The Dean of Doom series (companion thread)

[Firedust]

Real shame Scythe X will never get finished.

[Andromeda]

15 hours ago, Firedust said:

Real shame Scythe X will never get finished.

Never say never ;)

[Firedust]

4 minutes ago, Andromeda said:

Never say never ;)

A couple years ago, Alm's brother logged on to these forums and said that Erik had lost all interest in Doom mapping.

[Lucius Wooding]

The real question is when Scythes III-IX are going to come out, man's holding out on us.

[RHhe82]

6 minutes ago, Lucius Wooding said:

The real question is when Scythes III-IX are going to come out, man's holding out on us.

 

But what about Scythe Revisited Community Project and Doom the Way Alm Would Have Done It?

[head_cannon]

9 hours ago, RHhe82 said:

 

But what about Scythe Revisited Community Project and Doom the Way Alm Would Have Done It?

 

Now you've got me thinking about the Dean's Digression at the end of the episode, of how the new monsters seen at the very end during MAP10 would have presumably been joined by a Cmdr Keen replacement, an SS Trooper replacement, and a Spider Mastermind replacement. I have no idea how "complete" the stats are for those hypothetical foes, but wouldn't it be cool if someone made sprites for them someday? I can't help but be reminded of the way that Doomkid structured his Ray Mohawk 2 community project as "here's a bunch of DeHackEd alterations, let's play around with this ruleset and see what we come up with."

 

Ezekiel and Jägermörder taught me that you can design a WAD to pick up where the previous one left off, so that when the user loads them both their campaign will progress seamlessly as if it was one experience. So, on a long enough timeline, you might eventually see someone effectively do mapping fanfiction, publishing their idea of what maps 11-15+ could be. This would of course be decried as not a tribute by fans, but hooliganism by vandals, but I still think that there could be an appeal to building encounters with this monsterset, even if it would never be anywhere near as elegant as the real thing.

[Shepardus]

Dark Scythe on Dean of Doom when?

[Kool Belzero]

Requiem episode when?

[MemeMind]

Halloween episode on Trick and Tear 1 and 2???? (Totally not because it would give PUSS more publicity, and not because then I would be in DOD)

 

[Devalaous]

On 10/8/2022 at 2:26 PM, Firedust said:

Real shame Scythe X will never get finished.

 

I'd say at this point to Eternal Doom it, incorporate the 'first part' into a community continuation that respectfully continues his work, while also keeping the expanded release seperate. I always wondered why Eternal Doom IV wasn't continued that way as Eternal Doom V via the earlier 'Eternal doom way'..

 

But thats just my take.

 

_______

 

As for video stuff, im hoping he'll cover No End in Sight some day, hes mentioned it a few times, so hes definitely played it. Theres so few Ultimate Doom wads on his show.

[xScavengerWolfx]

I wonder what he has in store for this years halloween. Please dear god don't let it be Lillith.pk3 again. For some reason i actually played that a bit and all i felt was dread and my eyes hurting.

 

but as far as the next video should go i say he should do one on snax's doom 1 wad Stickney Installation

[Firedust]

21 minutes ago, Devalaous said:

 

I'd say at this point to Eternal Doom it, incorporate the 'first part' into a community continuation that respectfully continues his work, while also keeping the expanded release seperate. I always wondered why Eternal Doom IV wasn't continued that way as Eternal Doom V via the earlier 'Eternal doom way'..

 

But thats just my take.

Oh, how I wish someone took over the reins on ED V...

[Shepardus]

11 hours ago, xScavengerWolfx said:

I wonder what he has in store for this years halloween. Please dear god don't let it be Lillith.pk3 again. For some reason i actually played that a bit and all i felt was dread and my eyes hurting.

Why would he feature the same wad twice?

[LadyMistDragon]

On 10/14/2022 at 9:57 AM, Firedust said:

Oh, how I wish someone took over the reins on ED V...

Chris Couleur came here some months back and said he would try contacting Rex and Adam to see if they'd be ok with re-starting it. It's hard to say if that's going on or not.

[Foxstiel]

 

[Thelokk]

On 10/8/2022 at 3:26 AM, Firedust said:

Real shame Scythe X will never get finished.

 

Not keeping my hopes up, but Mouldy also gave absolutely zero signs of interest in Doom for years (even said in their own Overboard thread that they played pretty much no Doom for who knows how long) and here we are, with a new mapset. Insane_Gazebo went MIA for a decade before continuing Sunder.

You never know. 

[Firedust]

Good takes from Mt Pain again. PRCP is probably my least favourite Plutonia PWAD by quite a margin. The sequel is miles better in every aspect.

[ZethXM]

Halloween has been nothing but bangers so far, so I'm excited to see what we get this time.

[LadyMistDragon]

7 hours ago, Thelokk said:

 

Not keeping my hopes up, but Mouldy also gave absolutely zero signs of interest in Doom for years (even said in their own Overboard thread that they played pretty much no Doom for who knows how long) and here we are, with a new mapset. Insane_Gazebo went MIA for a decade before continuing Sunder.

You never know. 

Anyway, what Alm's brother said was that he was too busy with his job to really bother and I'm sure that's especially so these past 2 1/2 years. Honestly, he probably has less opportunity than Dario probably has to spend time mapping or whatever.

[xScavengerWolfx]

You know i have played this megawad when working on my plutonia wad. All i'm going to say is this: Yes it maybe a megawad from the era where you got your ass handed to you...but i feel like it lost it's chance to stack up to it's.....what did mt pain say? Oh yeah it's weird and kinda all over the place, unlike it's 2006 brother.

 

But overall i never finished it because i lost internet in after map 10. I mean not saying the mappers are bad, i'm just saying that this is what i mean by your killing gameplay for more cool stuff you can make with linedefs and such. Creative linedefs dose not equal good gameplay.

 

I feel i need to toss a disclaimer in for this, only because i feel like this will get taking out of contexts and such...

 

This is my personal option on the subject at hand. No i did not just say this because i wanted to, i've played this before he made a video on it and after watching this i do agree that it kinda, i word trashy is too harsh so let's just say the mapset is odd and confusing.

 

Not saying there aren't any good maps in this but like i said before making stuff look really cool with linedefs dose not equal better gameplay. Hell i'll take a step further and say that i don't care about making a map look like really detailed and have a ton of whatever i'm think of at this moment of typing. For me as a mapper i've learned that making maps is more then "oh look what i can draw/make in a doom editor" it's more of "what dose the player want from this? How can i make the player sweat bullets?" and the most important one is this "Will they have fun playing my map and enjoy it and not get bored of it". 

 

And as the dean of doom once said "At the end of the day. It's about spreading the joy of doom".

[Devalaous]

PRCP seems to mostly all blend together for me. My attention actually lapsed during that video due to so many maps looking near identical that I had to go back a few times to stop my eyes glazing over, I still cant remember anything about what he said about Map 18, and he named that the best in the set!

 

Only his criticisms of Xaser and Whoo's maps still stay in my memory, and that's immediately after watching it.

[RichardDS90]

Speaking of Whoo's map, has there even been a bugfix for it at all? Be nice to have a tie breaker for the dunce cap after all. :P

[jazzmaster9]

I've been seeing a reccuring theme with the recent Dean of Doom episodes and thats "Your favorite wad/that wad everyone likes, Isn't as good as you think it is" and how many people agree with his sentiments.

 

Don't know what to make of it, but thats just something I observed. 

Player Tastes change over time i guess. Let's see if im around long enough to see the "Going Down and Eviternity are bad actually" takes 10 years down the line from community members.

 

Edited October 21, 2022 by jazzmaster9

[ReaperAA]

Agreed with Dean regarding PRCP. Since I have a fairly recent memory of playing both PL2 and PRCP, I vastly prefer PL2. PRCP felt considerably less polished and not as consistently good. Plus I really hated Map19 to a point where it almost singlehanded drop PRCP, though thankfully I didn't. Though one thing PRCP does better than PL2 is that it's maps on average feel much closer to Plutonia's spirit than PL2

[liPillON]

and with this he has now reviewed 3 (TNTR, PL2, PRCP) out of 4 popular Final Doom community projects..

TNT2 when? ;')

 

[Firedust]

47 minutes ago, Delfino Furioso said:

and with this he has now reviewed 3 (TNTR, PL2, PRCP) out of 4 popular Final Doom community projects..

TNT2 when? ;')

 

Not until all the maps completed. 2024?

[Devalaous]

13 minutes ago, Firedust said:

Not until all the maps completed. 2024?

 

*2224

 

1 hour ago, Delfino Furioso said:

and with this he has now reviewed 3 (TNTR, PL2, PRCP) out of 4 popular Final Doom community projects..

TNT2 when? ;')

 

 

Don't forget PRCP2 which recently released!

 

I'm still hoping he'll review No End in Sight and some other classic megawads oddly missing from his show, even though he tends to rip the old classics a new one, ha.

[Shepardus]

Looking forward to the Plutonia 7 review!

[baja blast rd.]

12 hours ago, xScavengerWolfx said:

You know i have played this megawad when working on my plutonia wad. All i'm going to say is this: Yes it maybe a megawad from the era where you got your ass handed to you...but i feel like it lost it's chance to stack up to it's.....what did mt pain say? Oh yeah it's weird and kinda all over the place, unlike it's 2006 brother.

 

But overall i never finished it because i lost internet in after map 10. I mean not saying the mappers are bad, i'm just saying that this is what i mean by your killing gameplay for more cool stuff you can make with linedefs and such. Creative linedefs dose not equal good gameplay.

 

I feel i need to toss a disclaimer in for this, only because i feel like this will get taking out of contexts and such...

 

This is my personal option on the subject at hand. No i did not just say this because i wanted to, i've played this before he made a video on it and after watching this i do agree that it kinda, i word trashy is too harsh so let's just say the mapset is odd and confusing.

 

Not saying there aren't any good maps in this but like i said before making stuff look really cool with linedefs dose not equal better gameplay. Hell i'll take a step further and say that i don't care about making a map look like really detailed and have a ton of whatever i'm think of at this moment of typing. For me as a mapper i've learned that making maps is more then "oh look what i can draw/make in a doom editor" it's more of "what dose the player want from this? How can i make the player sweat bullets?" and the most important one is this "Will they have fun playing my map and enjoy it and not get bored of it". 

 

And as the dean of doom once said "At the end of the day. It's about spreading the joy of doom".

 

This is a really strange post because well over half of PRCP is at best serviceable aesthetically, or even bare/ugly, and those maps way outnumber anything that is consistently pretty. And even when it's pretty, it does so with minimalist design rather than "using lots of linedefs." And there's no evidence or even correlatives with it sacrificing gameplay in favor of aesthetics. The (universally) worst maps of PRCP tend to just lack quality across the board. 

 

"what i mean by your killing gameplay for more cool stuff you can make with linedefs and such. Creative linedefs dose not equal good gameplay.

." / "linedefs dose not equal better gameplay" just reads like a weird strawman of PRCP's failings. (I'll admit I don't like PRCP either.)

 

There is this pattern (I'm speaking in general here now, rather than about PRCP specifically) where many people are easily impressed by aesthetics (or "technicality"), so then pair that with their own subjective dislike of the gameplay, and incorrectly assume that visuals must have been way more the wad's design focus than it probably was. But it seems like people are not accounting for the perceptual differences of visuals vs. gameplay: 

 

- gameplay preference is always very subjective/personal (there are vanishingly few wads of any length that >50% of people will finish and  enjoy -- even Valiant has lots of people bouncing off it -- and it's not because people are worse at designing gameplay)

- visual design is extremely easy to appreciate as "good"/impressive even when it's not your cuppa (the peak here is well over >50%) 

- that usually isn't the case for gameplay at all 

- visual design is often very easy to abstractly overrate, because unless you're an experienced mapper, you don't really know the 'tricks' that someone can use to make, like, idk, serviceable/decent or even good visuals surprisingly quickly. and one 'trick' good design plays is that maps often look higher detail on inspection than they really are (see: all the people who every year call Valiant or Ancient Aliens "high-detail" when (outside of some AA guest maps) they are modestly detailed / pretty economical).

- gameplay design effort is easy to underrate, because nearly everything that goes into it is "invisible work" like testing, tweaking, whereas visual design effort is always there (although kind of easy to overrate or underrate in certain ways too)

 

So sum that up and a lot of people (who don't realize that's going on) read wads that are balanced between visuals and gameplay as having clearly emphasized visuals as a virtue -- and I've seen that as a pretty questionable take about a lot of wads now. 

 

Like it's fair to simply say, "I liked the aesthetics but not the gameplay," which is always true in the sense that people are right about their own subjective experiences. But when you get into "you cared more about the aesthetics than the gameplay, don't do that" type dogma you need much more perspective to be making accurate claims (not to mention telling people what to care about while mapping is more than a bit overbearing lol). 

[baja blast rd.]

11 hours ago, jazzmaster9 said:

I've been seeing a reccuring theme with the recent Dean of Doom episodes and thats "Your favorite wad/that wad everyone likes, Isn't as good as you think it is" and how many people agree with his sentiments.

 

Don't know what to make of it, but thats just something I observed. 

Player Tastes change over time i guess. Let's see if im around long enough to see the "Going Down and Eviternity are bad actually" takes 10 years down the line from community members.

 

 

Player tastes do change, but this just seems like more of a sampling thing. People see video and vent about That Wad They Hate, whereas people who like it are like "eh whatever it's just one person's opinion." Comments for one video are only a tiny  % of the total community. I have read  a lot of negative criticisms about these recently featured wads dating back several years, so that's not a new thing at all. Also there is definitely a vocal crowd of people who dislike Eviternity and Going Down right now. (Eviternity for one has one of the most memorable rants, on ZDF.) So if a video by popular Doomtuber Habitat22 came out and gave either of those a B with a negative tone and took Eviternity to task for its emphasis on pretty design and theme over gameplay, and Going Down for its emphasis on Doomcute and elevators over gameplay (see how easy that pattern is), you'd get a ton of comments springing up in "solidarity."