Kid Airbag

Ah yes, those heady days when post count could be confused with legend status.

Nope, sorry. The "clean" CR that would have averted this crisis already contained nearly everything the Republicans demanded as far as spending cuts were concerned. In fact, the evidence indicates that had Boehner allowed a vote on a "clean" bill that wasn't tied to Obamacare funding, that measure would have passed in the House because ample Republicans even realize how idiotic this hostage-taking is. This whole thing is entirely the fault of the far right nutjobs in the House who have decided that they absolutely must take down Obamacare - which, at this point, is so clearly about nothing more than personal spite, because now that it's up and running, all signs point to the ACA actually being a beneficial thing - even if it means destroying the country's economy again. This is essentially economic terrorism, and I don't see anyone blaming "both sides" for 9/11.

This is unequivocally false, and the media's insistence on continuing to perpetuate this myth out of some misguided quest for "fairness" and "impartiality" is making me ill. One side is holding the entire country hostage and threatening to press the detonator unless they get everything they want. I'll let you figure out which side that is.

I thought this thread was going to be about public housing.

Also surprised no one's mentioned Tolwyn/Klem! Love those guys.

I would think that the area around the Sound would be pretty safe. If there's some disaster big enough to put 70 miles inland into the ocean, then we're all fucked. That'd be like "2012" level shit. And speaking of quakes, looking at their earthquake risk map, I had no idea there was some sort of seismic center along the South Carolina coast. Is that right? I knew about the Mississippi Valley fault line, but I've never heard of an earthquake in Charleston.

Considering the alternatives I'm not convinced that's such a bad thing.

Do you mean "what happens" as in will there be a short-term backlash against them? Or are you asking will they be withdrawn, in which case I highly doubt that. It's not like Bin Laden was the endgame here.

http://i1093.photobucket.com/albums/i425/wph9486/desktop.png Pretty boring, but I've only had this computer for less than six months so I haven't quite had the chance to really clutter it up. Plus most of the stuff I actually use is on the Windows side (God bless Parallels/Bootcamp). Most of the stuff you see now is copies of my most recent stuff for work, once I'm sufficiently certain that I won't need to suddenly e-mail it to anyone then I'll trash it.

Heh, I'm strongly thinking about Eugene for grad school when I go back in a couple of years, so that's good to know.

This is a forum devoted to a game that came out over 17 years ago... But anyway, most recent picture? Barcelona last month.

I'm disappointed there's not some sort of kebab on the menu...

"Give In" is still one of my favorite computer/video game soundtrack songs ever, period. Totally psyched to hear what you guys are cooking up now :D

So I've been having this sort of Doom renaissance lately, and part of that has involved blowing the dust off of WadAuthor and a subsequent return to mapping. I'll put more details on WIP at some point in the near future, but for now, I wanted to glean some useful information from the fine folk here at the Doomworld Forums. As you may or may not know (more likely the latter), I contributed map 10 to the Community Chest 3 megawad and I was planning on modifying/reworking the map for use in this current project of mine. In perusing the comments on the doomworld/idgames page for CC3, it seems several people had issues with map 10, so I'm asking for some elaboration in that regard. Is the map too hard? I'm personally able to beat it on UV from a pistol start, but then again I made the map and know where all the secrets are and what kinds of traps to expect, etc. But I figure that has to balance out with the fact that I'm far from the greatest Doomer out there. I can understand that people might get frustrated with some of the traps and other situations I put them in, but I did implement difficulty settings for a reason, and I've always been the type to save my game like every two minutes, and I guess I assume other people are similar. But gameplay has admittedly always been my weak point when it comes to mapmaking, so if there are issues here I would gladly welcome any advice. As far as level design goes, I do acknowledge that the multi-level brick10 maze could rub a lot of people the wrong way, since the next step to take is never really clearly marked (although in a few instances I tried to use rising and lowering sectors near the switches to indicate what the switch did). I thought it was a neat concept, but I could be alone in that opinion. Architecturally, I also can see where my blocky sector-based style is somewhat outdated, but I happen to like that style so that's the one thing that won't change. Other than that, though, I'd love to hear what people thought so I can edit accordingly. Thanks.

Great thanks to the both of you for your comments. I actually did this intentionally, I thought it was a good challenge to have to run down the hallway with the specters while trying to avoid fireballs and rockets from the imps and revenants above. Having to avoid some enemies for the time being instead of just everything being right in front of you to be killed all at once is just something a little different from traditional Doom carnage, and that's what I was going for in that room. What I think works the best there is to use the chainsaw (which I even put right at the entrance to that corridor as a hint) to hack through the specters and just keep moving forward as fast as you can. If done right, by the time you get to the end, you may have taken some damage, but it should be minimal, and there are also several stimpacks along the way to help out in that regard. I do see what you mean about it being unclear where to go next, that's definitely something I'll be working on. This is also something I can work on. I just put about equal amounts of both shells and bullets at the beginning of the level and left it up to the player to decide which kind to use. Would you load up on shotgun ammo in the first room and then give the player more chaingun ammo after the Mancubi are dead? Although, I do think a lot of your grief could have been alleviated by using the chainsaw in the dark room, and not worrying about killing the baddies above you until later, when you're actually up there with them and it becomes much easier. I understand that of course, as the level designer, it would seem more obvious to me, but I am also a staunch believer in "trial-and-error" dooming and saving very often. If your strategy doesn't work, hopefully you have a saved game right before you entered that room so you can just reload and try something different. Yep, this is basically what I was most worried about. I figured my attempts at scenarios that were a little atypical would take a toll on the gameplay, but I was hoping it wouldn't be so bad. This is essentially what I'm going to end up having to do anyway, since this new levelset I'm working on is unique in that every level fits spatially with the other levels in the set, giving it a kind of 3d "hub" feel. But as for the "good ideas," I did want to keep the multi-level brick10 "maze" in some capacity, because I love the idea of using rising and lowering water levels to access new parts of the maze. Do you have any suggestions for how to better implement that? Using numbers in the walls to help progression be more clear, maybe? Or is it really just not an idea that is meant to be compatible with the Doom engine?

While most of the "pick-up" lines I've seen are completely ridiculous, I actually do have a pretty fool-proof method of getting a girl's number. If you've been talking to her for a bit, tell her you've been working on a picture and you've run into some inspirational block and perhaps she could help you finish it. Then take a spare piece of paper, the back of a receipt, or a napkin, or something, and draw: (_ _ _) - _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ I've only actually used this twice, but it worked both times, and other people I've told have also had success.

Yeah but in my book getting married isn't a bad thing. I think I'd be more frustrated if I didn't find a long-term partner and instead resorted to picking up girls at bars for a quick screw.

I know a kid who really subscribes to this sort of thing, and to his credit, he's gotten pretty good at it. I had a long talk with him about it because I personally don't agree with treating women like the object of a game, but he did have some valid points. Basically, he explained that in the long run it's just an exercise to get you to be more open and socially adept and confident, with the ultimate goal being when you do finally meet "the one," you'll have no trouble winning her heart. It does make some amount of sense, but I still don't necessarily agree with the process involved. I mean, I know I'm not very good at approaching complete strangers, especially girls, in a public setting. Generally, I've had the most success in forced-interaction situations like work or camp, etc. But at the same time, I don't think this is the right way to go about improving your ability to meet people. There are ways of doing it that don't involve toying with a girl's mind. I'd also be worried that if you got good enough at this pick-up artist stuff and did it for long enough, it'd be hard to ever have a normal, healthy relationship with a girl after that.

RALPHIS why wasn't I involved in this

See, the palm-inward form is the variation that I, and a lot of my generation, use as a greeting/parting over here in the U.S.

From time to time I'll dream up an entire level. Some of them are really cool, too, but I never get around to actually trying to turn them into a map.

I just found out that apparently, the peace sign is actually an obscene gesture in some places. It's a good thing I learned this now because I often greet or say goodbye to people using a peace sign.

This is the most romantic happy song I can think of:

That would be sweet. A whole winter of not having to deal with panhandlers downtown. And then all of my asshole friends and relatives from the south who complain when it gets below 50 degrees can enjoy the extra company.

Huh, I always got the impression that critics are so quick to call them overrate solely because everyone does have such a boner for them. In fact, what I've noticed seems to be the opposite of what you've noticed, which is that whenever someone tells me they don't like Radiohead, it's just because they're so popular. Anyway, staying on topic...