Hellbent

E3M7 is a great map. It's one of the few maps I IDCLEV to when I feel like playing Doom (along with E2M4). I feel like people don't talk enough about the art and sound design in Doom. These things contribute greatly to why it has held up so well. The slop of former humans, the twisted roar of a dying Baron of Hell, the still excellent music tracks; all the components of the game came together to produce a distinctive and compelling effect that far surpassed the sum of their parts.

I changed the "Loss" to "Dread" which I think is a bit of an improvement. I thought a blind playthrough would get more traction, but the video isn't even managing a 4:00 avg view percentage of its 37 minute running time. :-/

I recorded an FDA of my playthrough of this map. I feel like my thumbnail could use some work, though:

I was! playing on my MacBook. I really liked the level. Seems like you must have planned much of it out beforehand. I liked how the baron I opted not to fight followed me around the level. I will have to look up other wads you have made. That was a treat!

My FDA: 30th anniversary of Doom! https://youtu.be/MUE61ZxO6BQ

https://www.pcgamesn.com/doom/expansion-pack-bethesda

My stranger music submissions for the soundtrack for the upcoming Strange Things season. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsl15zAC_a4 https://youtu.be/z7-yTQ528aA

The snort and thud sound a demon makes when it dies.

Same. I rode 95 miles on Sunday so I guess I'm not feeling very old! The only time I feel old is when I drink alcohol. I pretty much can't drink anymore, except vodka and tequila. All other alcoholic beverages make me feel like I've entered the upsidedown, and watching Stranger Things makes me feel young again (just 8 more days till the new season!).

Making a single map from this piece of art is a tall order. The question is, how do you break up such a task into a multi-person project? (Because, honestly, no one would be insane or ambitious enough to tackle this solo). Maybe you could break up the mapping into color codes: One mapper to draw the big purple corridors and the thin blue ones surrounding them. Another to draw the combination of the dark blue and regular blue ones. And another to do draw the gold ones. But this isn't a great solution either since each mapper would have to wait for the previous one to finish before they could start (unless each person were to build their part in separate wads and then you were to overlay each person's designs into a single wad). 4-sector.wad anyone? If this were to be done with only 4 sectors, what do you think the sector heights and widths should be? One possibility could be: purple sector: floor:0, ceiling: 512 (I'm thinking these corridors would be 256 wide) Thin dark-navy blue sector: Floor:-32, Ceiling: 96 (I'm thinking these would be between 40 and 56 wide [the diagonal portions]) Thin blue sector: Floor: -56, Ceiling: 152 (I'm thinking these would be 24 to 33 wide [the diagonal portions]). Gold sector: Floor: 96, Ceiling: 288 (you'd use arch-viles to get up here) (These generally could be about 128 wide). Maybe Doomworld needs another competition wad like 10sector with some worthwhile prize for the effort. Judging would be based on how cool and creative the wad is but just as importantly how closely it adheres to the "blueprint" of the image:

I'm new to Formula 1 and I don't really have a vested interest in any one particular person. After watching a couple seasons of Drive to Survive I was sort of starting to root for Red Bull to dethrone the Mercedes stranglehold on the sport. So when I learned in the middle of the season that Verstappen was up on points I decided it might be fun to watch the final races. But all I saw was Lewis outdriving Max every race (I guess I tuned in right after Merc got a new motor). I really wanted to see these two have closer battles in the final races, but still super exciting racing in the latter stages of the season, and honestly I could hardly breathe for the entire final lap of today's race; I've never really experienced that before while watching a sporting event. I think the decision should stand; it's just not how I wanted Max to win. I wanted him to outclass Lewis and I don't understand why the race wasn't closer. Max's qualifying lap on the soft tires made it look like he was going to lead the first 15 laps, but he had a bad start, and even though he was on the soft tires couldn't catch Lewis up (!) after he attempted to pass Lewis only to lose more ground to him. This was quite disappointing, and I don't really understand it. It was also disappointing after seeing Checo do an amazingly heroic job of bringing Lewis back to Verstappen only to see Lewis then increase the gap again. For a minute there, it looked like Max might bring the gap back after his second tire change, but he didn't seem to move through the lapped traffic quite as quickly as Lewis (he was gaining on Lewis up to that point) when he needed to his gap to Lewis to really start dropping. While I wanted Max to win, ultimately I wanted the best driver to win today, and Lewis always seemed to have this in the bag, so to bring the two racers back together for the final lap just didn't seem right to me (especially since Lewis was on crap tires at that point). And as breathless as I was on the final lap, I couldn't help feel bad for Lewis; that it wasn't a fair way to lose the championship (or at least, the race). Redneckerz: after watching replays of the Silverstone crash, I can't really fault Hamilton on that one; or at least it doesn't look like a blatant foul on Hamilton's side. If the roles were reversed and it was Max being aggressive (as he always is) then Hamilton likely would have yielded, but when it's Hamilton being the aggressor Max isn't likely to yield, then that's what happens. But, yeah, that's a lot of points to lose in a split second! Anyway, I think Max deserves the championship, I just didn't care for how today's race was decided. :-/ The stewards definitely haven't been consistent throughout the season.

Yeah, I have mixed feelings on the outcome. Personally I'm leaning towards feeling the stewards took too many steps to ensure the race doesn't I understand why they do this, but I'm not really sure it's the right thing to do.

I just tried that map. Pretty cool, I was having fun until a hell knight didn't die when it "should" have and plasma'd me dead. I might give it another go; I do like that midi a lot. Now that I think of it, I don't think there is a custom level that I play over and over, though I have played Alleycat.wad quite a bit as it is probably my favorite custom level, as it has great gameplay and a very economical use of space and has Doom 2 levels of detail. For me it is the quintessential doom map and I would love to play more maps like it. Not sure what level I play the most from Doom 1, but map10 is probably my favorite level to pistol start and play repeatedly from Doom 2. Not sure why that is, maybe because I find it easy to navigate while having really fun gameplay, whereas most doom 2 maps have annoyances in the navigation department. But map24 was a level I played a lot as well as it has a very unique and distinctive sense of place and atmosphere that is unlike anything else, really, and it also has really fun gameplay, especially the first half of the map. EDIT: I used to play Map16 Suburbs a lot as well as it also a really fun pistol start challenge. I also replayed Map23 a whole bunch (for same reason: super fun pistol start challenge, and one of the less annoying maps to navigte) and citadel a lot because it has interesting secrets. To slightly lesser extent I played The Pit a lot as it is probably the most epic early doom 2 level (lots of really cool set pieces in this map), but I find the map a little more tedious to replay as compared to Refuelling Base and Suburbs. I replayed Map20 from pistol start a lot, too; the open world-map was appealing to me as well as the cyb/spidey set piece. Map15 was for a time my favorite Doom 2 map as I liked the castles in it and the way the map was sort of split by a river and that sort of LOTRy feeling when you enter the yellow key door (I think it was yellow key, not 100% sure on that now), and the secrets were fun. But over the years and decades it's always refuelling base that I'm happy to play again and again, whereas lots of other doom 2 maps I enjoyed replaying for a stint, but did not revisit them all the time.

The mouse action on earlier versions of zdoom (zdoom version 2*) is just phenomenally awesome; and modern versions of gzdoom or any other versions I've played on just are not as good. So I prefer to play in zdoom versions 2*. Since I got into Roguelikes in 2013 (umm, just Angband really) I no longer save when I play doom, which means I don't play much doom because I lose patience after dying a lot to replay levels. I should probably play on HMP but I have such a psychological hang up with that difficulty setting that I am not playing it as the level was designed to be played.

Qualifying Results: Redbull p1 and 4 on qualifying. Mercedes p2 and 6. Redbull starting on soft tires and Mercedes starting on the mediums. Redbull's hand sort of forced to soft tires when they got a flat spot on one of the medium tires. Verstappen so cool and collected for a young man in position to take his first championship, when he was talking about his flying lap and taking pole. Pretty cool to see. Hamilton says he couldn't beat Max's time, that he had just about as clean lap as he could; but, interestingly, he didn't mention that Redbull used slip stream to get the fastest lap (Max slip streamed Perez on his flying lap). Also cool to see Lando Norris of Mclaren get third. How will Redbull starting on soft tires play out with Mercedes starting on Medium tires? Is Mercedes at the advantage towards the end of the race? Whatever the case, I think Verstappen is going to set a blazing pace out of the gate and hold off Hamilton down the stretch.