Uncle 80

AAA movies (i.e Hollywood productions) and AAA games are generally of little interest to me. The last "big" new game I actually purchased was StarCraft 2 and one of the expansions - but it didn't grab me the way the original game and its expansion did. Less focus on quality time in single player and catering to the E-sports aspect of online multiplayer kinda ruined it for me - it's just no fun when the "main" component of a game is playing online and having to deal with the moronic "gamer" culture. I just can't stand the worst cases of that at 45 y.o - too old for that crap. And when single player turns into grind-fests, hand-held tutorial missions, or campaigns that are over in a few hours, I feel kinda cheated. Paying additional fees to unlock more content, or to get a second episode when the main game itself is already expensive enough isn't the way to go either. And when games I've already bought gets a lobotomy update, removing some of the content because the publishers have lost the rights to certain stuff in a game you "own" - like e.g the soundtrack - that's pretty infuriating as well. Being required to log on to an on-line service when you want to play some single-player all by yourself... I could go on and on. Another aspect is needing to upgrade the computer time and again to be able to play the newest, awsomest nth incarnation of a game. I know PC gaming has basically always been like that - at least since '92 or '93, but it's not something I'm willing to "invest" in anymore. I'm not interested in getting a new console every few years either. The endless sequels, prequels and remakes in both gaming and movies is also of virtually no interest. I was done with Marvel at 13 years old - I did see a couple of the first superhero movies, but I thought they were worthless, save for the Dark Knight trilogy of the late '00s. When it's been going on for so long that they acually make a movie of Madame Webb or Ant-Man, it's time to look elsewhere for visual entertainment. I wish I had the time, interest and money to look for actual good AAA games, but I just don't care about them anymore. I'm more than happy with "remasters" of older games I didn't check out at the time or that fell out of compatibility with the newer OSes - and quality "DIY" games. As for movies, there's literally a whole world of options. I'm particular to Asian and French cinema myself. No lame spandex-clad superheroes there. As for how to "improve" the situation with big, incredibly expensive studios in both the gaming and movie industry - I really don't see that happening until there's a paradigm shift of some kind, as there's too much financial risk involved in trying new things. Looking forward to Fast & Furious 19 and GTA 12.

Thanks! Yes, pagodas and other pictures of various "eastern" themes were the main inspiration for 3 of the maps in the set, those shots are from two of them. To make an actual pagoda in vanilla doom is rather impossible, so this was the closest I got :D

- music (CDs mostly, vinyl in "special cases" or if CD unavailable) - movies i "need to own" on DVD/Blu-Ray (not a big collection, but rather specific) - a vast collection of comics/graphic novels of all kinds (except that superhero junk and newspaper strip comics) - some vintage action figures (G1 Transformers, TMNT - mostly survivors from my childhood, I don't go out of the way to purchase new ones)

Thanks for the good words, people! I'll probably stick to the Udoom sky, unless I have sort of a last-minute change of mind. It works well to "counter" all the brown in the stock textures :) But thanks for the idea, I'll have to remind myself to check out some available skies before the final WAD assembly.

Some screenshots from my soon-to-be released (RC1) 10-map doom2.exe compatible episode.

I usually have my maps linked together, where one map's exit is the next map's starting room, and this does indeed lead to some starts being non-descriptive "liminal spaces", as the current buzzword is for these kinds of rooms. But I generally like to keep a "grand" area with some nice visuals setting the theme & tone for the map close to the start. When playing, I often prefer a "cold" start myself, i.e. not getting dropped into a hot spot right at the beginning (as I'm a "filthy casual"). Starting the player out in a "boring" location is also a good challenge for map design - how do you make that boring old cave interesting enough at first glance so the player doesn't immediately idclev to the next map in hope of a striking vista right after the screen melt?

hahaha, beautiful work :D "Speed" really lived up to its name in this run.

I heard a fan-made cover of "Frantic" on YouTube that was made to sound as close as possible to Metallica's sound [without the stupid sound design choices of the actual album], and that was a decent listen. If the original album had a sound like that, not ruined by the questionable production/mix, then some songs would probably be quite listenable. But "Death Magnetic" was even worse, as you couldn't turn the volume up to more than a few Db before the sound was totally distorted. I gave up on Metallica after that one, and haven't even heard any of their albums since "Death.." Every now and then I'll fish out "Master.." again, but I'm basically done with the whole band. They either screw up the production or their songs every time - Their last solid effort was Load/Reload. Those two are WAY better than their "reputation". Final side note; I also enjoy not listening to Megadeth. My God, the constant whine...

I have shortcuts for BTSX 1/2, Requiem, MM2, Vanguard, Alien Vendetta, Batman Doom, Ksutra and Doom 2 In Spain Only. I also got back to CRUSADES recently, that was also a fun revisit - pretty hard for a non-slaughter ultdoom wad.

Ah, the mighty exit switch! It melts your face, and then you go elsewhere. Superb!

It's a good set! Good looking, well playing maps in my opinion. It deserves its place as Doom's 4th episode, despite not having a unique final boss or a less cheesy ending screen.

My first attempts at mapping was a big square of STARTAN2. It was a lot smaller than I had expected it to be when I tested it - to my surprise - as I had drawn a big enough rectangle to fill the whole screen in the editor. Then I found out you could zoom in and out in the editor and actually make areas bigger than 512x512! The next milestone was understanding 1st and 2nd sidedefs, which I didn't for a long time. I could only make doors and raised/lowered squares in the floor for a quite a while, until I opened MAP02 in the editor to try and figure out exactly how stairs were made. None of my problems were lessened by the "amazing" editor I was lucky enough to download - which I actually stuck with for a long time because I didn't know better and feared the learning process using another editor would be as troubled as the first. Doom E2 (Doom Easy Edit) was its name, and bug-ridden was its game. After a few more big STARTAN2 rooms with boss shooters, cyberdemons, bfgs and lousy architecture, I found out about tags and line specials, upper/lower unpegged textures and other useful info - thanks to stubling across The Unofficial Doom Specs by Matt Fell somewhere online. (I still use this document to determine what line specials to use in a given situation as it is still the most accurate). This resulted in a magnificent sewer level, which had slime tunnels / pools that could be drained or filled. I was very satisfied with it, until I started getting ugly bleeds and rendering bugs. Turned out I didn't know what having a bunch of 0-length linedefs in a map will do to the rendering. Also, DoomE2 would crash if you deleted a linedef you had drawn in the same session, so I would avoid deleting unwanted linedefs by instead dragging the vertices together - slowly filling my map up with 0-length linedefs I had no way of finding afterwards. I probably could have salvaged that map somehow, but unfortunately it was lost in the great hard drive crash of '89 - really '97 - but the battery in my 386s bios had died, so it was january 1st 1989 every day. I hope it's easier for new mappers to learn the basics and find proper tools these days!

"Blood" definitely lives up to the hype. But if you want to play it Doom-style, don't go above 3rd difficulty. Those last two skill levels is what makes the game unfun if you're used to the more casual gameplay style of Doom. The reaction time of those cultists is a real showstopper on higher skilll settings.

I never liked "informer" either. Winter is cold, summer is preferrable. At least the snow can be used for skiing, and ice for skating. Both these things are good things to do, so winter's existence is warranted.

I have been playing saveless for many years because I enjoy the challenge of it, and how it gets me a little more "pumped" to survive tricky situations. But when I started playing the BTSX3 demo this autumn I started using saves again like after the first half of a map, or similar milestones. These modern maps are just too big to be played in one sitting for me, and replaying the first half of such big maps and dying in the same tricky fight at the second half over and over again gets old pretty fast. (but map01 and map05 were both excellent for saveless, I must say) Edit: I almost forgot why I started doing saveless initially - the reason was of course how all the "good" wads broke the savegame buffer in the original .exe - and trying to save your progress in e.g. Requiem only to have the game insta-crash was how saveless began for me - and many others, I'm sure.