objectives" pic, several other coins could be grabbed instead of these, these are just the 10 I thought were quickest to get. On harder difficulties, the coin directly below vagrant 1 can't be grabbed, so the other nearby coin to the east we pass by on the way here is grabbed instead.
 
Up until today, we were grabbing a warp point near the end of the prologue, as we do in all other categories, and then later a checkpoint by that warp point for save+quitting that upon some thought, isn't actually necessary. We happen to run a couple rooms below the final checkpoint just outside of the final vagrant fight, so that can be used instead to save a lot of time from grabbing the second warp point, then warping there later to grab the checkpoint at a time where it'll be usable, then running to final vagrant from there, as opposed to skipping it, getting the checkpoint by the end, and running out of vagrant 2.
 
It's been fun to see this category (and others) be routed and rerouted, running it/them in each iteration. I love the process of analyzing the map, our move set, and what's available to come up with a new way of doing things, helped along with this game (and particularly this category) being relatively new, and with a small community it leaves a lot of room to find new routes, speedrun tricks, and boss strategies to get an edge in our friendly competition against not only each other, but the clock in general.

Been working on some stuff lately, yet another personal project that I'll probably end up abandoning at some point (lol), it's supposed to be a sequel to Dessert. This is a 20 level megawad, why? because I fail to even finish a 1 map thing, so I might as well try a megawad for shits and giggles.
 
So far, I got 9/20.
 
 
 
There's also this, for PUSS XXXII: D-30, a full Episode 2 replacement that I'm working on along with @NecrumWarrior.
 
 
Hope to get this stuff released soon! :)

First time writing my own feed lol.  But I keep thinking how I should put my releases on ID games, I've only done 1 so far.  

Plutonia MIDI Pack just turned a decade old.
 
why the fuck is time
 

[DM-MAP203]
 

 
Started the DM map using Green Gothic v1.5.
 
I'm experimenting w/ 'natural' looking curves. Should pair well w/ the natural / medieval aspects of the texture pack, I hope.
 
Nowhere near done, but I've got something moving at least!
 
:)

Going for some weird intersections in this one.

 
There's gonna likely be a blue armor at the end of this huge ramp area. Mostly so that the BFG is cushioned a little bit. (BFG is on a perpetual pillar, btw, I took the screenshot near its lowest point.) Haven't done my lighting yet, so the lava looks a bit dim right now. Still have quite a ways to go.

Four days in, current pace is 7/33 maps completed. I feel really good about this, it's honestly helped with my confidence in DOOM mapping as a whole (and hell, streaming too)! Still need to figure out how to archive streams properly, but asides from that it's honest to god smooth sailing.
 
Sneak peek of MAP07 also attached, made in around 70 minutes.

In attempting to diagnose my inability to create consistently and figure out how to improve things, I've hit upon a realization that I've felt for ages but never consciously noticed: I am positively terrified of putting things out there nowadays. All I've managed recently is either a few maps for outside projects, or a couple solo pieces pulled from incomplete or abandoned works. For the past few years, it feels like reviewers who do thorough map-by-map analysis (the Doomworld Megawad Club, Dean of Doom) have been contributing to my ever-growing self-consciousness regarding every decision I make within the editor. It stresses me out thinking that whatever I do may be picked apart and heavily scrutinized, map by map, piece by piece. All I want is for people to play my work and hopefully have a good time, without the perceived weight of expectations on my shoulders and without the fear of my ideas being torn to shreds by players.
 
Is this an irrational fear of something that every creator out there has no choice but to face and accept? Yes. Does it still eat away at me like you would not believe? Also yes, and sometimes I feel as if I'm approaching wit's end when it comes to the creative process. Is this a necessary post? I don't know.

MDOOM:

 
A little look at my next 'big' project. Haven't started the mapping yet, but that should begin soon. It'll likely be after I finish my current 'hellish prison' DM map.
 
This is going to be a 6-pack of soda-themed DM maps!
 
Many thanks to @Daytime Waitress for the idea.
 
Here is some material that @4MaTC has made for me:
 
TITLEPIC:

INTERPIC:

 
:D

New FFA map on the way.
 


I'm gonna go w/ some magenta paired w/ some grey. Maybe a couple spurts of orange here and there.
 
:)