Rest in peace Esa Repo

[magicsofa]

RIP

[exp(x)]

Visi said:

Is there a certain folder where this stuff normally gets saved

It might be easiest to just search for .wad files.

[Fusion]

Espi was the main man behind the graphics in Hellcore and Hellcore 2.0

Goodbye friend, I will never forget your contributions to the project, when we had so little help you stepped up to the plate and provided us with some absolutely amazing stuff. (The first sky you made in Hellcore 1/2 blew me away)

You'll be dearly missed, good luck to you in the afterlife, may you rest in peace and be blessed with eternal happiness.

[pavera]

Hellcore 2.0 certainly was an incredible looking mapset.

[Creaphis]

exp(x) said:

It might be easiest to just search for .wad files.

Agreed. Anything with a .wad extension would be of great interest here. However, it doesn't seem to be possible to search for files of a certain extension with Win XP's search function. Lame.

[Super Jamie]

Creaphis said:

Agreed. Anything with a .wad extension would be of great interest here. However, it doesn't seem to be possible to search for files of a certain extension with Win XP's search function. Lame.

F3, *.wad, C:

[Visi]

Alright then, going over there on friday, the funeral is on saturday, got a day to sort things out on sunday and then back on the plane on monday. *notes down the names to search for* I'll upload anything I find either sunday, or some time in the next week.

[ReFracture]

If you need any more help while you are there please feel free to ask.

[SaladBadger]

Look out, a good portion of the WAD files may be other mods downloaded from the archives. Try to isolate those in a folder like "In-Dev", "Projects" or whatever. If worse comes to worse look up the WADs you find at http://doomworld.com/idgames

[Visi]

Mike.Reiner said:

If you need any more help while you are there please feel free to ask.

Will do. I'm taking my geeky friend with me, if I can't manage it, he probably will. I was really hoping that you'd all tell me it'd be in some neatly organized folder, such as doombuilder/data/neatly organized list of projects. Oh well, nothing's ever easy.


Edit :

Look out, a good portion of the WAD files may be other mods downloaded from the archives. Try to isolate those in a folder like "In-Dev", "Projects" or whatever. If worse comes to worse look up the WADs you find at http://doomworld.com/idgames

Thanks, *notes down the site*

[SteelPH]

Why must the good die young? :(

Rest in peace, Espi.

[myk]

Farewell, Esa.

In a way, you will live on in your unique maps, which have given people here much enjoyment.

[Colusio]

Farewell and thanks for your levels, especially ruma and sid.

[Hitherto]

Fly in peace.

[Lüt]

Ah, what the hell.

I see a lot of people saying they didn't know him so well. He tended to withdraw from public presence 5 or 6 years ago, only staying in regular private conversation with a select few people. I guess I was one of the lucky few.

Until recent months, rarely a day went by during the last 6 or 7 years where we weren't having some kind of random conversation over instant messaging. We started out talking a lot about Doom and our various projects, but eventually broke off into music, movies, other hobbies, other people, random daily activities, personal living arrangements, food, art, computer parts, MMORPGs, online comics, TV shows, science, religion, fly shit, sauvakävely, epic international misunderstandings, and everything else about everyday life. Sometimes, for the sake of having a more focused and detailed conversation without interruption, I set the messenger to allow only him - and more than a couple times, it ended up with him being the only one I'd talk to for months after. We were usually talking the first thing out of bed and last thing before bed. We never cammed, for lack of cams, but we passed around digital camera videos of around the house and around town. Even though I've lived with a number of people over the years, he was a closer housemate than anybody I'd actually shared a house with. A lot of our IM logs probably look like a transcript of people talking to eachother in the next room.

Consequently, I was also the one he always sent his in-progress works to, and I have a variety of his projects at various stages, as well as a few odds and ends that were never released. I also had a lot of long talks with him about other ideas he had and things he was planning to do. One project he had been talking about a lot since releasing b2b was a "realistic" recreation of Doom2 based on its level names and designed along the lines of SiD but for Boom-compatible engines. No maps were ever started, but he left me with some impressive mental pictures. I also have a bit of an E4M1 he intended to be the b2b of E4 episodes. He was going to do an "epic" and "small" project side-by-side.

On that subject...

Visi said:

I have to clear out his computer later this week, I'll save anything he was working on and upload it somewhere, if that's what people want, but I don't know where it would be... He never really spoke about it much and all I ever did was play the stuff. Is there a certain folder where this stuff normally gets saved?

He was my whole world and I miss him more than anything...

- His girlfriend

Hello. Nice to finally meet you, though I wish it had been under better circumstances.

I can help you deal with his Doom-related archives. I'm not certain of his directory structures, but I do know a few things. You can probably expect to find hundreds of these WAD files. He kept multiple versions of his works in progress. He may not have kept all of them after the final product was completed, but I know he kept at least a few significant ones. He also archived some of these into dated ZIP files, so a *.WAD search likely won't turn up everything he's worked on. Maybe not even most of it. As somebody else pointed out, plenty other people make WADs, and there will also be plenty of other people's WADs in his game directories. If he was pack-rat and didn't delete the WADs he didn't like, you could even expect to find thousands of these files. Finally, I sent him as many maps and versions of my works-in-progress as he's sent me, so I'm going to have to make things even harder by requesting those not be prematurely released :(

It would be absurd for you to try to sift through all of that stuff while you're out there, plus I think the visit will be stressful enough without having to deal with all this. On the other hand, I'm a regular around here, I've been watching the incoming /idgames stuff for years and have been playing selections from it for even longer, and I know about everything he's worked on so I know what to look for amongst his files to find the ones that are actually his own works. If you could check your private messages, I'm going to write you about help with this, and a few other things.

Anyway, I honestly don't know what to think now. It's like his sister said, it's hard to find words and it feels like it happened to someone else. She thinks maybe it hits at the funeral. It hasn't hit here yet. He's been such a constant presence, the idea of him never showing up again just sounds like a lame joke. Usually a death and everything that goes with it is such a big deal. A simple IM from a relative hardly seems "real" or "official". That's really all there is to it?

Yeah.

I have no clue about life right now.

I think I'm going to disappear for a month or two.

Visi, I'll write you by Wednesday night (American time), alright?



(And for whoever was doing his wiki page, you can put Nov 12 1981 for date of birth. I don't know who put it in his blog that he was only 22, but that was quite off.)

[Visi]

Yeah.. It's like he's just offline, and he'll be back if I just wait long enough, if I just keep saving up the things to tell him. The thought of having to spend the rest of my life without him just seems silly and impossible. I loved him from the very first time we met, even though it was in a game and I think we spent most of the time killing monsters in silence, :p something just clicked.

As with you, he was my best friend, and one of the very few people I spoke to. I'd get up in the morning, and he'd be there, if I had college, I'd go online and talk to him at lunch time, and then again when I got home, until he went to bed. If I didn't have college, we'd talk on and off all day, sometimes play a game, Doom or Diablo2 or WoW or whatever was the game of the moment.

But, I still feel like I hardly knew him, like I should have taken more advantage of it, even though I know I couldn't have and that there's no point in regrets. He was my whole world and it feels like half of me is missing now he's gone. He changed my life so much.


My AIM is KoChanneo and my YIM is TheRealKoChanneo, I'm online most of the time but gonna be doing a lot of packing and tidying today. Going to Amsterdam tomorrow, (Thursday) gotta be at the airport for 8am GMT, traveling to Finland on Friday with a friend, the funeral is on Saturday, we have all Sunday to try and do something with his computers, then flying back to Amsterdam for a couple of days on Monday. Home to the UK on Thursday.

[fraggle]

Lüt said:

I can help you deal with his Doom-related archives. I'm not certain of his directory structures, but I do know a few things. You can probably expect to find hundreds of these WAD files. He kept multiple versions of his works in progress. He may not have kept all of them after the final product was completed, but I know he kept at least a few significant ones. He also archived some of these into dated ZIP files, so a *.WAD search likely won't turn up everything he's worked on. Maybe not even most of it. As somebody else pointed out, plenty other people make WADs, and there will also be plenty of other people's WADs in his game directories. If he was pack-rat and didn't delete the WADs he didn't like, you could even expect to find thousands of these files. Finally, I sent him as many maps and versions of my works-in-progress as he's sent me, so I'm going to have to make things even harder by requesting those not be prematurely released :(

Perhaps you might be the best person to go through the files anyway. You were obviously someone he was close to and who he would have trusted to do it.

By the sounds of things there is probably a lot of data on his hard drive, more than is possible to go through in a day. Perhaps the best course of action might be for Visi to copy all WAD files from his hard drive onto a flash drive and send them to Lut to digest?

Just a thought.

[Fusion]

Lut, If you require any help whatsoever, whether it be hosting, or helping you sort through files. Please let me know, I'd be eager to help in anyway I can.

[Prince of Darkness]

Fusion said:

Lut, If you require any help whatsoever, whether it be hosting, or helping you sort through files. Please let me know, I'd be eager to help in anyway I can.

I think we all would love to help.

This... just felt like it needed to be here.

[Devalaous]

Quite a shock, as Ive played his maps and seen him posting and all. I wish I had bothered to complete his map sets I had, which I didnt due to "100s of wads, so little time", as it'll be difficult to play them now

Mindblown.

[Epyo]

oh my god, wow, this is the most awful thing...possible.

I have to say, I think suspended in dusk is just about one of the best level sets I've played in a shooter...I'd have loved to have seen him picked up by a company like valve or something...

But at least he left the inspirational marks on the world that he did. People who create such beautiful art for the earth do not deserve such a fate. This terrible world did not deserve Espi, perhaps now he has moved on to one that does.

[SYS]

:(

Rest well in the grace of infinite consciousness......

[Doctor Faust]

So sorry to hear about this loss. My deepest sympathies to his family and friends.

Doc Faust

[ragnew]

Ah man, how very, very tragic - :-(

I don't even know what to say. RIP Espi. You fought a long hard battle man, and it's time to take the rest you've earned.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of this great person.

[Lüt]

Alright, seeing how today would have been his birthday, I suppose it's about the right time for an update.

I haven't forgotten about this topic, but I have been busy, and these situations take some time for everybody to process. The Doom stuff wasn't exactly top priority.

Still, the DVD of Espi's Doom files arrived earlier this month. It was as I suspected: 7,606 files, 190 folders, 4.097 GiB, and rather haphazardly organized.

I've been perusing the WADs during my bits of spare time the last 2 weeks. It's also as I suspected: there won't be much rare and unreleased material to share.

B2B was more or less his attempt at gathering all his random scraps of unfinished material and working them into a full release. E2M1 was a major overhaul of a previously complete level, E2M4 was a reworking/expanding of a prior attempt at a 3D-floors-based quake-themed map for either Legacy or EDGE (I forget which), and a couple other odds and ends, from scenes that didn't make Flashback to other random experiments, made their way in as well. Not to say that B2B was a hack job in any way (it's at least 80% original, and almost every prior construction that was included got a major revision) - just to say that there probably won't be much original material left over.

At this point, it seems most of the material will be alternate versions of existing maps rather than all-new partial maps. There are some versions of B2B maps from before they were made vanilla-compatible. Most of these changes weren't very notable, though there are a few big ones, the biggest by far being E2M9, which featured all the floating buildings in one large sky arena rather than split into separate sections. Hopefully I can find the original map E2M4 was based off too. There's also a lengthy development history of his epic EDIV castle/dungeon map, which should be fun and inspiring for any fan or mapper to see unfold. I'd like to put all significantly different versions into a single 8-or-so-map WAD so people can watch it grow from a little 64x64-gridded outdoor river area to what it is today. Certain areas are majorly different from their final versions, so this won't be a mere see-the-order-of-completion progression.

But most of all, he really did some excellent work for Millennium, and I think that would be of the greatest interest to anybody by far. Still, I'll keep whittling down his Doom directories to see what's lingering around.

Unfortunately, I'm going to be quite busy for at least another month. I've got 4 classes going until December 16, and they only get harder as they progress. On top of that, I also might be buying a condo in the next month or two, which will add a slight moving/renovating hassle. However, winter break should be enough time to deal with all that, and I'll be taking a very light class load this spring semester so I can get caught up with everything else I've been putting off the last year and a half. I made the mistake of taking 2 double-pace summerschool classes, and now I'm completely exhausted from basically no summer break between schoolyears.

Anyway, since this'll be a rather lengthy process, I'll start a blog in the blogs forum to chronicle progress (once it gets going), along with any material or compilations I find to document and release. I may take somebody up on their webspace offer soon. Thanks for being patient, and for the hosting offers.

[EarthQuake]

Thank you.

[neubejiita]

SID is awesome i know i will always love playing it. Thank you espi for all you have given us. Fare thee well.

[sargebaldy]

Goddamnit. I only just heard about this now.

Espi was a friend of mine, though I hadn't been in close touch with him for years, and also the best damned Doom mapper I've ever known.

Rest in peace.

[Colusio]

Thanks
Lüt

[sargebaldy]

I spent a few hours updating one of Espi's old speedmaps and released it as Alley Cat. It's not long, but it's a fun little map.