Grazza

I'd go rather further than that and say it is one of the pivotal events of the 20th century (with the tank guy one of its great symbolic images). Not just for the loss of life, but as a sign that China was not going to follow the path of Eastern Europe. If things had gone differently in China in 1989, we'd be looking at very different global economics and politics right now and in the decades ahead.

Yes, it's a good map, and I gave it a generally favourable review in T/nC #150. There's one bug though: there's a door near the end where you are expected to open it and then go through it before it closes. If you open it and then retreat, you can't open it again, which rather ruins things.

Most classic-style megawads are designed so that each map is playable from a pistol start (I can't think of any that aren't) - and weapons are available to make use of the ammo that is lying around. That's not to say that they will be easy that way - you may need to find some secrets or use a cunning route to make use of the resources that are available to you. You might also need to make good use of a berserk, if available. Obviously, if you play them carrying your weapons from the previous level, they will tend to be easier, and you may not appreciate some subtleties in the map's balance and object placement. A boobytrapped SSG won't be such a clever trick if you already have one, for instance. If you want to experience the gameplay the level author "orchestrated", then play from a pistol start. Zdoom wads tend to be designed with the assumption that the player won't have disabled autosaving, and so will have stuff carried over from the previous level(s).

My best guesses are Cleimos 2 map20 (though older than you say - it's from late 1995) and Fear Complex (which is from late 2003).

That's not a lot of information to go on. Is there anything else you remember about it? Music? Any port features? Was it only slightly E1-styled or did it have areas very similar to the original maps? Was it just one big map, or a number of maps? Was the gameplay similar in difficulty to the original maps, or tougher? Lots of hitscanners and imps/demons, or were there a lot of monsters that weren't in the original E1?

There isn't, but it might make sense to have thread for "Non-Compet-N demos on Compet-N wads" (there already is one for HR, but that's always been kind of a special case, in view of its extreme popularity amongst demo recorders). Anyone have any thoughts on that?

I believe you would then be presented with a warmed-up English peer, possibly from the 19th century.

You can't. Well, there are ways you could chop the previous tics out of the demo, but it would desync due to the discrepancy in the PRNG. If you're recording demos, you need to quit the program after each failed attempt, and restart.

Yes, I'm pretty sure all of them were reviewed. I recall reviewing at least one of them. To find them, check the dates they were uploaded to the archive, and look for the T/nCs soon after those dates in the news calendar.

I'd say you're being sensible by leaving it to wait until it has cooled a little. There are areas of Japan where it is normal to drink tea at about 80 degrees C. These areas have a markedly higher rate of throat cancer than other parts of the world. Link for similar info abour a study in Iran. And another link on a different tea-related topic.

Espresso just seems silly to me. I'll drink coffee based on it (some places you have no choice), but am not really aware of any subtleties in flavour. Your choice is little more than "coffee or no coffee". With filter coffee, you get a vast variety of flavours depending on the beans, the roasting method and the grinding method. To get a sense of the differences, try a sample of the following very different filter coffees: Kenya Peaberry, Kona (pure Kona, not "Kona blend"), Maragogype and Mocha Java. Then make Espresso using the same beans, and see if you can even tell them apart. 8 oz is still pretty big by many European countries' standards.

I hardly ever have tea, but if offered tea and nothing else, I'd go for Earl Grey or Lapsang Souchong. Or maybe Keemun Congu. Something with a bit of an odd flavour. Unsweetened (of course) and normally with a little non-fat milk. Celestial Seasoning's Lemon Zinger can be nice, but the last box I bought of that lasted about a decade, so I obviously can't be too mad keen on it.

I think this is the same deal as E1M8: you need to kill everything that isn't in that final room, and it doesn't matter if you kill anything in that final room. This comes under "map-specific exceptions", so the normal Max rules are by convention suspended for these specific monsters on these specific maps. Having said that, this is a more subtle case than e1m8, in that you can choose whether to go into that room or not. I don't recall if there are demos where people use that route, or if this question has been discussed. I vaguely recall some discussion of the analogous case of maps where the rule is stated as "only 90% secrets is required", and if this means that if you succeed in triggering the officially "problematic" secret, you can skip one of the other ones. So the questions are: 1) How was the map-specific exception for pl11 stated (if at all)? 2) How have these exceptions been interpreted when there is any ambiguity?

A while ago when this stuff had been hyped up in the media, there was some sort of civil disobiedience day where "everyone" flying was going to refuse to allow themselves to be searched or some such nonsense. As it turned out, airport authorities found hardly anyone behaved differently from normal. I think the truth is that, while a lot of people dislike aspects of airport security, and are somewhat irritated by it, they tend just to mouth off about it to friends and family. When it comes to the crunch, they simply view it as a necessary evil, and understand that the alternative (leaving exploitable gaps in the security system) would be a lot worse. By the way, I fly a lot, and don't find it a big deal. People waste lot more time jabbering about it than they do actually being inconvenienced by it. Very true.

<a href="http://classic.wunderground.com/global/stations/89606.html?bannertypeclick=big2"><img src="http://weathersticker.wunderground.com/weathersticker/big2_both_cond/language/classic/global/stations/89606.gif" alt="Click for Vostok, Antarctica Forecast" border="0" height="60" width="468" /></a> pwnt

Thy Family Consumed by Eeva Marin Nightmare! Pacifist (first exit) in 0:35 A little window jumps makes it easy to exit. I chose NM skill just to make it a little more interesting. tfc2np35.zip

I drink a fair amount of coffee. A few mugs each day, at irregular times and intervals, and very variable amounts. Some days I won't have any. I don't notice any strong stimulant effect on me - I can sleep after drinking coffee just as easily (or not) as I can at other times. I normally have filtered coffee, made from beans. I use this (or rather an earlier model of that, with similar functionality - it's nice that it keeps the coffee warm by preventing heat loss rather than by continually heating it, which leads to a stewed taste within an hour or so). I take coffee with a little zero-fat milk (enough to turn it dark brown) and nothing else (no sugar or sweetener). I get most of my beans from Trader Joe, Target or Whole Foods. I tend to like lighter roasts, and the more aromatic beans such as Peaberry. Kona's nice but too expensive for what it is (if you visit Hawaii, be sure to get some as it is more reasonably priced when bought locally). Trader Joe has recently been selling Kenya Peaberry, which was my favourite coffee when I was a student but haven't found since. I'm pretty happy with the choice of coffees I now have - in England I didn't live very near a coffee specialist, and had to make do with the smaller range of ground coffee that was available at stores like Sainsbury's. At university, I got coffee from a store on Pembroke Street, which had a fantastic range, and was pretty on much on the way to lectures. That was probably where my taste for real coffee developed (in the UK, people tend to drink instant coffee - ugh!). The fact that I'd normally have a pot of Mocha Mysore or Kenya AA on the go seemed to be the main reason people would drop by my room. I find it odd how coffee, as sold in cafes, varies so much from country to country. In the US, you get a massive damn cup even if you ask for the smallest size. In France you tend to get a smaller cup of very ordinary coffee that costs about $4. If you want a dribble of milk in it, they double the price. In Italy, you have to fight to get anything larger than a thimble of ultra-strong coffee - even when it is a coffee stand at the bottom of a world cup ski run, where you'd expect people might need some liquids. (To get something like a normal-size coffee with milk: ask for an Americano; once they have poured it out, then ask for some milk to be put in it - mention milk any earlier and they give you a coffee milkshake.) In Greece and Turkey they grind the stuff into a (close to) mono-molecular powder and force water into it under pressure. The result, as far as I can tell, is like diluted mud. But the worst coffee I have ever had was in Estonia, while it was part of the USSR. I had 70 roubles that I needed to use, as I couldn't take it out of the country. The coffee cost a few kopecs, so I could have practically unlimited amounts. However, it tasted as if they had made normal filtered coffee (at some point in the distant past). And then taken the leftover coffee grounds, and ground them up finer, and pressed most of the flavour out of them. And what was left after that was mixed with warm water and served to the customers. I'm sure they serve great coffee nowadays though.

I'd only dive a dumpster if it were in an unsafe elevator on Mt Washington, and filled with my favourite monsters and weapons.

Was that a name for Phoenix/Doomzaak?

This was my attempt to clarify the generally accepted Max definition. But if people want to define new categories (such as "NotMax"), that's fine and dandy of course.

That was an ambiguous (mis-)statement of the rules, clarified by AdamH to mean that everything resurrected must be rekilled. It was never intended in any statement of the Compet-N rules that resurrected monsters could be left alive.

Rather than using shoe size, why not use his height? This is a larger number and less subject to graphical distortion (besides, they are space boots, rather than normal shoes...), and should lead to a more reliable result. Max normal strafe-50 running speed (without wallrunning or other speed boosts) is 23 units per tic, and there are 35 tics per second. Assuming Doomguy is 6 foot tall (he wouldn't be less, would he?), a little arithmetic will lead to a speed in MPH. As a trained mathematician, I'll leave it to someone else to do the calculation. :p

I've split it off so that it can't derail the Vanguard demos thread. All demos are welcome in this forum, and if people wish to define their own categories, then that's fine. Of course, whenever one of Phml's "NotMax" demos is also a valid standard Max, then it makes sense to call it a Max. I'd tend to agree with dew's thoughts on this rather odd category, but it is a clearly defined category, so as far as I can see there is no problem with posting "NotMax" demos in the thread most appropriate to them.

Agreed. Off-topic posts split off.