Stronghold v1.0 released

Tormentor667 said:

was the staging too much?!

Just a tad.

Spleen said:

Forgot to mention, I consider the copy-paste argument bullshit. If the maps are bad, it's not because Tormentor copy-pasted. Deus Vult map22 is full of copy-paste, and it's still a great map.

Dude, honestly, please show me a few screenshots where the copy and paste issues are obvious from a player's point of view so I can finally understand what everyone is bashing about. And please no screenshots of STR11's teleporters (which were copied and pasted by skillsaw's map as well by the way) or STR14's floating pillows, because that's as it is for a reason.

People are talking about the copy'n'pasting just as I have created a room out of 10 sectors and used that over and over again in one map, copied and pasted this map as well 39 times. This is excessive exaggeration!

Sorry Torm as heartfelt as you post was, I don't buy it. It's not your fault, it's a culmination of your history here as long as I have participated. In other words, your actions betray your intentions. If those statements came from someone like TimeOfDeath, Insane-Gazebo or Armouredblood, obviously very talented people who operate very low-key, I'd believe it. I'm willing to bet you won't see a 'TimeOfDeath detail guide' anytime soon.

Not a great idea to bring my personal reasons for continuing to make works of Doom in this thread. If I didn't map I'd probably be institutionalized or atop a bell tower shooting people. Besides you're asking someone who has essentially been begged to even bother releasing my megawad that will has been cooking since I was a teenager.

Tormentor667 said:

Dude, honestly, please show me a few screenshots where the copy and paste issues are obvious from a player's point of view so I can finally understand what everyone is bashing about. And please no screenshots of STR11's teleporters (which were copied and pasted by skillsaw's map as well by the way) or STR14's floating pillows, because that's as it is for a reason.

People are talking about the copy'n'pasting just as I have created a room out of 10 sectors and used that over and over again in one map, copied and pasted this map as well 39 times. This is excessive exaggeration!

That's my point, the fact that you copy-pasted wasn't nearly as noticeable as in DVII map22. I consider the copy-paste argument bullshit, so I am agreeing with you. :)

Tormentor667 said:

was the staging too much?!

I'll let the fact that it was locked and renamed to "This is just a waste of time to read this!" answer that question.

esselfortium said:
And it is your right to feel that way, but critics don't have any obligation to authors. Just because you're happy with it (which, again, you are perfectly free to be; it's your project, and you released it as it is because you were happy with it) doesn't mean that everyone else is required to be. The fact that you're done working on it doesn't somehow mean that people are no longer allowed to tell each other that they don't like it.

Absolutely true, and I have no problem with that - actually I am already used to this, and that's okay.

esselfortium said:
It baffles me that you earlier quoted a bunch of reviews talking about bad gameplay and concluded that the only possibility could be that people are out to get you.

It's pretty obvious if 9 of 10 reviews that mention "bad gameplay" also pull my name into this, e.g. "typical tormentor map with bad gameplay" even though I haven't been responsible for the gameplay department at most of the times.

esselfortium said:You say you're open to criticism, but your actual actions (from what you've shown to the public, at least) are more visibly based in ignoring or rationalizing it. If someone doesn't like something, it's either "you're only criticizing it because [unrelated reason]" or "I meant it to be that way". [i]The fact that you meant something to be a certain way does not preclude people from disliking it.

I sort of agree, but one point still stands: There have been two release candidates and we really incorporated and fixed about 95% of all the issues mentioned, the SVN had about 300 revisions between RC1 and v1.0. And those 5% that are still left? What actually is it? Is rgere something that's so damn serious that keeps people yelling?

Dude, you are one of the most skilled people around here and you know how this whole thing is working. I expect that TSoZD and also Vaporware will have something like a beta phase, people will test the project, give their feedback and then it's up to you, it's your choice which tester ideas need to be implemented and which suggestions simply don't fit into your idea of this project. Am I right? And after you have released your project, little issues might still be present in v1.0, a typo here, a wrong texture alignment there, ... but when these issues are not serious enough to reason a v1.1, would you still do this just because people "demand" it?

Tormentor667 said:

even though I haven't been responsible for the gameplay department at most of the times.

Oh? Who's responsible for the gameplay on your maps in Stronghold, then?

40oz said:

I'll let the fact that it was locked and renamed to "This is just a waste of time to read this!" answer that question.

It was never meant to annoy people, it was meant as a reminder, nothing else. I already said that weeks ago when the flaming started. Other people do things like this at well, what's the problem when I do this?

Use3D said:

Sorry Torm as heartfelt as you post was, I don't buy it. It's not your fault, it's a culmination of your history here as long as I have participated.

People change, people evolve. I am part of this now since 1999 and I would do, say or write the things that I did 11 years ago. But anyway, what has this project, that over 10 different talented people but effort into, have to do with my personality? I don't have a problem if some people don't like me personally, but transferring this to a project that I have worked on as one of many parts is not only unfair towards me, it's without any respect towards anyone else who has worked with me.

I was wondering the same thing. I was under the impression Tormentor was leading the whole thing. If he's not responsible for that department of the game then why -- as a leader -- would he even let that happen?

EDIT:

Tormentor667 said:

Other people do things like this at well, what's the problem when I do this?

Wrong. It's always a problem. Jukenukem proclaimed his wad to be deserving of a cacoward. Which it appears he must have been a troll or something since he was a nobody and had no credibility or established any awareness of what he was capable of. He got shot down by some people but most people ignored it as if it were an intentional joke. I can't even think of other people who do this other than new guys that go "WHY ISNT ANYONE POSTING" 15 minutes after they make their announcement thread. You actually have a pretty stubborn set of followers that are heavily inspired by your work, and you've released projects that received cacowards. The things you do have a much stronger impact than a nobody. The modest thing to do would have been to simply say that Stronghold was underway instead of crossposting your advertising propaganda everywhere even before anything of value was around to play. This thing has gotten a news thread for every release candidate that happened. You've got to be kidding if you think that isn't screaming for attention.

Spleen said:

Oh? Who's responsible for the gameplay on your maps in Stronghold, then?

Mappers have been responsible for the layout and the basic wave settings like missions and events and roughly for the wave settings, but finalizing the whole stuff in terms of difficulty, reinforcements, monster amount and armory was part of several other people, and I was not involved in this, as my settings mostly turned out too hard.

40oz said:

I was wondering the same thing. I was under the impression Tormentor was leading the whole thing. If he's not responsible for that department of the game then why -- as a leader -- would he even let that happen?

Simply because I was very pleased with the gameplay, I didn't see a problem and so did everyone else on the team. The gameplay was and still is absolutely fine from our side.

Just because I spearheaded this doesn't automatically mean that I am adjusting the gameplay. Be happy that I didn't, the whole thing would have been even harder...

Tormentor667 said:

Dude, you are one of the most skilled people around here and you know how this whole thing is working. I expect that TSoZD and also Vaporware will have something like a beta phase, people will test the project, give their feedback and then it's up to you, it's your choice which tester ideas need to be implemented and which suggestions simply don't fit into your idea of this project. Am I right? And after you have released your project, little issues might still be present in v1.0, a typo here, a wrong texture alignment there, ... but when these issues are not serious enough to reason a v1.1, would you still do this just because people "demand" it?

Of course not, unless I agreed about them (though I'd hope to be aware enough to have noticed them before the release :P). Acknowledging criticism doesn't always mean agreeing with it and incorporating it.

I've been given strong negative feedback from a few people about music I've been working hard on since 2007; while I don't agree with the majority of it, sometimes it reminds me that I can still change or improve this or that. Some of it is from people who also dislike artists I'm heavily influenced by, and thus I can't really expect to please them, but I'm okay with that; different people have different tastes. If they don't like what I create, that's their choice. While it certainly bothers me to hear somebody tell me they think something I've created sounds like shit, it's their right to feel that way, just like it's my right to let them feel that way and continue doing what I'm doing.

If a significant number of reviewers were telling me they didn't like it, though, I'd sure want to take a few steps back and try to understand why, even if I was still happy with it and didn't plan on changing it at all.

Tormentor667 said:

It's pretty obvious if 9 of 10 reviews that mention "bad gameplay" also pull my name into this, e.g. "typical tormentor map with bad gameplay" even though I haven't been responsible for the gameplay department at most of the times.

You may find this a bit difficult to believe, but I reckon you have a hand in this more than you may think. I know, from discussions with newer mappers, that people do try and conform to your standards when working with you. In turn, when you criticise people, the constructive suggestions do tend to be to move their work more towards what you like. This is to be expected, as everybody makes constructive criticism that would lead to things being more like the stuff they like.

What does the above actually mean? It means that people in your projects like your work. They are inspired by it. They want to make stuff just like it. So when you make suggestions, they follow them and move ever closer to making the same thing as you. They follow your detail guide. I know all this because about 3-4 years ago I was much the same. This does have the rather unfortunate side-effect of crushing the creative part most of the time, meaning people make maps like Sapphire and Austerity (which you already know my opinions on) where a lot of what makes Doom fun for a lot of people is simply snubbed out. You end up with flat layouts of dull (albeit pretty) corridors that usually progress very linearly and have very little to liven them up.

What can you do about this? Not a lot, to be totally honest. You made the first 3 TNTs and the first TCoTD, which are great examples of how well you can do gameplay and more interesting layouts. Those were my inspirations, and I came out with Warpzone, which was pretty crap. These days, when you tend to have a hand in what your fans are making in projects such as this, it all ends up a bit homogenous. ZPack also suffered from this in places (amongst other things, of course), although as I was on the inside there, I didn't see it properly at the time.

I've seen that you can adapt to criticism and stuff - the real problem is that the changes that we'd REALLY want to see are on such a base level that its kind of impossible for you to do when we get round to seeing the work. You'd have to set out at the very start with what we'd want changed in mind to please a lot of us now, I think.

Anyway, got side-tracked there. The real point I'm making is that people are actually right in saying that a lot of this is "typical tormentor" stuff, because most people in these projects are trying to map as you map and follow your examples and advice very closely. They make roughly what we expect of you, sometimes even without any personality of their own injected to help give it life.

Graf Zahl said:

First, this 'issue' comes up like clockwork in any Tormentor project. I can't remember a single of his releases since Sapphire that didn't get shit on. But this is so different that the same thing getting mentioned again in the exact same manner makes it sound like a knee-jerk reaction based on antipathy to Tormentor than actually trying it out.

Yeah, I've picked up on that. Hence, I said "Maybe a smidgen of truth here." A lot what's said can be seen as nitpicking, and kind of ridiculous. A lot of people are like that. On the other hand, I've seen the other side of the argument, and its knee-jerk reaction is to defend it in the same way, only twice as stubbornly. So there's this back-and-forth mudslinging that goes on, and suddenly, each side is so stubborn that they won't even listen to reason. Meanwhile, any legitimate complaints are dismissed as being anti-Torm from the start, and legitimate points arguing in his favor are "cock sucking."

In my brief time on this site, I see things like this, not to mention the original Stronghold thread was bullshit-free. So... what the fuck happened? Seems like people, the complainers included, were willing to give it a chance at first (Fisk, 40oz e.g.), but then... y'know, Torm's sort of... er, overhyping caused problems. Or, at least that's the perception I'm getting.

But, like I said, I've only been here for little more than a year. Maybe I don't have enough background on the problems. I did search for his other threads in Wads & Mods, and for the most part, they seem reasonable. UTNT, for example, seemed to be friendly enough.

40oz said:

I'll let the fact that it was locked and renamed to "This is just a waste of time to read this!" answer that question.

As far as I remember, that was because people like you said that the project was rubbish without having played it and got really angry because tormentor was announcing that stronghold was going to be released soon.

Here's a link to the thread so you can reread my posts.

So much for "time to move on!" eh torm?

you never answered me bro, do you like donuts?

Graf Zahl said:

Allow me to clarify:

This is not about criticism but the ensuing shitfest that the moronic faction of this community had to start.

Really? Because I seem to remember part of it being about a few select people, including the almighty Graf Zahl, demanding that people stop making demands and posting inflammatory shit to try and make me look like the bad guy.

Just putting that out there

A bit of random crap, but is this "7+ years!" work time count counting the huge period of inactivity that appearantly existed at one point?

(not like it matters in the end (you know, I should delay my first map by seven years just to be immune to criticism. that sounds like the greatest idea ever!), I just want to know)

Fisk said:

Really? Because I seem to remember part of it being about a few select people, including the almighty Graf Zahl, demanding that people stop making demands and posting inflammatory shit to try and make me look like the bad guy.

Just putting that out there

I read the end of the ZDoom thread. It seemed pretty unreasonable how Weasel openly called you out when you were defending your point of view, meanwhile, Graf gets to run around telling people to shut up and nobody thinks twice to stop it.

Another thing, no, Tormentor I don't think you've improved much. Maybe in your mapping but not in your obnoxious hyping. I'm tired of it, and I'm starting to sincerely believe that you thrive on this negative attention. This shit happens with just about every big project you have a hand in making. Either that, or you honestly have not realized yet that this will stop happening if you would just tone it down (despite tons of posts telling you this.)

I know this seems trollish so I'm not going to play the victim, but this all needed to be said and I stand by it. Okay, rip me apart guys! (no homo)

Tormentor667 said:

What's so controverse about this? It is a kind of "art" and my expression of creativity, it always was and always will be, I never intend to earn money with that kind of stuff and I never intend to get praised for what I do, so the megalomaniac expression is totally out of place. But honestly Use3D, why do you map? Isn't it for the same reason? Because it's fun for you? Sure it is, and if people like what you have created, doesn't that feel good as well? Doesn't it make you happy if someone tells you that he/she absolutely appreciated your map?

It isn't the most important thing, but I am sure it feels good, and so it does for me. I am glad that some other people also like what I did. On the other hand, I am also glad if people tell me what they didn't like, not that I change things that I have already produced but for things to come that can be improved. Though, I have my life, I have my job, I have friends, I have my hobbies - and Doom is only one of them. There is no need for recognition.

Doom is a hobby, and I already said that a hundred times before: If other people like what I or what we produce, it's simply a bonus for me, nothing more and nothing less, but it's not my primary aim.

When I am working on TSoZD, on HPack or on TCotD3, I simply do this because it's fun working on a map, fun working together with other skilled artists. I don't do this just to get a nice review, to get people talking about it or to get an Cacoward. That's all simply just a gimmick.

Sweet baby jesus fucking the virgin Mary, I still can't believe how devoted you are to spilling out bullshit like this when evidence that proves otherwise is right here in front of you before your very eyes.

Yeah, we all love being praised for our work. Hell, I love it myself. But you don't see me bitching and moaning and throwing a huge tantrum when somebody doesn't like my work, something you've done time and time again. There are people here who don't like your work, so what? If you don't want to take the criticism people have given, then maybe you should be a man and just move on. Instead, you just continue to cry about how everyone is being mean and picking on you and hurting your feelings. If you can't take this kind of criticism and want nothing more than to be praised for every single thing you release, maybe you should just stick to your forum on your site where people will gladly fondle you for each and every wad you release.

phi108 said:

Vordakk, why did you have to post? This thread had settled down and you turned it into yet another Stronghold flame thread.

Hey man, don't blame me for this. My last post was back on page 1 :)

Seriously though, everything that CAN be said about this HAS been said. Some great points have been brought up on BOTH sides, frankly. And I for one think it was a good thing. At least this way people have expressed their opinions/concerns honestly and everyone knows where everyone stands on stuff like this. Sometimes it's good to air your grievances instead of keeping them bottled up.

Like it or not guys, we are all here because we love a 17 year old game called DOOM; it's our common interest. And I know there will always be staunch people on both sides of this type of argument. But my wish, however absurd of a pipe dream it may be, is that we all try to remain positive and constructive. After all this community is small enough as it is, no point in the few people we have here fighting incessantly.

Please bear in mind that the purpose of this thread is for you all to claw each other eyes outto discuss this release in whatever way you see fit, and not to rake over and reignite old arguments from another forum (such as the Zdoom forums).

Vordakk said:

Hey man, don't blame me for this. My last post was back on page 1 :)

That was mostly joking, I just read that post, and saw that there were 2 more pages added to the thread, and guessed what they contained.

Grazza said:...and not to rake over and reignite old arguments from another forum (such as the Zdoom forums).[/B]

These arguments also contain reiterations from the Stronghold countdown thread and the ZDoom release thread. It seems to me that certain topics just need a dedicated "argument thread" and "+/- criticism thread", and threads for the fanboys and trolls to post in. Forum multithreading is born.

Vordakk said:

Hey man, don't blame me for this. My last post was back on page 1 :)

Oh please. You know all the haters were aching to post here but they resisted the urge to appear here uninvited until you decided to show up just to call em out. Get real.

This is a very entertaining thread to peruse, I must say.

But the reason for me being back is that I'd like to mention another 'bug' I think should be fixed if a new release is ever made. The player autoaims on the autoturrets if they are directly in front of him. This is pretty annoying, and makes you not want to shoot when you are behind them, which can really screw with gameplay. I'm pretty sure zdoom has a 'no autoaim' flag or something along those lines for things. Autoturrets most certainly need this flag.

Now, as you were folks.

NT

Oh yes, and another thing... your spawned buddies like to rub right up against the badguys as they make their attempts at killing them. Which can also make it annoying to try to work with them in killing groups of monsters. I know doom AI is pretty weak, but I also know that there is a fear state. It seems with a little clever editing you could get your buddies to keep a bit of distance. This would be desirable IMO, unless they have an ssg of course.

NT

40oz said:

Oh please. You know all the haters were aching to post here but they resisted the urge to appear here uninvited until you decided to show up just to call em out. Get real.

Oh riiiight. I totally forgot that I'm directly responsible for the behavior of other autonomous humans. How silly of me.

Vordakk said:

Oh riiiight. I totally forgot that I'm directly responsible for the behavior of other autonomous humans. How silly of me.

In his defense, this thread was pretty peaceful until you informed us that our opinions were unacceptable.

Vordakk said:

Well I for one am disgusted by all the negative reviews this is getting in the "Levels" section of the website. Considering that this monumental undertaking is being made available to everyone free of charge, seeing that it must have taken many people YEARS of their lives to complete, and with the knowledge that the creators did everything in their power to ensure that the final release was polished and fun as possible, including the posting of 2 release candidates, how the hell are people flaming this!!!

esselfortium said:

<explanation>

Well, you see, that's what we did, or at least had in mind, and there's nothing wrong with it.

Phobus said:

<long reply

Thanks alot for your reply, that's definitely interesting and I can at least understand where this is coming from and where this now ends. Although I partially agree, I also consider people like Carnevil, Skillsaw, Vader and Keksdose (just for example) as personalities who lose their own style or creativity just because of my suggestions or because I am leading the project. You know all of these and I am sure you will certainly agree. Though I get your point, and thanks for your fair and polite answer, this is what I would have liked to read more often in this thread.

Snakes said:
In my brief time on this site, I see things like this, not to mention the original Stronghold thread was bullshit-free. So... what the fuck happened? Seems like people, the complainers included, were willing to give it a chance at first (Fisk, 40oz e.g.), but then... y'know, Torm's sort of... er, overhyping caused problems. Or, at least that's the perception I'm getting.

Where is the problem when asking for a deadline? It wasn't related to Stronghold anyway, I just wanted to know if some maps that were released close to the publication of the Cacowards 2008 have simply not rated, forgotten or if they are part of the Cacowards 2009 then. And for the "overhyping" stuff, we had these problems already with KDiZD where flamewars and drama occured, and for a strange reason I didn't have this with UTNT even though (!) I advertised it exactly the same way. Now I am curious how you can explain this ;)

Insanitybringer said:
A bit of random crap, but is this "7+ years!" work time count counting the huge period of inactivity that appearantly existed at one point?

Sure, there have been weeks when absolutely nothing was done at all, but simply take a look at several Mordeth awards of the past years, none of them really have been worked on all the time during the given development time in the readme.

Zap610 said:
Another thing, no, Tormentor I don't think you've improved much. Maybe in your mapping but not in your obnoxious hyping. I'm tired of it, and I'm starting to sincerely believe that you thrive on this negative attention. This shit happens with just about every big project you have a hand in making. Either that, or you honestly have not realized yet that this will stop happening if you would just tone it down (despite tons of posts telling you this.)

Something that I can't understand personally. I always love hype and adverts of projects with a long development and a high scale. I loved the way Scuba advertised and hyped Action Doom 1, same goes to the Shotgun Frenzy stuffage and other projects that where similar during their development. It's not that I hype projects like "This is the best thing ever" or "A must play", it's simply teasing and giving information from time to time, actually a procedure that many people are doing and many people are liking.

On the other hand: What's the problem with posting news to Doomworld, even though it's 3 times, for RC1, for RC2 and for the final release? It's not that someone forces you to read this, or even download it 3 times. I am actually happy for every single news item on the Doomworld frontpage, it keeps the page alive.

Craigs said:
Instead, you just continue to cry about how everyone is being mean and picking on you and hurting your feelings. If you can't take this kind of criticism and want nothing more than to be praised for every single thing you release, maybe you should just stick to your forum on your site where people will gladly fondle you for each and every wad you release

Maybe I just should split up feedback in the upcoming future into 3 different kindes: The positive feedback, the constructive feedback and the bullshit that I do not care about (like "THIS IS T3H AWESOME" or "IT'S SHIT, DONT DOWNLOAD!").