DMPhobos

That is awful, i never got a chance to interact with him, but i was well aware of his work around the community and i even used some of his custom monters, i think it's true that such contributions are often overlooked and taken for granted in the community and they really deserve recognition. My deepest condolences to his loved ones, and may he rest in piece.

I got a bit curious about how much was changed so i started playing kdizd to compare a bit. While i did noticed a lot of changes when i first played the demake, now that i'm playing both side by side, i'm really impressed by how much the layouts were changed and reinterpreted for the better. Just to compare e1m5 side by side... While all the vanilla and deh tricks are extremely impressive i do think that the reinterpretation and reworking of some of the maps also deserves equal praise. Seriously the more i keep taking a closer look at kdikdizd, i just keep finding more and more cool things about it

Just completed my playthrough using Cripsy Doom (build 4) On Z1M4 there's a couple of spots that don't do any damage to the player in the reactor toxic zone, haven't checked if it's due to missing the damage flag or because of the microdetail, but might be worth checking. It's still present on build 5 I'm not a big fan of the original KDIZD gameplay but i was really curious about checking it out. It's extremely impressive for vanilla and i really appreciated some of the changes made to the original encounters and layouts. One thing i do have to comment on is how much i loved the music (specially z1m4 and z1m8). Overall really impressive work, and despite the fact that i don't like the original kdizd much i really had fun playing the demake

Personally i do try to always find the secret exit on all the wads i play, but i've had a couple of wads where after playing a few minutes of a secret map i revert back to an early save and take the regular exit since some wads have really difficult maps for the secret slots, and after playing a few minutes i just realize they're not my cup of tea and i just go back to the regular exits. So yeah, i try to always find the secret exit... but i don't 100% commit to play the secret maps if im not enjoying playing them

I don't have much to comment on the episode itself, just tho the whole jag doom having 0 music has me scratching my head a bit since the music it's still there, it just plays on the intermission screen rather than ingame, seems to me a weird omission since literally you just have to finish a map to hear the jag tracks James mentions that Sandy Petersen said jag doom music was missing due to licensing issues, but i think he (or sandy) mixed up ports since i think PS1 was the one with different music for that reason

Longest break i had was somewhere around 2008 - 2015, where all doom related things just stopped interesting me, but with the new doom game around the horizon, i started getting interested into the series again and not long after i feel into the mapping/modding rabbit hole again, and haven't gotten out of it yet

Generally i try not to spend too much time doing detail since i've always been more on the "Architecture over detail" camp. Not so much because i want to be efficient within any limits (if there's any for the map format), but i think that things like having interesting shaped rooms, lots of height variance between areas and other architecture details such as columns, windows or ceiling variance can make a better looking map than adding heavy detail all over the place. Not that adding detail to a map is a bad thing, and sometimes i do get carried away with it, but too much detail can end up looking really 'noisy', and can sometimes even be intrusive to gameplay (such as getting stuck on some microdetail when moving) so i try not to spend much time doing it

I guess mine would be semi abstract layouts that tend to flow in an interconnected way

I only have one piece of advice for anyone interested in mapping Always try to make the sort of map that you have fun playing As for everything else, go nuts and most importantly have fun

I'm still mapping (albeit slowly these past months)

A few years ago when i was getting back again into mapping i contributed to a map called impromptu minidido, where each participant would speedmap one section that would be put together into a single map. Not just the end result was a massive map, but it had contributions ranging from small sections with easy classic gameplay, to difficult slaughter setpieces. When it released i tried to complete the whole map, but the sudden difficulty spikes between sections completely caught me off guard, and after getting stuck on a difficult section i realized i had bitten more than i could had chewed at the time

Congratulations on the release! This was a fun set to test, and it's good to see it finally released

These are really awful news, it's really sad to see a long time community member pass away. My condolences to all of his family and loved ones, and may he rest in peace.

México

The only rule i have for mapping, is to always try to build a map that i have fun playing. That's it Other than that, i do have a few mapping habits, but i wouldn't necesarily call them rules such as always doing the first test runs without taking any secrets to balance properly or always trying to make the map fun to navigate in