CactusChowder

Oh whoa, this looks great! I got inspired and hairballed up a short map for this. Doomguy ends up helping a dying god of hell get revenge on the followers that betrayed and killed him. As the god dies, his death throes warp and corrode the environment. I still want to make some music for the map, so it's not completely ready.

I'm always rotating through different favorites, but I picked up this one recently that's really unique and fun -

Map 2 of 'Irradiated' takes place in a maintenance tunnel full of pipes leaking slime. As before, you are an irradiated marine, so nukage heals you, and normal floors hurt you. I'm like 60-70% done?? So close but so far!! I'm really happy with how it's turning out, I can't wait to finally share it!

I never formally did an IQ test & idk if it's strictly accurate to call myself 'gifted,' but if I'm not gifted I damn sure got a stocking stuffer. I'm frustrated because I don't always feel allowed to even act like it's a thing to face unique impacts and challenges related to smart shit. Because it could be seen as bragging or something. There's no humble version that also actually captures the truth. Like if I try to "forget about being 'special' and just join in with everybody else for god's sake," I would keep doing it wrong. But if I try to embrace the differences I have and join in with everybody else as like a friendly ambassador from my weird planet that I like and am proud of, maybe that's also doing it wrong because maybe it's not okay to like and be proud of intelligence. So it's like there's this permanent hole in trying to relate to a lot of people, and it's like a slider puzzle; I can change where the hole is, but not that there's a hole. And even being aware that the hole is there is the hole. That's kinda where I've been stuck lately. Mega shrug!! Not to get all 'Princess and the Pea' about the hidden costs that come with what is undeniably an advantage, but yeah it sure is trippy when you can't even talk about a problem because talking about the problem is the problem. Humans are a social species, man... I wanna complain to the fullest & truest depths of my complaining potential. Maybe I should check out Clarey's book!

Do you like nonfiction books (or documentaries, etc.)? What are some of your favorite nonfiction books & book subjects? What nonfiction book did you last read? What nonfiction book are you reading now? What authors do you like? I like reading about physics, science generally, math, history, biographies, and personal development. I wish I had more time to read than I do!! I recently read Crucial Conversations, by Kerry Patterson and others. It was pretty good; in an, "I'm not going to remember all of that, but it sounds very nice!" kind of way. I should probably read it again. The most valuable takeaway from just one read through, I thought, was to not give up at the gate & to believe that impacting a situation by communicating well is possible in the first place. Sean Carroll is possibly my favorite nonfiction author, and he has a great podcast too (called 'Mindscape'). I'm really interested in his two recent books explaining physics concepts to a layman audience, but I'll have to find more time for self-study projects to really dig into those. One nonfiction book I really liked was In Defense of Plants by Matt Candeias. Knowing relatively little about plants going into it (beyond what 'everybody' knows), it was really cool to get a better sense of how plants fit into ecosystems and by extension just how connected every living thing on earth is. The title refers to 'defending' plants because the author is frustrated with how, in his experience, people mostly tend to write about plants in terms of how the plants are 'useful.' The author writes from a place of being fascinated with plants in the same way someone might be fascinated about animals; 'isn't this a cool living thing/where does it live/how does it eat/etc. etc.'

I'm new to mapping, but I've really enjoyed environmental storytelling. Doomcute is really fun. In the map I'm working on now, I used a cage texture to make a ladder leaning against a wall. I'd be interested to also make maps that are visually appealing mazes with no particular narratives, but that's what I've been focusing on for the moment.

The people who belong in communities aren't having an internal experience like they're correctly following every step on a checklist. The people who belong in communities are having an internal experience more like, they're coming up with things to do, ways to contribute, even ways to rock the boat and shake things up a little. If you're trying new things and having fun and being funny & mischievous and coming up with plans to follow & invite people to, and then multiple people in the community consistently act like you're ruining everything or even just totally ignore you, that's not just your brain running the 'what-if' hamster wheel, that's a sign something's off. Either you're inadvertently breaking social expectations & you should pay attention & keep trying, or the community is just not for you. You might have to go through several, even many communities until you find your people, and a sense of not belonging could be an important message to listen to; like, is what you have to offer even currency to these people? If you don't have a solid sense of what it looks like for you to 'put yourself out there' and have fun and engage with people, that's a great place to start, trying to figure that out and meet that version of you. Just being curious is helpful. If you're doing interesting things and having fun, other people will be drawn to that. If your mind is a train station, how much of it is an empty station that's prepared and waiting to accommodate someone else's train, and how much of it is an active and busy station that runs *your* trains? Ideally, you have a balance. It's really vulnerable and scary to leave yourself open to rejection, but it's part of the process. Don't feel like your approach or your whole self is bad or flawed if you tried really hard one time and got chased out or just crickets. Usually, a social faceplant has a lesson, even if that lesson is just 'wow, people suck sometimes, and I can be less surprised by this particular kind of bullshit next time.' Usually, it's more valuable to take risks and faceplant than it is to isolate yourself. I tell myself this from the sidewalk sometimes. The emotional detachment thing could be related to the social thing. If you feel stuck like you're never correctly following an invisible checklist of how to be acceptable to other people so they don't get mad at you or reject you, that's just not a safe foundation for approaching emotionally charged issues. Like, let's say you want to be part of the Doom community, and you observe that 'everybody' seems to have a certain opinion (pistol start is how you're 'supposed' to play every level, something like that). It could feel inauthentic to pick that up and carry it around like a personal truth you care deeply about, purely to fit in. But it could also feel threatening to the group belonging you really want to question it too much or conclude that it's not a big deal. So what part of you are you supposed to sacrifice, the part that wants to be authentic or the part that wants belonging? Don't you need both? It's not purely a you-project (see: people suck sometimes), but the more you become your own foundation and your own sturdiness, it becomes safer to your sense of self to like what everybody likes, and safer to your sense of needing to belong to dislike what everybody likes or decide you don't care about it. And as it feels safer, it gets easier to figure out. Maybe your detachment is more complicated than this, but it could be a factor! I've definitely watched myself like, come up with super passionate reactions and opinions to low-stakes things like video games, but feel overloaded and uncertain when it comes to many real world things because it just seems like everybody's shouting and I really don't want to get shouted at or labeled a scum of the earth bad person. It's not a mystery to me why I can access passionate opinions more easily in the arena where it's less likely I'll get shouted at. In the end, though, there's only so many things that you as an individual can affect, and it's probably not realistic to have a strong and nuanced and perfectly educated opinion on every single issue. If you can identify one or two things you really care about and even put some effort into the cause, we'd have like peace on earth by yesterday if every single person did that. Issues with motivation could be related to overwhelm or burnout. If there's a lot of stressful things going on (and everyone seems extra stressed these days tbh), maybe it's just not realistic to bounce right into creative hobbies with all of your energy and motivation every time you get the chance. I know I feel like I'm always running on leftover energy at the end all of the responsibilities I have to take care of, and it's a bummer that my free time and creative hobbies have to suffer like that. Your motivation struggle may not completely be burnout, but if you think it could be (even partially), I encourage you to try and get more rest and put less pressure on yourself. Whenever your body is trying to send you a message to stop and slow down because you're doing more than it can handle, that's not a mindset issue or a wellness deficit or whatever, that's like a check engine light on a car: valuable information you need to know about right away if you would like to keep driving the car in the long term. I don't know how much of this is helpful or me going on about stuff, but I've struggled with belonging & motivation and just feeling weird and disconnected, and that's what I've got! I can recommend The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck and Braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown for more direction on authenticity and belonging. Good luck with things!

I'm working on some midis for my wad.

Thank you for the feedback and playtests, everyone! I have a small update. No new levels, but I fixed the door texture issue and also added a custom MIDI. I found this site (signal.vercel.app) for making music, it's pretty great.

One time I had a dream that actually seemed to warn me about something that would go on to happen in the future, the very next day. I will happily call it explainable as a coincidence, but it was still a cool experience. I think life would be disappointing if there was no mystery to it, and I think life would also be disappointing if there was no reasonable expectation of rationality to it. I was happy to see this thread because asking people if they've ever seen a ghost is one of my favorite conversation starters. It's a quick way to crack open a conversation about interesting stuff like spirituality, rationality, fear, childhood, and so on; and stories about ghosts are super interesting to me even without a commitment to believing them *or* disproving them. The prompt can lead to other interesting places too. One time someone told me a story that started as a classic 'things kept disappearing with no immediately obvious rational explanation' type story and ended with a man secretly living in a garage attic.

I watched my dad play DOOM a few times when I was little, and it made a huge impression on me. I always wanted him to play it, but he didn't spend a whole lot of time on computer games, and sometimes he'd play Command & Conquer instead. It took me a very long time to work up the courage to play DOOM myself, even after the general practice of fighting enemies in video games had become normal to me. But that was part of the charm and appeal of DOOM, that was the whole point. Like, it's right there in the name. It's not a game that lays out a heroic story for you and guides you through filling the shoes of the hero. The game tells you you're doomed and gives you mazes full of hostility and seems to actively take pleasure in trying to trip you up and surprise you and try to make you fail. If you want to get to the other side of it, the motivation to survive and persist has to come from you. As an adult, I find DOOM enjoyable, and other games (like Dark Souls) that ask you to step up and fight to gain ground and prove yourself in an inhospitable landscape that hates you or go play something else. There's something about that, getting pushed and pushing back kind of conversation between game and player that really scratches an itch.

@Zesiir Thank you so much! The moving door textures were bugging me, thanks for the fix. Here's how to make a barrel leave a slime puddle after you explode it - - Draw the shape of the slime puddle around the barrel as a sector on the floor. Add smaller sectors for splashes if you're feeling fancy. Keep the floor texture the same for now. - Assign a tag to each of the hidden puddle sectors (1, let's say) - Use a script like this one to describe how the puddle sectors should change. Assigning a negative sector damage makes it heal you. Script 1 (void) { ChangeFloor(1, "NUKAGE1"); Sector_SetDamage(1, -1, 13); Light_ChangeToValue (1, 200); } https://zdoom.org/wiki/ChangeFloor https://zdoom.org/wiki/Sector_SetDamage https://zdoom.org/wiki/Light_ChangeToValue - Assign action 80 ('script execute') to the barrel in the Edit Thing menu, and choose your script from the drop down menu (it would be 'Script 1' in this case) - That's all there is to it. When the barrel 'dies,' it executes the script, and the script changes the texture, damage value, and lighting of the hidden puddle sectors. You could absolutely use this to make barrels leave behind toxic sludge puddles in a map without the gimmick that my map has.

***Update 5/12/24 - Fixed door texture issue - Composed custom MIDI Hi everybody, I'm a lurker coming out of the shadows with a map! I really enjoy watching DOOM content on youtube, and I started messing around with doom builder earlier this year to see what I could come up with. This is the first map I finished and polished up, and I'd love your feedback. This looks like the end. You tried to defeat the legions of hell, but there were too many of them. A clawed-handed something has just dumped you into a nukage pit full of fallen marines. It seems like humans are garbage to them, but you knew that already. The radioactive slime burns as you sink into it. But then it stops hurting, and before long you stand up feeling just fine, if a little confused. You don't seem to be dead... but at this point, you might not be human, either... So far I just have the one short map, but I'd like to eventually build off of it and make a larger wad based on the same concept. The map is part combat, part puzzle solving, where Doom Guy is an irradiated marine who can walk in nukage safely (it even heals him) but can't leave the nukage without taking damage. Hint for solving map 1: >> Download Link Info: - Tested with GZDoom - UDMF - Doom 2 IWAD - MAP01 start, one map so far