MyHouse.wad

[AlSmith]

13 hours ago, Gez said:

In the documents on the Drive folder, the obituary says that Tom used to run cross country in high school. In the photo, there's a picture of a girls' cross country team. Why, if these are supposed to be pictures of Steve and Tom's past?

 

There's also a boys cross country team in this photo. Perhaps Tom/Anna started participating on one team, and ended participating on, or wanted to participate on, the other?

 

I still don't really understand what Jimmy meant by paying close attention to the Google Drive's folder structure (boldtext):

 

On 3/13/2023 at 2:07 PM, Jimmy said:

The Google Drive link in the OP does contain some things worth examining for context, and also pay close attention to the folder structure and how the map's files are presented. Still worth checking it out with zero expectations, though. Go in with as open and curious a mind as possible. It's much more than a 5-minute one-off excursion.

 

[TJG1289]

33 minutes ago, AlSmith said:

I still don't really understand what Jimmy meant by paying close attention to the Google Drive's folder structure

I think it was a hint about the extra screenshot folder that has the BFG location in it.

[xmonkeyofevil]

On 5/24/2023 at 6:38 PM, Sergeant_Mark_IV said:

I feel like only the few first dozen people who played this wad were able to experience it as it should be experienced. The very fact there are people telling you to play it blind without reading the treads already ruins the surprises.

I think being told to play it blind is fine. I did and had nothing but surprises during my playthrough. But I do think sometimes people give too much away in their warnings. Like "Oh, here's this Doom map inspired by House of Leaves, but try to go in blind!" Because then if you know the book it kind of gives you an idea of what some of the map is like.

[MissArgent]

On 5/23/2023 at 4:21 PM, Devalaous said:

 

Oh how awkward, I literally just finished watching your blind run on Youtube, and here you are.

Im noticing that every blind run I watch has largely the same progression and reactions

  Hide contents

Every player circles House 0, enters House 1 and enjoys it, and almost all of them miss the soulsphere, largely because mouse movement is so fast that the camera never focuses on the window long enough for the alluring trap to catch attention. Most go to Underhalls, failing to notice the darker sector lighting and the height change, and the second run is bolder with that SSG in hand. The boldness instantly falls when the changes start becoming apparant, whether its noticing the smooth weapons, the discord sound, or especially the music being..off. The attic terrifies people, and after the blue key is picked up, people run right past the impossible door multiple times as they panic after seeing the doors are gone, and the music is ramping up in errors. I have yet to see anyone open the Navidson Corridor or find a different path, its always the burned house. While there, NOONE notices the basement changing to brutalist, largely because most people cant see a damn thing. You at least noticed the sky change though!

The Brutalist house is when people all seem to acclimate to 'we arent in the house anymore' and adopt an uneasy tense wonder at these dimensions. Nonoe questions the impossible hallways linking two versions of the same house by this point. Its just accepted.

 

No mods, period. The only mods I used that worked were Nightfright's brightmaps and fullscreen hud. The level has a lot of control effects to enforce you play as the author intended. No cheats, no mods.

 

One of the things I really liked about this one was the fact that it's really good at anticipating a typical player's decisions. Lot of bits of cleverness like making it so the breaker spark sounds play right where a player would go to find the doors gone, and so on.

[Major Arlene]

 

another to add to the pile

[Wub Nub]

On 5/25/2023 at 9:00 PM, Wub Nub said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Hello, I've gotten all of the items in the real world and can now get to the gas-station, but when I try to get to the gas-station in the mirror world the fence won't open. I have the duck, the crayons, the controller, the die, and the teddy bear(snuggles).

  Hide contents

 

Could someone help me with this?

[ultra_kek]

23 minutes ago, Wub Nub said:

Could someone help me with this?

Spoiler

I believe you are missing the pumpkin from the porch of the brutalist house (i.e. opposite of the inaccessible exit) and the pills from the airport women's bathroom (not the empty ones right in front of the purse, but the refilled ones that spawn after looking through the mirror). You should be able to access the brutalist house again through a secret entrance available in the real boiler room, if you haven't used it already. You can check the doomwiki page for the wad to see a full guide, although it has spoilers.

 

[embql]

Been diving into the lore, the tom/anna thing, genderswap and so on. I still have some questions though; For me, it's kinda weird it's called "myhouse.wad" when it's not steven's house (i know it's a gimmick on how most new mappers made their house as their first map, but still). also, a lot of the dreams in the journal are what we experience in the map. taking into account that steven's word probably are not to be trusted fully, nightmares and all, what if.... steven and tom are just the same person? we have a lot of steven's accounts, thoughts, dreams, that coincide with what we find and see. we don't know if the accompanying files are to be taken for real or if it's "imagination".. could we be into a story where Tom is skizophrenic and gender-fluid? and we follow his dreams and thoughts through all of the map? They also died at the same time, maybe in the same place. dunno. it's a giant story and an even bigger rabbit hole, probably forgetting small details that won't line up with my theory, but if noone had this thought of Steven and Tom being the same, here it is.. :) 

On a side note, still awestruck at their mapping skill. I remember playing doom for the first time around 97-98, in second grade, at a school friends house. when i found out my dad had it installed too, and i asked to try it 'for the first time', he realized that i already knew where the monsters were, even though it should be my first time playing. i finally gave up and said i had played it at my friends house, and what do cool dads do? absolutely dominate me in multiplayer, i was not happy ;D but not much later, friends and I were doing co-op through doom 1 and doom 2. those were the times.

well, a lot of things has happened with Doom since.. i'm from the era where Underhalls first button behind the first doors also had bars in front of them ;) #seriallinkOGs 

[OliveTree]

48 minutes ago, embql said:

could we be into a story where Tom is skizophrenic and gender-fluid?

im not a psychiatrist, but my understanding is that schizophrenic people typically deal with symptoms like delusional thinking and hallucinations, not having multiple personalities. If Tom was an alternate identity of Steve, that would be more akin to dissociate identity disorder.

 

With regards to that, I'm not sure if it's common for individuals experiencing D.I.D. to have alternate identities who transition from one gender to another, although I'm sure it's possible. The idea that Steve had an alternate identity named Anna who eventually transitioned to a man named Tom feels somewhat convoluted to me. The inverse, that Anna had an alternate identity named Steve who stuck around as Anna transitioned to become Tom, is slightly less convoluted. Also, the concept of forming a romantic relationship with one of one's own alternate identities seems somewhat well documented according to a very quick Google search.

 

In any case, I'm not sure this is what the mod is gesturing towards. Signs that seem to connect or link Steve and Tom, or blur the lines between their creative input, strike me more as part of the supernatural narrative, and an indication of their closeness.

 

56 minutes ago, embql said:

it's kinda weird it's called "myhouse.wad" when it's not steven's house

Tom is the one who named it "myhouse.wad". Steve is just renovating it (pun intended) for a public showcase.

 

56 minutes ago, embql said:

we have a lot of steven's accounts, thoughts, dreams, that coincide with what we find and see

I honestly took this to mean that Steve's "dreams" were actually just misremembered memories of the experience of building those parts of the map, considering that he had those vivid "dreams" and also couldn't recall building large portions of the map.

[DeafPixel]

12 hours ago, Mr Masker said:

It's really so surreal to see a mod that I played when it was only known to Doomworld folk, become talked about by SomeOrdinaryGamers, Vinesauce, Jacksepticeye and Pyrocyncial, get analysis videos that gain over 1M views and have actual effects on the sales of its inspirations.

 

I thought MyHouse was great when it came out, but I never expected this much attention towards it. I hope maybe this can inspire people to try out Doom mapping themselves and make their own interesting projects, whether on GZDoom scale or just mapping. I'm quite hopeful for the future this could bring. Well done MyHouse.wad... or MyHouse.pk3... or just "MyHouse"... something like that.

As someone who has played doom mods for at least 5 years at this point, seeing one get THIS big is honestly almost scary

[OliveTree]

8 hours ago, Gez said:

Help me!

 

Anna.

do you mean to say that its two messages? or that "help me" is attributable to Anna ?

 

21 hours ago, Gez said:

It's always "my childhood friend" and there's never any pronoun,

This isn't strictly true. A brief list of some sentences with pronouns (not exhaustive):
 

Spoiler

 

August 04 - "I miss him so much and I can't believe he's gone."

August 16 - "At the end of the visit, his parents gave me some old personal items that belonged to my friend."

August 20 - "It was a map of my friend's house… I was so surprised to learn that he had been working on this map in secret!"

August 29 - "I just miss my friend so much, and it's hard to think that he's gone."

 

 

It still feels notable that none of the gendered references come after August. Certain sentences, like the one above from August 16th, almost feel like they're referring to two different people (being "the person for whom 'his parents' are the parents of" and "my friend") because of the clumsy phrasing. It's telling, but feels inconsistent, for Steve to not refer to Tom by name. Certainly he's willing to call him Tom at some points, including this forum thread itself and other points in the journal (see feb. 19 and 20), but he also namedrops Anna in the map and includes the S+A engraving which we're assuming means "Steve + Anna" in this case.

 

On an unrelated note, has much been made previously in this thread about the fact that Tom's vanilla version of the map already had an invisible teleport, something that's not vanilla compatible? That's assuming the .wad version actually is "the original vanilla release" Steve refers to it as. It's almost like there was always something about this map that was out of the ordinary.

[Logamuffin]

I don’t know if this connection has been drawn but MyHouse.wad is similar to the videogame The Beginner’s Guide by Davey Wreden. They both have this developer character who is gone (Coda in the Beginner’s Guide, and Tom in My House) an unreliable narrator (Davey in Beginner’s Guide and Steve in MyHouse.wad’s journals) who wrestles with the other person’s work. They also have very similar vibes overall especially when comparing the Epilogue level of Beginner’s Guide to MyHouse’s middle section.

 

Possible inspiration or am I drawing connections where they don’t exist?

[Gez]

1 hour ago, OliveTree said:

do you mean to say that its two messages? or that "help me" is attributable to Anna ? 

Yes to both.

 

39 minutes ago, Logamuffin said:

I don’t know if this connection has been drawn but MyHouse.wad is similar to the videogame The Beginner’s Guide by Davey Wreden.

The similarities were noted in one of the vids that have been posted in here. The one by an id Software employee.

[ShallowB]

1 hour ago, OliveTree said:

Tom's vanilla version of the map already had an invisible teleport, something that's not vanilla compatible?

I don’t think Steve ever mentioned the map being vanilla, only that it was made in the early 2000s.  Boom source port was already around at that time, and that engine made silent teleports possible.  It was frequently used exactly the way the Tom version of the map uses it, to fake room-over-room layouts. 

[Kroc]

5 hours ago, embql said:

it's kinda weird it's called "myhouse.wad"

 

It's a DOOM community inside joke, in that everybody's first map in the 90s was a recreation of their house. "myhouse.wad" is neologism for a dull, low-quality, first-time mapper map typically ignored by the community. This wad plays into that by naming the map in a way that purposefully undersells its depth. :)

[thomasthetankengine]

what if all this theorizing was wrong and it was literally just steve uploading tom's map here, with steve keeping a little journal of his dreams and him putting the dreams in there to separate it from other myhouse.wads

[embql]

2 hours ago, Kroc said:

 

It's a DOOM community inside joke, in that everybody's first map in the 90s was a recreation of their house. "myhouse.wad" is neologism for a dull, low-quality, first-time mapper map typically ignored by the community. This wad plays into that by naming the map in a way that purposefully undersells its depth. :)

You're right, and I agree with you in the following paranthesis of my previous post ;)

[AlSmith]

Not discounting the discussion about the appropriateness of presenting the release as a 'tribute WAD' when it might not be a real one:

 

-----

 

Re: Jimmy's hint:

 

15 hours ago, TJG1289 said:

I think it was a hint about the extra screenshot folder that has the BFG location in it.

 

I just realized that the containing screenshots folder has one fewer picture than the screenshots sub-folder inside it, meaning that the sub-folder is an extended set of screenshots. The additional screenshot is the blood-soaked airport bathroom. So, in terms of the narrative, the .pk3/.wad release, as a representation of Tom Allord, is depicted with a "first layer" of screenshots and then a "second layer" inside that is more detailed. The detailed inside-layer of Tom-as-represented-by-a-game includes a memory or metaphor of a traumatic incident in a bathroom in which there was a gender swap, at least in the bathroom-visitor's outward presentation. So, the containing folder can be interpreted as "What's on the outside," and the sub-folder as "What's on the inside." That matches the House of Leaves material: the house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. (Much like we all are.)

 

That's clever.

 

-----

 

Re: Are Steve and Tom one and the same? I don't think so.

 

Their obituaries wouldn't be detailed differently if they were. I interpret the burnt house ending as Steve dreaming a what-if: what if he was with Tom/Anna and also died in the house fire, and was together with them in death.

 

-----

 

What's it all about?

 

At heart, I think the .pk3/.wad release essentially interprets many of the themes in House of Leaves as a metaphor for the trans experience. And, I think it possibly aims to convey that living with dysphoria, an outward presentation different to your gender identity, is like existing in a liminal space. I already wrote before in this thread that the fact that the game's monsters are all from established WADs or are other horror icons (e.g. the skinstealer) might be supposed to convey that we each share similar demons, from similar fears. But then, the trans narrative is so personal, I'm second-guessing that interpretation, and trying to reconcile the use of established horror icons with the very personal narrative.

 

In the endings where the house burns and the plot of land still exists, I interpret this as conveying that when someone has died, it is typically the outward presentation that others see as having gone (i.e., the house's exterior) and not the true identity (i.e., the house's interior). Hence, in the house fire endings, Steve, knowing Tom/Anna (i.e. having collected all the memories / artifacts), 'what-if's as having died in that house fire along with Tom/Anna (hence Steve's gravestone), to be together with Tom/Anna's true identity in death.

 

As a sidenote, and this may be a coincidence but I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't: I note that in this photo in the GDrive, showing a hand holding a polaroid of the gas-station, the only movie title able to be made out in the photo-prints in the background is "The Matrix". That movie is famously a trans metaphor.

 

The two "beach" endings are, to me, plainly about acceptance. As I said earlier in the thread, the "fake beach" seems to be about 'putting on a show' of peace, but not having accepted anything (hence the incomplete heart on the beach). 'The show' is represented by the clapperboard. The "real beach", I think, represents that Steve has reached acceptance — the journal says as much. Steve has "fought for happiness" (paraphrased from the journal), i.e. he fought his demons to get to happiness, it couldn't be presented more literally. Steve has accepted that "life is finite" (from the journal again) — hence the "S + A" heart is complete on the beach, because Steve has accepted that A has physically gone, but that the love still exists.

 

-----

 

Remaining narrative mysteries (at least, for me)

 

The dog(s) in the brutalist house/s narrative.

 

The large house has the big dog and the small house has the little 'best buddy'. I think this pretty clearly represents a traumatic childhood experience with a dog (when Steve was small, and so the house was big), hence the message for the frisbee, "Good dogs are good dogs." When Steve is older (and so the house appears smaller), the dog is smaller. I note also that "Snugs" the soft toy is a dog, though that might be an unintended similarity.

 

Is/are the house/s brutalist simply because it's/they're another liminal space? I'm not sure about this. 

 

It's clear that accepting dogs is a part of the narrative. The 'best buddy' dog joins you on the "real beach", which represents acceptance (as above). I think this pretty clearly hammers home that overcoming one's fear of dogs and accepting them is part of Steve's 'journey' through the game. 

 

But I don't really get how the dog-acceptance narrative interweaves with the friend's-death-acceptance trans narrative (if they're meant to).

 

The red numbers in the journal

 

What does 2, 3, 1, mean? [Edit: Catpho reveals below]

Edited May 27 by AlSmith

[TasAcri]

What are the system requirements for this map?

 

It seems like my i5 4670/GTX 1060 can barely handle it. It often drops below 60fps and in

Spoiler

the Gas Station fights

it even goes below 10fps. I'm playing at 1080p resolution, though dropping it doesn't help much.

 

It also drops below 10fps in most areas if i open the map.

 

Are there any options that could increase the performance in GZDoom?

[Catpho]

6 minutes ago, AlSmith said:

What does 2, 3, 1, mean?

It's a hint regarding the deeper progression of the map. Try matching up the entries with the places that you go in a full run of myhouse.

[AlSmith]

1 minute ago, Catpho said:

It's a hint regarding the deeper progression of the map. Try matching up the entries with the places that you go in a full run of myhouse.

 

Oh! 1 is the mirror-world, 2 is the daycare, and 3 is the bathhouse. This makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

[Logamuffin]

6 hours ago, Gez said:

Yes to both.

 

The similarities were noted in one of the vids that have been posted in here. The one by an id Software employee.

 

Link? I haven’t been following this thread.

[Gez]

6 minutes ago, Logamuffin said:

 

Link? I haven’t been following this thread.

 

[PinKiSiDoR]

22 hours ago, aloysiusfreeman said:

 

I encountered this issue too (I am playing on a Mac). I was on a previous version of GZdoom, because for some reason I could not get it to load on the latest one. 

What fixed it the first time? I walked backwards into the underwater section of the house. That did it!

It actually does, what the hell, thank you so much.

[TasAcri]

How do you reach the

Spoiler

Megasphere in the brutalist house?

 

The DOOMwiki description didn't help much.

[Yagacaw]

20 minutes ago, SakuraFalls said:

It's a very manipulative way to bring people who have Empathy to try the WAD since they will feel sorry for the OP. Now, I don't want to turn this into a debate. It's still subjective on whether or not everything mentioned is true or false. Until the OP reveals the truth, I will hold back my judgement. However, I'll still remain bitter towards the fact that I was lied to. 

 

I hear you on not wanting to be emotionally manipulated through deception, but It doesn't feel like to me that the deception was malicious in nature.  The nature of the ARG element of the work of Art seems to be a narrative choice in order to spark discussions like this and to invoke obsessive thoughts in the players who come here trying to find a definitive answer or meaning of the wad. Its what makes any puzzle game a fun experience. 

 

It doesn't matter to me that In John Wick that they emotionally manipulate me into getting on board with the slaughter of gangsters by killing his dog in the first part. I'm on for the ride, So I don't think its at all beneficial to try and track down if these were real people or not,  any more then to find out if there really was a John Wicks Dog.

 

Plus with the heavy influence from House of Leaves I would make a guess that the Author will never reveal themselves or provide an "Answer". When you are wallowing in self obsessions', either for a Doom wad, or thinking about an old friend who you will never see again, your never going to get to the answer, there's just more and more hallways that are as deep as you are willing to look.

[SiFi270]

I'm beginning to think the QR code ending was a mistake. Without it, people might have taken the story at face value and not dug any deeper than the author intended.

[LuzRoja29]

muy quemado el mapa honestamente.

• no new weapons
• no much enemies and tech bases
• very strange house, and is not covered in blood
• no gore corpses and metal songs
• very boring map

4/10

[pikitunch]

it's interesting cause there is a story but at the same time it still feels more about the author (the actual author, not the character author, unless they're actually not separate?) dealing with grief and loss of someone. there's an interesting line that's being toed where it's not quite certain how much of this is a story with more pieces to be solved, or if it's really just the author's own story and way of dealing with a loss. either way, personally I don't find it disrespectful and resonates a lot with me as a map about losing someone in your life. I thought the ending with the sunset was perfect, it was like the game's way of saying "you can stop thinking about the house" with it not letting you to go back or hit an end of level mark. you just got to finally sit there and relax.

[ultra_kek]

2 hours ago, SiFi270 said:

I'm beginning to think the QR code ending was a mistake. Without it, people might have taken the story at face value and not dug any deeper than the author intended.

Spoiler

I mean personally, I think subverting any attempt to take this at face value should push anyone away from believing there is a true version of events or any kind of objective author's intent, by making it clear that there is no literal or realistic way to interpret the narrative that would require digging into the author's identity and private life. I think the QR code may have been a mistake, but pretty much only because limitations on the link make it difficult for people to directly access the content the QR code is supposed to direct people to, which happened to me on my playthrough.