Bank

Incredible year for Doom, congrats to all winners and contributors. Seriously couldn't have dreamed of a more exciting 30th.

nice

@LightningBoltForever I love this series and your comprehensive, intentional analysis. MIDI music is a fascinating subculture and historiography, and a big part of our community.

Thank you for the special mention @Not Jabba and cheers to another amazing year of Doom wads

Bank in Kyoto

Bigger (pink) fish in a smaller pond. Certain things about old DW don’t make sense anymore, but there was an excitement to the small town internet fame and drama of that time that can’t be replicated.

Truly an epic yolo. @epicyolomaster420 your “haters” in this thread are actually your critics, the very type of people you’ve asked for feedback and attention from. I promise you there is no conspiracy on this forum to make you look bad or misinterpret your words, and instead many people are trying to guide you away from the type of common attribution errors and social faux pas that can detract from or derail a good-faith project. Defensive is not a position from which you can project confidence and power, and you’ll probably have a better chance getting the reception you desire by being gracious and listening to and engaging with the community you wish to be a part of. Mistakes are forgivable and natural, but be careful not to turn mistakes made in ignorance or naïveté into decisions made in arrogance and anger.

At the risk of raising the dead by speaking this forbidden incantation: Why is texture filtering enabled by default? @Graf Zahl I know that you are sick of fielding this question, and unlike some others in this community I can honestly understand why you have made the choices you have and your right to make them as the port maintainer and creator. But if you are concerned about negative feedback from your userbase at all, this particular feature has generated more negative feedback than any other and is unique in its implementation; much if not most of the rich GZDoom cosmetic featureset is disabled by default and available to players who wish to use it. As we have seen in this thread, there are countless nitpicks and preferences of sourceport performance comprising a near infinite number of perspectives--far too many for any port to ever satisfy (and frankly, to do so would quickly destroy the creative authority that animates anyone insane enough to create software for free)--but in contrast to other entries, GZDoom is likely the most popular sourceport in the world. Does it not have some responsibility or hand in the presentation of these games to a new audience? I've been around long enough to remember how exciting ZDoom and its features were in the early days. I think that Doom was still "alive" in some sense as a game at that time, that these developments were a part of that game and its growth. Things like texture filtering or jumping made Doom feel modern, advanced, and relevant. But in 2023, Doom is less a game and more a cultural artifact or genre upon itself that history has isolated certain identifying features from. Doom's art and visuals are as definitive a feature as its movement or mechanics, and the particular quality of that art has come to signify Doom and games of its era as an important piece of what makes this game what it is. @Scuba Steve is an artist who has dedicated a large portion of his life to this artistic medium and is passionate about its preservation, I can understand why this is important (and infuriating) to him. Resolutions can be increased, limits removed, and these changes do not detract from the essence of the game--if anything Doom is more like Doom now that these boundaries have been breached. But for the thousands of players whose first experience of this game is through GZDoom; a port that innovated through ease of use and customization, a port that has enabled not only the most popular Doom mods of all time but itself has become a common gateway through which people are introduced to the Doom engine, game modding, and programming, a port that is for all intents and purposes the port of record for the average Doom enjoyer---why must these players be started on (what the majority of the community believes is) the wrong foot? It's such a simple change, it's a change that you @Graf Zahl can choose to make at seemingly no cost. GZDoom is a project defined by choices and is distinctly not a preservationist platform, but this single feature generates such division I have always wondered why it persists. I want to stress that I'm not trying to be antagonizing or diminishing in any way, and that ultimately the decision (rightly) belongs with the port's creator. Too often this community forgets that the people who make things have authority over how they work and that creativity is not a democracy, but I would hope that a dedicated community's opinions are at least considered when making decisions that impact generations of players. Doom in 2023 is a Ship of Theseus, and unlike @Csonicgo I don't see supporting endless backwards compatibility for a minority of users who wish to use obsolete hardware as a priority (fortunately for those who do, CSG and others will implement such changes!) But the Ship should still embody the thing that its meant to represent, and I think it would be a great service to players and the next generation to embody Doom's visual style in its most popular sourceport.

@NoReason you are one of my favorite mappers and this set is an awesome counterpart to your speedmapping experiments. I feel like your fight choreography and slaughter dynamics are super unique and satisfying to play, and this consistent (and beautiful) styling added an unexpected depth to playing through these maps. Really really good, please make more stuff like this!

Really amazing!

I think this functionality is the ideal and doesn’t really conflict with @Graf Zahl‘s concerns. Of course people should be able to play the way they want, but I also think mappers should be able to make their preferred configuration easily playable.

A lot of my gripes with sourceports were remedied by a good launcher. After decades of drag and drop and ZDL I started using @hobomaster22’s Doom Launcher (which is frequently updated!) and a lot of annoyances went away. Easy to configure individual ports, perfect and beautiful library functionality, and idgames integration just made it a lot easier to have all the different strengths and features of different ports without the nightmare of folders and folders of wads for specific ports. I think with complevels being far more important for “canonical” play in certain wads, I would love to see some kind of flag or lump detection in a sourceport that could auto-detect and set a preferred complevel for different wads.

My wad ARLINGTON is a nonviolent adventure game, I’m also really interested in exploring this concept in a game built around killing things.

This is the canonical “bad” ending Thank you so much! I’m working on finishing the following map and can’t wait to show everyone

Doom II (imo) is at its best when the team dropped the “story” and did something weird. Maps like Tricks and Traps or Barrels o’ Fun remain the most memorable to me even if they aren’t necessarily the best or most fun levels. I think had id made another iwad we would have seen more gimmicky mechanical experiments looking more like cyberdreams than Plutonia.