Nine Inch Heels

I've got an idea for that issue in particular, and some adjustments to E3M6 on HMP won't be too difficult to do. Only problem is I'll not get around to doing much of anything until the weekend, but I should be able to take care of most points on the list, if not all of them.

Basically what Xaser pointed out already, I will add, however, that there's a bit more to it. Time was, that people posted bad reviews/feedback if some WAD or pk3 didn't run properly with either project brutality or brutal doom. So it's not a PB exclusive problem. There have been a few people who made themselves particularly infamous for giving poor ratings if anything didn't run in their favourite niche source port, too, btw - those folks aren't talked about much, if at all, because their numbers pale in comparison to those who ran BD or PB. Here's the thing, if you got lot of people using "thing A" there will always be some entitled and vocal headcases amongst them, who will then complain that "thing A" doesn't work as expected when used with "something.WAD". With no rudimentary idea as to how anything doom works, blaming the mapper is anything but an unnatural course of action (thus far, "thing A" has always worked fine, so it must be the mapper's fault, right?). Now you tell that vocal person that their supposedly 100% justified criticism is anything but, and vocal person yells into the internet, on some other wavelength, that people from "notyoursitehere" hate gameplay mods. And now you know why this question, as well as similar ones, just aren't gonna disappear for good in the foreseeable future...

Alright, fine, I'll think about it.

"Tell me how you play, so I can make a map that fits like a glove" isn't a solution either, and I am quite possibly the worst "target" for such a suggestion. You do something wrong - you get hit. You're not willing to adjust your play - you'll get hit in the future - universal truth for virtually every map ever put in a .WAD file, to say the least. You can keep arguing this all you want, I'm not gonna budge on HMP and UV cybers in E3M8, when it's as simple as waiting for when the cyb starts shooting, so you will know when and where the rockets will go, and while you're waiting, you might as well line yourself up for the switch. There is nothing "specific" about it. It's literally just waiting for a window of opportunity, and I'm not going to map around a mere lack of patience on the player's side. It's just not going happen for those 2 difficulty settings. If getting a clean hit on the switch without being blasted to death right away was subject to RNG, I would actually be able to wrap my head around this discussion, but it's not. The only thing that's subject to RNG is when the cyb will start firing rockets, from there on out, it's as deterministic as it gets. Making the switch easier to punch is up for debate. Additional health or even blue armours are up for debate as far as HMP and lower go, but the cybs are non-negotiable on HMP and UV, because even if you happened to mess up the switch-press, you could just keep playing the map and try again the following cycle. There is enough time for that, even though time is a limited resource for one reason or another. The timer on UV predates any possibility to even get 2 shots in on the SMM, and back when the map was significantly harder, you could still afford to miss a couple shots, or opportunities to shoot, for that matter. As for painting myself into a corner: If I wanted to just solve it all immediately, I could just plop down an impassable fence in order to force players on the path that clearly beats rolling the dice. Problem solved, player's situational awareness and willingness to do some tactical thinking severely disrespected, however.

Overtly prickly is probably one of the most charming ways to spell sadistic. :P The maps are mean-spirited, and I knew, long before the RC would be released, that there was gonna be some talking going on about them. What baffles me is how the E3M8 cybs keep coming back as a talking point - I'd been expecting way more blast for the platforming in E3M6, tbh - I'm fine with adjusting lower difficulty settings to make the maps more forgiving (fewer monsters here, more power-ups there, etc) - I am not even against the idea of tweaking UV a little bit more - but the E3M8 cybs are gonna stay for UV and HMP respectively, because they create a problem that almost hands out the solution to itself on a silver platter. If it was HNTR we're talking about, then I would be open to the idea, because I think asking greener players to remember that they came down a short hallway that may now contain cybie-rockets, might just be enough "stress" already, and I could genuinely fathom a poor soul walking down that short hallway backwards, just to know when and where that other, distant cyb is shooting (which would be a pretty smart move, actually).

A couple things here... E3M6 has different platforming sections for different difficulty settings, UV is somewhat tight while HMP is basically built around the idea that pure keyboarders should have a fair shake at it - if there is any willingness to invest some practice-time. And to address the point Mouldy made about the difference in monsters - I adjusted difficulties by way of monster count, extra goodies, or more forthcoming timers. E3M8 for example has different timers for when new sets of monsters get to warp into the map, also based on difficulty settings. Having said all that... I'm not going to budge on that. Doing a 3/4 "lap" around the cyb guarding the switch, at a measured pace until it starts shooting (instead of bum-rushing the switch and getting a rocket up the ass) is not only consistent, it also makes lining oneself up for easy access to the switch trivial for all but the greenest of doomers.

I have no idea whatsoever how that happened. Easy enough to fix, though. That's how that was meant to be done originally, but a number of playtesters pointed out that I might be pushing it a bit too far - so, you get a lift instead. But hey, nothing's stopping you from trying the "original" method. I'm not 100% sure if the timers still allow for enough legroom if you do, but I believe I wasn't dreadfully tight with those anyway.

I knew my maps would ruffle some feathers, but to get the pistol start question out the way, both of these maps, as well as all other maps in the WAD that I played prior to the release candidate, are doable from pistol start. Dis isn't a puzzle, it's a race against the clock. Unless you're proficient at doing invuln-supported rocket jumps, you won't even be able to max the map, you merely get to survive it.

Well then. Let's see what manner of insights the sacrifices playtesters will provide.

That's precisely the problem. We've all been there before, we see "stuff somebody else did", no matter what it is, we sit with it for however long it takes until we're ready to pass a verdict, which we then transmit shortly after. Now we've judged somebody else's efforts. If we did indeed write something off as "low-effort", because all we perceived was the "final product", while we have no means to tell how hard the creator in question actually tried, then we've made an unqualified (and possibly unjustified) judgment call. Just recently a colleague of mine tried cooking a somewhat complex dish he had seen on the internet. He showed me the war zone that was his kitchen first, and then he showed me what looked like the most unremarkable vegetable stew you could possibly imagine. Had I seen those two images in reverse order, I would have asked him why he devastated his kitchen in order to cook some canned soup, if the conversation even went that far. Long story short, I am by no means exempt from making these unjustified "snap-calls", it happened to me more than once, for that matter... That being said, this image of a kitchen that would take hours to clean followed by a plain-looking meal certainly gets a point across.

The only thing that I would consider "objectively bad" is when a map does not behave as intended, as in it's "mechanically unsound". If what you want to make is a "low effort" my-first-map, go ahead and do that, advertise it as such instead of pretending it's something it clearly is not, and that's all there is to it. If it works as intended and advertised, then someone else is gonna get to spend a few minutes on it, and they won't be disappointed at the very least. Mission accomplished. If what you want to make is a "magnum opus" high-detail challenge map, go ahead and do that, but don't be surprised if eyebrows raise because scripts of some sort misfire half the time, monsters don't teleport into the map properly, or worse, because the map soft-locks. Mission not accomplished. By the way, "effort made" is quite possibly one of the worst possible metrics to go by (even though it is a metric people like to employ surprisingly often). Chances are nobody is watching while you bash your head against the editor as you're still learning the ropes - nobody is gonna see you sweat bullets while you're trying to figure out how to get a door to work properly from both sides, because you might just tell yourself that asking for help publicly is gonna be too embarrassing in an environment where more maps than you can feasibly play are being produced seemingly all the time. A map you might have been working weeks on while you're still learning to walk the editor walk could be something somebody else can lay down in the editor over the course of a single weekend, if not hours. This is why seeing new mappers and their threads get the first few bits and pieces of activity irks me at times... When people say that something basic is low effort (by virtue of it being basic in all respects), or worse yet, possibly "not worth posting" while someone has been working on that (supposedly) basic stuff for a considerable chunk of their limited spare-time... Then that's a problem, and it does happen every so often, unfortunately...

The thing is, anybody's time spent within any given community is what they make of it. If you are content with just cruising along, playing a few maps here and there, and perhaps sharing a few thoughts on them, then that's what you should be doing, because then you're doing it right in your individual situation. If you enjoy creating MIDIs, then that's what you should be doing. If playtesting is your thing, you ought to be doing that, etc... The person saying otherwise does not seem to understand that everything that's happening here is happening on a 100% voluntary basis, no matter what it is, and that no amount of work anybody puts into anything means they get to expect that others put as much time into anything, too. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever, for anyone, to get involved with anything they don't enjoy being a part of. For instance, since I've been around, I've hosted a small community project, and I learned quickly that it's not something I am particularly good at - not because I can't do it at all, but because I'm not getting much of anything out of it while it is a pretty time-consuming endeavour, to say the least. I did learn, however, that I'm not too shabby at contributing to community projects, so that's what I ended up doing for the most part, aside of playtesting stuff for folks whose maps I enjoyed for one reason or another, and writing up a somewhat comprehensive guide on teleport closets. One may argue all that was altruistic, but it wasn't. I did that stuff, because I had fun doing it. Point being, if you don't like what you're doing on these forums, because it makes you feel bad for one reason or another, just don't do it. That's not to say that grievances should never be spoken of, mind, but finding your comfort-zone in a community, while staying away from what bothers you, is your personal responsibility entirely. It may take some time to get where you are most comfortable, but crying foul because nobody's rolling out the red carpet - which is what that certain "someone" has been doing - isn't how you get there.

In other words, if your map is too difficult for someone, or if they happen to have more important things to attend to, such as, you know, living life... Then what? Are you owed an apology because this community isn't in orbit around your projects at all times? Wakey wakey? Toughen up, or get out. I made a couple maps over the years, virtually all of which would qualify as "difficult if not borderline impossible" depending on who you ask. There have been negative comments regarding the cruelty of my maps more than once, and not just a few of said comments were nothing more than thinly veiled pie-sling-attempts made by frustrated players - who believed themselves to be an authority on the subject of how difficult maps may or may not be in order to be suitable for "the public". I "outlived" enough tirades of armchair game-designers by now to know that the only cure is not to give a shit what people think if what you created clearly isn't meant for them to begin with. Break out your wet-wipes, do some growing up, and learn to deal with failure and adversity - turns out both these things are fairly common in life, such as it is.

And where's the arch vile who complained about your lack of decorum?

Immersion-breaking aside (which is an argument I'm not buying into myself, for the record), these supposedly cheap pop-ups are actually a win-win: Either, you die and get to tell yourself that, if only it wasn't so "cheap" you could have made it, so it's a "guilt-free" death... ...Or, you survive and get to tell yourself that you're the hottest shit to ever wield a pixelated boomstick, because you just survived the impossible unfair... I wonder why this perspective is not being entertained, let alone considered, by a (supposedly) large number of people, but then again, I have a great many suspicions as to why that's the case...

I could have sworn that I'd seen some mapping time-lapses, but I can't find any on YouTube that would demonstrate the process from start to finish... I'm not sure if something like a "definitive" tutorial on the matter exists, let alone how useful it might be. Despite the fact that my maps were mostly made with thing-placement in mind, which tends to result in a "greybox-to-greybox" approach more often than not (where the layout of individual rooms is the most important aspect for me personally), I did a few ones where layout came first - most recently my UDINO maps (an older example would be my map in JOM05 "winter weekend") - all of which were mostly about the layout at first, but also for vastly different reasons, and with very different results, accordingly. I think if you want to wrap your head around the idea, the best comparison I can make right now would be that mapping layout first is like drawing a (potentially convoluted) flow-chart in the editor, and then working your way around it as you need to. If I were to write a tutorial (not that I'd do that, because there are lots of people who can do that better than I would be able to), I wouldn't even know where exactly to start, because at the end of the day the reason for doing layout first, in my case, depends a lot on the goals for a particular map (be it pacing, sense of scope, interconnectivity, or something else entirely). If there's one advice I think I could provide, it would be to think about why/if doing layout first could be a beneficial method with regards to what you want your map to be like. Once you've identified the approach you want to be taking, most of the "operational steps" will probably become self-evident.

1. Never presume to understand how enjoyable something is when you yourself have never tried it. If you wanna know what's fun about X, then nobody can tell you why you should be liking X - you need to find that out for yourself. 2. Don't presume to understand what a genre is all about after having seen only one example out of thousands. Slaughtermaps can cover a fairly wide range of settings, quantities, difficulty, and, like everything else, quality. 3. Why I play them is because I don't find the vast majority of "straighforward-classic-doom-gameplay" very entertaining any longer. I've been there, I've done that, I've moved on to something else. The fact that it's still one and the same game is mostly a coincidence - just like rocket jump maps, which are also unlike anything else, those are also something I've ventured into a fair bit, because it's not something I've been doing up and down for a decade or two. Why I made some maps that were slaughter? Because why shouldn't I make something that I think is fun?

I think you're selling yourself short. I get that this project has seen some time on the stove but, considering the circumstances as of late, I think it's fair to say that everybody has had a few difficulties making time for a project like this when there is so much else going on "in the real world". Let's not forget that this project could have been dead and done in the water instead.

I think it's less about blaming anybody for their personal preferences and more about pointing out how somebody was not good at entertaining an audience in that particular instance. That difference matters, because what informed the creation of this thread is that the audience blames the stage (map) instead of the actor (decino) for an underwhelming performance. Decino had all the agency in the world to change things up instead of committing to something that was a chore to watch - or who else was sitting in the driver's seat?

I feel like MTrop and rd have the right idea. I get the frustration, though. I can't claim to have made a great many maps, but some of my stuff, when played on stream for example, has received a wide range of reactions, from streamers and chat alike. Depending on who played a somewhat sadistic map I made, with their respective audience in mind, the range of "feedback" was somewhere between "this is a neat idea" and "this is the most miserable shit ever". When it comes to an audience's impression of something they themselves have not yet played, the streamer's performance is what sets up the bias which their respective audience will entertain. That's just how people function, and this dynamic is absolutely not limited to playing video games, for better or for worse (arguably for worse, though). That being said, I never liked seeing somebody else having a bad time with something I made, but there wasn't anything I could have done about it, other than looking the other way, really. It's impossible to cater to everybody to begin with, and I can't force anyone to not play the stuff I made, either. Easier said than done, but I would recommend not giving too much of a damn about it, because if a map's supposed reception is what's keeping you from enjoying what you do for recreative purposes, then what's waiting for you at the end of that road? I'm sure there are some discussions to be had about the importance of completionism, the impact of streamers and their verdicts, the merits and pitfalls of self-imposed challenges, who's responsible for what in situations like this and all the other stuff that, frankly, has been discussed up and down before, just with a different coat of paint. At the bottom line, I think the most important question to ask and answer is why you (should/shouldn't) let it get to you in the first place, and whether or not the supposed reason it did get to you is one that happens to be worth "losing sleep over", or anything of the sort.

The lack of demos crossing that line can also be explained when taking into consideration the following: So, from the outside, this might as well be a result of the prevailing "climate" at the time, which doesn't mean there was a set-in-stone-rule that stated they were outright banned. In the easiest terms possible: People not doing thing =/= There has to be a law that states doing said thing is illegal. Nobody I know spits on their own carpets at home, but that doesn't mean I get to operate under the assumption that spitting on one's own carpet is a punishable offence in the eyes of a court of law -- unfortunately, that's basically what you guys are doing since this thread started - at least it smells a bit like that. As for the rules being all pure and holy, the contrary seems to be the case: These 2 lines taken from this link absolutely tell a vastly different story. Using these nebulous spinning utilities was not only allowed, they were, apparently, fine to use despite being classified as "hacks", and there were several "legal" ones on top of that (hence the word "various"). The argument that there would have been talks about spinning utilities, if only they were ever used, does not compute - you knew they existed, someone gave permission to use (some of) them, publicly for that matter. The rules we can still see for ourselves today are in direct conflict with your assertions, and when a thread like this pops up right off the back of a run that's deemed TAS as per your compet-n decree right away, no questions asked, no holds barred, then there needs to be a damn fine explanation as to why this glaring "discrepancy" exists.

But then what exactly is a "spinning utility", "spinner", "whateverdoesrotations", and why do the rules say that these legendary yet nebulous thingamabobs are allowed? And why do you keep insisting that stating which .exes may be used is in any way equal to a holy stone tablet with engraved commandments on it? It just doesn't work like that. When taking at face value your claim that there have ever been any holy principles, then these rules are clearly contradicting each other - yet we're being told it should be absolutely obvious what the correct interpretation of these sacred guidelines is supposed to be. J4rio was right on the money when pointing out that retroactively drawing a line doesn't mean we get to pretend it's always been there - and that's what's happening here, because with nothing tangible and explicit to back things up, this discussion isn't going to be headed anywhere. Having said that, the onus to state what's allowed and what isn't is on the admins. So if you people fucked that up, it's a you problem - not a "modern day speedrunners can't understand holy principles of purity" type of problem... Which also makes statements about the legitimacy of somebody else's accomplishments even more grating.

That's the thing though... It kind of becomes a "you versus them" when, earlier in the discussion, you put into question the validity of a run: I really don't care that you point out how great of a player the runner is, because it doesn't make this claim of invalidity any less uncharitable. First you say it's not valid in your opinion (which would have been fair enough, actually), and then, right after, you say it's not valid as a non-TAS - period... And then there's telling the rest of us how we should do: Not good enough. There used to be a joystick that allowed for turning while performing SR50s, what if someone used that for a run? Would you have gone out of your way to tell them that they obviously weren't allowed to use that piece of hardware, despite the fact that it would have been entirely unmodified and with no sorts of macros going on the background?

It seems weird to me to actually make it yet another discussion on these forums when the argument put forth is based on the following: I'm fine with discussing the ramifications of the 180° turn key with regards to modern day speedrunning - in which case my argument would be not to make such a big deal out of it, since the usefulness that informed this discussion to begin with appears to be limited to what-seems-to-be 1/1.000.000 maps or some ratio approaching meaningless looking numbers like that. Besides, the problem with regards to what were to happen if the use of the key was banned all of a sudden as far as old demos are considered, and the arguments that will then ensue along the lines of "why could they, but I can not?" are quite frankly enough to make lengthy debates about this look highly undesirable. As far as compet-n rules go: "It's dead, Jim..." Discussions should never be started with "It's how we did way back when, so it's how you do today (even if you're not part of the same gang, let alone the same format)."

The only responsibility source ports should have as far as I'm concerned is to inform their supposed users - in no uncertain terms - what the respective source port does instead of claiming to be accurate, or "strict". Other than that, no source port should have any responsibility to fix anybody else's mistakes or oversights - no matter how severe the mistake, no matter who is at fault - because at the end of the day it's not the source port's fault that a mapper messed something up. Besides, placing the burden on the source port developer to fix however many issues, in however many maps, created over the course of however many years... is a stupid idea.