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Kotzugi

Community balance

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You can't really apply certain fascist principles to a forum that's open to voluntary registration.


Why not? Essel's been doing it for ages!

But seriously, I'd like to see more sprite artists around.

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Eternity will never support DECORATE so you may as well stop waiting on that. We don't need and cannot support TWO content definition languages in one engine.

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The best creative people are those that can master several disciplines (mapping, art / textures, music, etc.) and combine those talents to a single creative vision. Doom is pretty unique in that it's "small scale" enough that something like that is even possible. There are several people in the community who have that kind of ability - I won't name them but it should be obvious enough who I'm talking about.

Bloodshedder's exactly right that the community could do with more artists, though.

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Marcaek said:

But seriously, I'd like to see more sprite artists around.

You called? In all seriousness, I find Eriance, zzrion the insect, Scuba Steve, and Cage to be my favorite sprite artists.

Tarnsman said:

And Kate

Thanks for pointing that out, I was about to.
I'd include myself, but I'm nowhere near 10% as talented as these people.

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I'm just curious, are there any success stories about Doom artists who eventually landed some nice jobs because of their experience in designing etc. for Doom related projects? I really hope so, this would have some great motivational power for artists who want to work in the game industry to try their hands on projects such as Doom which lack financial incentives.

On another note, I want to ask a musician how they make music for Doom because I'm just a curious guy (with a classical piano background) but maybe this isn't the right place...

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minigunner said:

You called? In all seriousness, I find Eriance, zzrion the insect, Scuba Steve, and Cage to be my favorite sprite artists.

Thanks for pointing that out, I was about to.
I'd include myself, but I'm nowhere near 10% as talented as these people.

I would agree with this list and I would add Bloax to it as well, I saw your work on ZDoom and Duke 4 before, I thought you were pretty talented.

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The talent part I was referring to was making midis, not graphical work. I know I'm decent at spriting; if anything, I'm just slow and a perfectionist.

And yes, I definitely like Vader's work too.

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Kotzugi said:

On another note, I want to ask a musician how they make music for Doom because I'm just a curious guy (with a classical piano background) but maybe this isn't the right place...


I'll direct you to this thread...

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Don't know about art work, but in terms of level authors, there are several well-known mappers who have gone on to work in the game industry. Iikka Keranen comes to mind.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's an important caveat: everyone who got a job in the industry through Doom did so in the 90s, when Doom was new.

While the argument can be made any skill you develop will be useful in other environments, strictly talking about building your portfolio you'd be better off doing just about anything else. Shitty infinite runners on iOS or artsy platformers on flash websites will get you more recognition than a top tier Doom mod.

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Phml said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's an important caveat: everyone who got a job in the industry through Doom did so in the 90s, when Doom was new.

While the argument can be made any skill you develop will be useful in other environments, strictly talking about building your portfolio you'd be better off doing just about anything else. Shitty infinite runners on iOS or artsy platformers on flash websites will get you more recognition than a top tier Doom mod.

I would say that the actual caveat would be that it really has more to do with the quality of the portfolio vs the type of artist an employer is looking for and the personality of the artist. However, I would agree that Doom's limitations would make a good Doom map pale in comparison to a good modern 3D map in the eyes of an employer.

A portfolio with just Doom maps probably isn't going to turn any heads.

On topic: I would like to see more programmers personally. If we could get some quality source port specific mods with gimmicky game-play features we would be sure to find some golden nuggets along the way.

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Phml said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's an important caveat: everyone who got a job in the industry through Doom did so in the 90s, when Doom was new.

This is for the most part accurate, but 5hfifty and el zee's work on Return of the Triad helped them both get jobs with Interceptor Entertainment working on the recent ROTT game, and I believe Kaiser's portfolio of Doom levels was shown to Timegate along with the rest of his portfolio. In these cases, though, they had all done notable work with modern 3D engines in addition to their Doom projects.

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Eris Falling said:

I'll direct you to this thread...


Cheers, thanks.

NiuHaka said:

A portfolio with just Doom maps probably isn't going to turn any heads.


Makes sense, but would you consider building Doom maps to have the potential to be at least an important stepping stone to a career in professional game level design (just saw what esselfortium wrote which kind of answers my question)? It seems to me that there could be important universal features to map design that can just as easily be applicable to more modern map design as well, that have nothing to do with the quality of the actual textures used (good use of space, flow, lighting, placement of monsters/ammos, secrets, etc.).

This kind of ties in with the main topic because I'd like to know if a valid case can be made for artists (as well as programmers, etc.) that spending their precious free time to work on Doom might actually have a positive impact on their careers in some way or another. And if so, this will help draw more potential artists/programmers/etc. to contribute.

Either that or we should just get a very very rich person/corporation to sponsor them. :) Geez, think about it: Getting paid to create/test/speed run/etc. Doom maps. :)

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Kotzugi said:

words

In short, yes.

At length, having great maps that show a sense of place and good use of space etc would undoubtedly help. The biggest hurdle here would be that most of the studios that have dedicated map/world designers are going to be large companies like Disney or Blizzard and you would be competing for those positions with people who have already been working there for some time probably as an intern with a good portfolio, people who have a varied portfolio with lots of experience and people who have a great portfolio with a college degree.

Any kind of "foot in the door" mapping position would be from smaller studios and start-ups who need employees who can fill several roles.

I'd have to say that getting your foot in the door as just a mapper without something extraordinary to set you apart is going to be quite the trial and/or stroke of luck.

On topic edit:
Seriously though, the more I think about it the more I think we would benefit most by having more great programmers.

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Cheers, thanks for clearing that up NiuHaka.

About programming, just a heads-up. I do program (mostly scripting) although not quite on professional level (I'm from academia). I worked on large collections of texts (corpora): annotating, aligning, filtering, running tools, statistical tests, etc.). Currently I'm looking for ways to get more experience so I have a better chance to get in at a company somewhere. I saw a thread recently where somebody was offering their services - forgot where it was - to do all kinds of little things, such as automatically detecting whether or not a player uses strafe-50 (I think it was called), remove unused textures, etc. I need to study up a little bit, but that's the kind of thing that I think I could do, at least in theory. Full-blown development maybe not yet (although I have a bit of experience with that in Perl).

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Mr. Chris said:

I meant MIDI musicians, forgot to clarify myself.

I believe the list of people stays the same anyway.

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schwerpunk said:

Slightly on-topic: Are MIDIs copyright protected?

If you mean are their contents protected by the automatic notion of copyright, then yes. Unless the composer releases his work under a license, the default is "all rights reserved."

If you mean is there any form of obfuscation or "technological measures" in place to protect data in MIDI format, then, no.

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Quasar said:

If you mean are their contents protected by the automatic notion of copyright, then yes. Unless the composer releases his work under a license, the default is "all rights reserved."

If you mean is there any form of obfuscation or "technological measures" in place to protect data in MIDI format, then, no.

The first one, thanks.

I did some quick research (Wikilegal), and I guess it should've been obvious. I was just confused, because there are a lot of MIDIs out there that claim to be copyright 'free.' These are typically 'remixes' of popular songs. I'm not exactly clear on if these are kosher or not, though.

Basically, if wanted to include a MIDI version of Nights in White Satin in my WAD, where would I stand, legally?

P.S. sorry about derailing the thread...

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schwerpunk said:

Basically, if wanted to include a MIDI version of Nights in White Satin in my WAD, where would I stand, legally?

P.S. sorry about derailing the thread...

The same place you'd stand by including a full-quality FLAC rip of a performance - you'd still need the full permission of the composer for it to be legal.

That being said, there haven't been any cases that I know of in recent history where somebody got sued over a crude MIDI version of a popular song, especially not one included in a mod for a 20-year-old game.

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Quasar said:

The same place you'd stand by including a full-quality FLAC rip of a performance - you'd still need the full permission of the composer for it to be legal.


This isn't true. A FLAC has copyright over two elements of a song: the performance, and the composition. A MIDI is essentially a cover version of a song, i.e. a new performance of an existing composition.

In the U.S., you can get a "mechanical license" to record a cover song, which functions essentially like a permit and doesn't require approval from the copyright holder. This is the route you'd want to go if you were selling an album (or possibly selling a game) that had a cover song on it. Wikipedia info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_version#U.S._copyright_law

For just including MIDIs in a free project for an old game, it's unclear as to whether there are legal exceptions or not. You are right in that in practice it's not something you're likely to be sued over.

e: A question I couldn't find the answer to, easily: If I make a cover song MIDI or otherwise, and then pay for the license, am I allowed to offer this song to other people to use as they wish for free? Or would other use of my recording require compensation for the original composer?
Copyright law is such a headache.

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I think we have an overabundant crowd of entitled opinionerds posting current events and other useless dribble in the everything else forum who haven't done anything doom related in the last six months (or even really play the game much at all anymore)

I'd be quiet about it if they were doing something for Doom, like make a speedmap or something, write a /newstuff review, or contribute to a community project (even if it's just a titlepic or a playtesting position) but there's a pretty good bit of people here who post exclusively in the Everything Else and Blogs section of the forum, and as much as I appreciate the visual aid of being able to see just how many people are really here, I feel as though we'd be better off without them.

Otherwise I don't think we have any shortage or surplus of anything else in the community. I highly disagree with what Memfis said about having too many mappers. All maps, good or bad, are perpetuating the life of Doom and all mappers are earning a learning experience out of it that will help them in their mapping in the future. I highly encourage anyone, even self-loathing newbies to open up Doombuilder and make anything they want. Someone will play it.

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40oz said:

All maps, good or bad, are perpetuating the life of Doom and all mappers are earning a learning experience out of it that will help them in their mapping in the future. I highly encourage anyone, even self-loathing newbies to open up Doombuilder and make anything they want. Someone will play it.


ding ding ding

people cant bitch about lack of variety and then tell people not to bother

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40oz said:

I feel as though we'd be better off without them.

Was that supposed to sound edgy? Where's the explanation why you feel that way? What do we gain from axing them?

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40oz said:

I highly encourage anyone, even self-loathing newbies to open up Doombuilder and make anything they want. Someone will play it.


You know, this is pretty much the ethos of the webcomic scene.

Yeah, I know - there's a bit of a negative stigma to even the word 'webcomic' and saturating the Internet with comics of varying quality won't exactly help that along.

But it's a great community that offers something for literally everyone. And also, an almost-endless well of support and feedback. I'd love to see that of the Doom scene, and it has grown in the past ten years partly due to the low entry level and nigh-open door policy of places like Doomworld.

I think there should be more mappers, by far -- everyone should really start by mapping and learning the fundamentals before they go all script/realm667-crazy.

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dew said:

Was that supposed to sound edgy? Where's the explanation why you feel that way? What do we gain from axing them?


More purity in the community. ALL HAIL THE MASTER RACE.

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