Alfwin

I've installed Ultimate Doom Builder on my new Linux (Pop!_OS) machine following the instructions on this page. Mostly, it works, save for two problems. The main issue is that, on entering 3D Visual Mode, Ultimate Doom Builder's controls become unresponsive. Moving the mouse still pivots the camera, but none of the keyboard commands do anything. I can't move; I can't auto-align textures, I can't even exit out of 3D mode. Sometimes, but not always, I am able to click on a wall and bring up the Linedef edit dialog, but the keyboard remains unresponsive and the mouse cursor is locked in place, snapping back to the center of the screen every time I try to move it. If I alt-tab out, the cursor remains similarly locked; the only thing I can do to escape is kill Ultimate Doom Builder from the terminal. Does anyone know what could be causing this, and how to fix it? The second, significantly less troublesome issue, is that the built-in nodebuilder doesn't work. No matter what settings I use for it, it "fails to build the expected data structures". But this isn't a huge problem, since using an external nodebuilder (specifically, BSP) works just fine. A fix for the UDB nodebuilder would be nice, but far from essential.

Been listening to a lot of The Warning lately; just some solid, high-quality rock music!

My first (successfully-recorded) DOOM video in a little while, and omg what a WAD to start with! I'm only two maps in so far and I already love it!

A couple of reasons. Firstly, it harms the balance of levels that weren't designed to account for it (most notably, it trivializes the Icon of Sin boss fight). Second, the graphics weren't designed for it and look weird when viewed from non-perpendicular angles. And finally, DOOM has, imo, a near-perfect level of complexity in its core gameplay loop. An extra axis of view to account for isn't all that complex, but its addition nudges DOOM ever so slightly outside of that "Goldilocks zone".

To quote Red of OverlySarcasticProductions: "I am an instrument through which the universe can care about itself".

Very fun little map! I tried to record footage of my playthrough, but OBS screwed up and didn't actually capture any video. Whoops. The start was pretty hard; I died a couple times before I figured out the path to just sprint through everything to SSG, letting the baddies fight it out behind me. And the Archie corridor was a bit of a grind, since the Barons kept standing in front of the Archie and I couldn't get a clear shot at him! On the whole, though, it was a fun time. Nice visuals, too - simple, gloomy, and with that classic DOOM II charm! (also I just gotta say, you just might have the best user title I've seen here on Doomworld and I fully admit that it's a significant part of the reason I picked this map to play)

There are so many great video game composers! The ones that are foremost in my mind are: Glenn Stafford Matt Ulemen Mark Morgan Lena Raine Eric Heberling And whoever did the soundtrack for The Elder Scrolls: Battlespire. They weren't credited, but it's some of my favorite spooky ambient video game music! Oh, and of course, Mick Gordon, Bobby Prince, and Andrew Hulshult all go without saying!

Back in 2016, I'd been playing a lot of The Elder Scrolls I: Arena, and I found its graphical style incredibly charming. I looked around for games that used similar rendering techniques, and so forth. I saw that, of such games, DOOM was by far the most popular, and that I could get it on Steam for less than the price of a cup of coffee. So, I gave it a try -- and instantly fell in love. I was (and, frankly, still am) amazed that a game from 1994 could feel so smooth and finely-tuned. And imagine my delight when I learnt that a brand-new sequel was just a few months away!

My "nickname" here on Doomworld (and most of the internet) is literally just my actual name. But, one of the perks of being transgender is I get to pick my own irl name, so it does have an actual backstory. It's a modernized form of the Anglo-Saxon name Ælfwine, which means "elf-friend". I chose an old Anglo-Saxon name because I'm a linguistics nerd who loves archaic Germanic languages in particular. "Elf" because I'm also a fantasy nerd, and "friend" because I always try to be as amicable as I can. Plus, I just liked the sound of it.

It was a few weeks ago that I saw it (I don't watch many movies), but the last movie I watched was Modern Times. It was my first time seeing a Charlie Chaplain film, and I absolutely loved it! I don't usually go for slapstick humor, but Chaplain's physical performance is so precise and masterful, I couldn't help but be thoroughly entertained (plus, it never felt mean-spirited, which is a big part of what turns me off to a lot of other slapstick comedies). On top of that, the story's themes/message felt strikingly relevant, even after almost a century.

Hah, good guess! She is, indeed, a female Breton with the default head! She's not a mage, though; she's actually a knight. (shameless self-promotion:) I'm doing a Let's Play series with her over on YouTube. It's definitely not as OP as a spellcaster class, but so far I'm having a lot of fun.

Oh, nice! Arena's super underrated. Sure, it's nowhere near the scope of the later Elder Scrolls games, but it's a fun little dungeon crawler. In fact, my profile pic is actually supposed to be my current Arena character! I've been hopping around a few different games lately, but the one I've been putting the most time into recently is Diablo 2.

A village in hell. The demons have gotta live somewhere, right? I've been working on this one for a while, off and on. The plan is for it to be an open-ended, exploration-heavy map where the player has to scavenge for resources to battle pursuing Cyberdemons, and it's turning out to be one of the biggest level I've ever made. So far, I've only made about half of the playable space, let alone detailing and populating with monsters, but I'm happy with how it's coming along. Biggest difficulty at the moment is deciding what music track to use; I'm torn between Waltz of the Demons and Nobody Told Me About id. Or maybe The Demons From Adrian's Pen; something with that feeling of adventure and forward motion.

GZDoom for limit-removing WADs, but for playing the IWADs or anything that doesn't use limit-removing, I prefer not to use a source port at all.

Looking at that, there are two main things I'd suggest: First, add some vertices to the outer walls of the rooms and move them around a bit, just to make the rooms seem less boxy/rectangular. Even if the overall layout is the same, having a bit of variation in the shape of the walls can make the map look a lot more interesting. If the room is using natural rock/cave textures, you can just make the walls irregular zig-zags (key word: irregular). For man-made structures, consider things like support columns that stick out slightly from the wall, alcoves or shelves set into the wall, or even just have a few walls at angles other than 90 degrees. The other thing is: you should probably delete a lot of those vertices along the edges of the blood pools. There are a lot of lines there where the angle between them is almost perfectly straight. Anywhere there isn't a significant angle between the lines, just reduce it to fewer, longer lines. With such shallow curves, you'll lose practically no apparent visual detail, but you'll significantly reduce the risk of crashes when running in Vanilla or non-limit-removing ports. (Of course, that's not a concern if you're specifically designing your map to require limit-removing ports, but even then, a lot of those vertices are just bloating your map without actually adding anything). Also, as you continue mapping, don't forget to play around with lighting variation! Even a simple, rectangular room can be made significantly more interesting if you change its bright, even lighting for a shaft of light shining from an open doorway into a dimly-lit room, or the like. Keep in mind that the human eye is naturally drawn to contrast, and to things it can see clearly, so a bright light in a dark room can also be a good way to catch the player's attention and subtly steer them in the direction you want them to go.

FIREBLU also makes for great stained-glass windows in Cathedral-type levels. Heck, I even like it being used for weird abstract Hell levels. The map I'm currently working on even has an attempt at making an E3M6-style FIREBLU building that looks trippy and surreal without being a total eyesore.

Super fun little map! Nice and simple; could easily have been an official Knee-Deep in the Dead level. Also, it's 99.9% Vanilla-compatible! Only issue I found running in DOSBox was a few of the stair textures (leading down to the switch to raise the platforms by the blue key, and again in the stimpak alcove just past the blue door) have the tutti-frutti rendering error. If you want to make the map 100% Vanilla-compatible, you'll just need to make sure all those stair textures have their vertical alignment offset set to 0. Other than that, it runs perfectly!

That's right folks, your girl is back! (albeit under a new name). I kind of burned out on DOOM for a bit there, but I've been wanting to get back into mapping for a few months now. I made several attempts, but until now, none of them really went anywhere. I decided to keep it simple, with a relatively straightforward techbase with a Knee-Deep in the Dead aesthetic. It ended up not being quite as 'small' as I'd planned, but it's still a fairly quick map. I probably won't be releasing new maps at the rate I did before, since I don't want to risk burnout again, but I want to be active in the DOOMworld community again. I'll be around, making the occasional new WAD here and there. Oh, and if you're wondering why I changed my name: "Orcsbreath" may have been a good username for me as a kid, when I first started using it, but it doesn't reflect who I am as a person now. I've been moving away from the name across the internet over the past year; my new tag, "Alfwin", is my actual irl name, and is how most people know me these days. Download: SMOLTEKv1.11.zip Compatibility: DOOM2.WAD, vanilla-compatible. Tested in DOSBox and Chocolate Doom. Difficulty: all settings implemented. Intended to be moderately spicy (there may or may not be a room with six Arch-Viles) Changelog: v1.10 - Modified the Invulnerability Sphere encounter to hopefully make the solution clearer, and corrected a switch which had mistakenly been set to repeatable in stead of single-use. v1.11 - Fixed a handful of monsters that weren't teleporting properly, and added a tiny bit of cover against the Arch-Viles for emergencies. Screenshots: SMOLTEK.zip SMOLTEKv1.10.zip

Oh wow, that's really cool! I love seeing all the crazy trickery you can do with DOOM to make stuff like that happen! Well, that's a really neat concept that I... completely missed, lol. I didn't realize I could open the door; every level I've played that had the exit right at the start like that needed a key so I just assumed that was the case here. In fact, I think when I saw the CEMENT9 in the doorway my brain "autocorrected" it to DOORYEL (which of course makes no sense because the yellow key is already used in the map, but I just didn't pick up on that I guess).

Finally got a chance to give this map a try! I wanted to do commentary, but my microphone broke so I had to wait until the replacement I ordered arrived. Anyway, it's a fun map!

Thanks! It's nice to be back! I saw you have a new map, too; I'll probably give it a try tomorrow (wish I could record a video but my mic's broken, RIP) I'm glad you attempted the nukage room without using the RL; I don't think I actually tested that. My goal with that room was to force a decision between the risk of using RL against specters and the time-sensitivity of the suit. I think I'm fairly happy with the results. I admit, although the Plasma Gun secret was about as difficult to find as I intended (judging by your and other peoples' videos), they way in which it's hidden is totally not what I intended. I tested on vanilla, and without GZDoom's fancy high-res rendering and wider color palette, the corner the switch in is significantly darker and harder to see - but I also overestimated how easy it would be to notice what the switch does, so it ended up balancing out to the result I wanted, I suppose! The archie room is definitely the weakest part of the map. It's meant to be a brief panic-moment as you scramble to get the Invulnerability Sphere, followed by another time-sensitive thing - kill the Archies before the Invulnerability Sphere wears off. I still think there's something to the concept, but this wasn't the right execution. I'll probably experiment with it more in future maps; I really want to find ways to use the Invulnerability Sphere to make interesting encounters. Oh, and for all I know, the sky texture might actually be Canada. I just did an image search for "mountain forests" or something and grabbed the first image that I thought would be easy enough to edit into a DOOM sky. I've used it in a couple of maps before, but I think this is the first one where the forest is really visible. Ah, cool. I think the updated version is less painful, but I admit it's still not great. The Archie knockback is definitely a problem, I agree.

Care to elaborate? I'd like to refine that encounter and make it more in-line with the difficulty of the rest of the map. Which version of the map did you play? The initial release, or one of the updates?

Thanks! It's good to be back! I've already updated the map to make the Arch-Vile trap less brutal - hopefully it's now easier to spot the way to the Invulnerability Sphere. Unfortunately, I can't really test how easy it is to recognize the options available in any encounter, since I obviously already know the options. I'm also considering adding another place to break line-of-sight with the Archies, but I do want to make sure the solution to the encounter remains: grab the InvulnSphere, and kill the Archies before it wears off. I definitely feel vindicated in my choice of music; your humming throughout the video put a smile on my face, lol. And thanks for spotting those monsters who didn't teleport. Somehow they got flagged as Ambush by mistake. I'd never have caught that, testing in Vanilla, since with all the Archies, the kill count was over 100% on every run I did anyway.

I knew that the AV ambush was going to be problematic, but I wasn't quite sure how to improve it until I got some feedback. My intention was not to produce an actual difficulty spike, but rather a moment of intense panic that demand the player remain focused enough in that split second to identify a readily-available solution. I've adjusted the encounter to make the Invuln Sphere, and the path to it, more visible - and moved the tripwire as per your suggestion. lol, no. The name came from my introduction to gaming - Warcraft II. I'd always play as Orcs, and needed a username to play multiplayer matches with my dad and my brother. The name just sort of stuck, mostly because I never came up with a better one.