deathz0r

blogpost 2020 edition: not rona'd or dead for other reasons, also gonna rant a bit

You would have noticed that I was active again during the most part of 2015 if you were paying attention to the ZDoom/Zandronum forums, but then significantly decreased my online presence to almost nothing - reason being is that I ended up switching jobs in October 2015 (went back to a full-time job that I had previously quit as I was offered a higher salary with a promise of two raises within 12 months) and stayed there until I was made redundant in mid-2019. That job had mentally drained the hell out of me (constant 50-60 hour weeks without overpay or time in lieu, never got those raises but given the circumstances of why there was financial issues at that company, I'm not angry about the lack of raises) and has put me off wanting to work permanent jobs indefinitely. It also threw me into a deep depression due to the massive amount of stress, but I got through that period with mostly playing board games with friends as I barely wanted to touch my desktop PC while I was working full-time. Much prefer the contract life where I can blaze through some project, had an easy 3-month contract job late last year that was great. Started job-hunting again in mid-February this year as the IT market is naturally dead from Christmas to early-Feb, but unfortunately some pandemic decided to go global a month later and the job market went to shit. Right now I'm waiting to hear back on a contract job opportunity that I was shortlisted for and had a phone interview, so hopefully that leads to some real income again!

So with this year being as it is with social isolation being the main theme, I've been spending a lot of time this year doing some long-needed cleaning - physically, virtually and mentally. It's been utterly fantastic to have either thrown out or sold a lot of unneeded physical cruft, and that's mostly done though I do need a little bit more shelving to properly organise some misc belongings. I don't think I'll ever organise my hard drives 100% to my liking since I've been accumulating 20 years of crap and have minimized data loss, but it's certainly better than the haphazard mess it was and having a GlusterFS clustered network storage using ODROID-HC2 nodes and a Netgear GS748Tv3 that I scored for free from the last contract job (which I modded with 40mm Noctua fans) is an incredibly cost-effective way of having scalable redundant storage, so I can worry even less about data loss short of a catastrophic disaster. Getting back to a good mental state has been challenging, but at least it's going in the right direction and that's always A Good Thing™.

With all that in mind, I'm looking forward to get back in the swing of Doom things and hopefully stay around for much longer than my last attempt in 2015, prioritising on OMGWPNS and Endless Survival along with jamming some DM/CTF map layouts that I may or may not release depending on whether I'm satisfied with them. I also want to revamp the map I made for DUMP 3 (MAP30) as I was hit hard by time constraints and work dominating my time. I've been setting up some streaming equipment and I'm aiming to get up and running on Twitch within 2-3 weeks. Focus is to do Doom stuff at least once a week on Sunday at around midday (2AM UTC) and other stuff on Monday/Wednesday/Friday night (tentative) mostly focusing on Amiga and going through my huge GOG backlog, but also some Mega Drive, PS1/PS2 and XBox stuff. As for playing competitive DM/CTF, there's an extremely low chance of that happening since repetitive strain injury had screwed my right wrist over in 2015 and I don't know if I can ever get back to a skill level that I'd be happy with. Who knows, I need to git gud again in general anyway so we'll see how that pans out.

The biggest challenge for my stream setup though is ironically my desktop - I refused to migrate to Windows 10, after I had bought a new Vega 56 GPU last year and fatally killed it three months later (due to uhh... modding it a bit too much) I ended up switching to Linux with a total hardware swap (as my i7-2600 was getting long in the teeth and my Radeon 7790HD had mysteriously died while my Vega was in use - the Ryzen 3700X is a beast and the RX 570 is a damn good GPU for its value) and eventually settled on Gentoo of all distros as the freedom of customising packages is far better than dealing with binary distros and their shortcomings, and compiling with the 3700X is an absolute breeze. Unfortunately there's still a few nagging issues here and there - neither Odamex or PrBoom appear to play MIDIs, (and something is a bit screwy with modifying the PrBoom config in general) the Zandronum Linux binaries don't play nice with Wayland at all in that using the mouse makes it crap out hard, and Wayland support in OBS is still very much WIP where recording at 60 FPS results in either severe jitter or frame drops ranging from 16% to 40% depending on the PC game for almost all instances - this is a non-issue with X11, but I'll take Wayland over the screen tearing, input lagging and microstuttery mess that is X11. Fortunately the HDMI capture card I have works great with Linux and OBS has no issues recording that at 60 FPS, and I can easily get away with streaming Doom at 30 FPS even if it's a bit below 35 FPS. Hopefully Zandronum will compile fine and will play nicer with my system, otherwise I can always resort to running the Windows binaries through WINE as they work fine, though it does make Doomseeker a bit more of a pain to use. Oh yeah, also need to figure out how to get SLADE to work properly without needing to resort to Flatpak.

That's essentially what I've been up to in a nutshell!

Oops, fell into a trance and got sidetracked heavily by digging deep into researching retro budget bin jank to stream - and buying a shitload from Steam and GamersGate for about $1.50AU each during 80-90% off sales. I already have a sizable collection on GOG that I've bought over time for roughly 75% off so it'd be fun to stream what I have and edit into reviews for Youtube. There will be a good focus on FPSes and strategy games but I'll also branch into other genres as well, especially platformers and fighting games.

Speaking of streaming, I'm aiming to do my first stream on Twitch within 48 hours from now - going to start off with a UV pistol-start-each-map run of each of the IWADs as it's a good way to get back in the swing of things, not to mention that I need to get used to the WASD-based config as I can't use my custom config effectively with the terrible right-mouse button of my otherwise fantastic ELECOM Huge trackball, so this will also be a fun exercise in excising my muscle memory!

Fortunately, further testing with recording in OBS has revealed that I can record 720p60 streams with a Wayland desktop in Linux with a very small amount of frame drops as long as the GPU is using less than 70w power, which with pretty much all retro jank that's at least 15 years old and good ol' Doom in software mode it's a trivial thing.

I also need a new SCART cable for my Amiga, as my current cable is about ~30 years old does not play nice at all with the cheap SCART->HDMI converter I bought. It's definitely not an issue with the converter, as I can output my Mega Drive via SCART without any problems. At first I thought my Amiga needed a recap so I did that, but that didn't affect anything, so I need to wait for a new cable to be shipped from Europe. It still outputs composite (black&white only) so I've been using a cheap $15 composite->HDMI converter to record MODs for my stream playlist. Apart from a 16khz tone, the audio quality is surprisingly clean!

I see DWF is now Web 2.0-compliant

;el theosi this tha third time i'ves ebh ene drunk, and it ruels!!! haaha my ardmas oas lreos like heavey nad datuff

...after exactly 21 months since it was confiscated off me. And for some reason, it boots up a lot faster than I recall. Maybe because the 20gb I used as the primary master is slow as shit compared to my 160gb.

Not only that, but Dad also gave me a DVD burner plus 40 or so DVD+R's!

*insert non-existant drama here*

And because of this, I propose a challenge to you in ZDaemon. These are the following rules that I have thought up:

- To be played on the GameArena Doom 2 DM Oldschool server
- Two spectators required (to prevent other people from playing)

You have four hours to reply.

http://unidoom.org/

Read that for some dramatic-ish thoughts on the current state of ZDaemon.

It pisses me off that after defending ZDaemon for a few years, I get biten on the ass for (more or less) being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

After almost seven years of cable, I've decided to jump the sinking boat (it sucks ass here in Australia) and move to ADSL. While it would be really fucking sweet to have ADSL2+ (because unlike most people I talk to, I actually want a decent upstream speed) I don't see that happening in the near future due to my location. Anyway, having twice the upload speed than cable and unlimited upload bandwidth is a godsend (more videos to upload! yay), but I haven't adjusted to having my downstream reduced to 1/8th of cable yet. It's not that I'm impatient or anything, it's just a new experience for me, very much similar to how I went from dial-up to cable back before I had pubes and being shocked at how fast everything went.

Another thing that also shocked me is that it took only three business days from ordering ADSL to catching up on everything that I've missed out on, especially when it said it'd take somewhere between five to ten business days to confirm my Direct Debit details, which has apparently not been received yet even though I sent it via email on the same day I ordered ADSL. Oh well, free internet I guess!

Oh, and I also have a 80gb limit now, divided into "peak" and "off-peak hours". For $30 extra, it was well worth gaining eight times the bandwidth limit and not having the downloading and uploading combined into one limit!

No, it doesn't explain why I've been "dead" for three weeks. Yes, I do have a lot to catch up on for /newstuff. No, it probably won't be done by this Sunday since I also finished my four week holiday last Sunday and I need to get back into my routine at waking up at 6am and trying to care enough for that Website Dev/Networking certificate that I'll probably never put into good use anyway.

Alliteration kicks ass, but that's unrelated. Anyway, Ralphis and I are writing up the "twenty-eight most favourite games of all time" as voted by various UD members. Unfortunately, there are too many games tied for last place, so there's a lot more than just 28 games. Regardless, you can check the progress as we will post articles each day (it was meant to start on Feb 1st but I was too busy with other things) over at http://unidoom.org/

Feel free to post comments in this thread or at the ud.org news posts.

deathz0r (11:47:13 AM): heh
ralphis sfr6 (11:47:17 AM): heh
ralphis sfr6 (11:47:21 AM): yo home boy
deathz0r (11:47:48 AM): yo yo yo homie nigger dawg
ralphis sfr6 (11:48:05 AM): whoa whoa whoa
ralphis sfr6 (11:48:09 AM): you didnt just call me a nigga
ralphis sfr6 (11:48:13 AM): you mutha fuckin whiteboy
deathz0r (11:48:14 AM): heh
ralphis sfr6 (11:48:17 AM): imma pop yo white ass
ralphis sfr6 (11:48:22 AM): motha fucka
ralphis sfr6 (11:48:29 AM): motha fucka cracks
ralphis sfr6 (11:48:32 AM): cracka

Ever since I bought a DVD of Plan 9 From Outer Space, I've been craving for more quality goodness that only B-movies can give me. While I was searching for a torrent of Troll II on google (which I never found, by the way), I came across an unrelated blog which had comments of bad movies to check out. Eventually I came across badmovies.org, and now I'm considering obtaining a copy of every single movie listed, whether it's DVD or VHS (though I might need to get a multi-format VCR since I live in a PAL region). My intended plan is to watch one roughly every week while drunk (and with friends if possible), then write a review of it the next day. This project of mine will definitely take several years, but it will be a great way to kill time during boring weeknights.

Of course, while this is a very elaborative list (plus this list of movies this guy has been involved with will be a bonus), I definitely would love to hear any recommendations for bad movies from any of you fellow crazy people for me to watch and painfully endure.

Good *insert appropiate timezone here* fellow moronic mappers who read the blog forums (heh, I never knew it existed until today). I must apologize here (since I can't be bothered doing it anywhere else) for a rather crappy /newstuff this week. You see, my computer has win98se in it. Not like that means anything, but ever since I installed quake 1 on it, it's been getting an increasing amount of bad clusters, until eventually explorer continously crashes, even though I can still access my files through Windows/Total Commander. To make things even more annoying, whenever I ping the other computers on my network, the ping times range from 1 to 4000, sometimes even timing out. So, I had to write newstuff on my mum's computer, and she doesn't exactly like me putting stuff on her computer. I also didn't have much time to write it, so I got the help of BBG and SargeBaldy to make things a lot less stressful for me. Hopefully when my dad ever comes here with the new (new as in non-corrupt) 3.2gb HD, I should be able to actually do a half-assed job in writing newstuff reviews. Thank you.

Hey everyone. Just like to thank Lut for getting me unbanned, even though I only asked him how long my ban lasts/lasted for.

EDIT: One thing that just popped into my head is that a few people from here have asked me recently if I still play Doom. The answer is yes, I still play Doom, as I now moderate the ZDaemon forums and Doom Connector, plus I'm working on UDM3. I also beta-tested Hyena's new One Nerd and His Doom wad, and I have to say that it totally kicks ass. I don't know if he's released it (I've been gone for over a week for other reasons) yet, but if he has, go download it from whereever it may be uploaded.

I hate CSS when it likes to act like a bitch, and quite frankly, this is getting beyond funny:

http://deathz0r.unidoom.org/noodlesoup/test.html

You think setting the width of a div, span or (dare I say it) table cell would be straight-forward, right?

WRONG! I'm getting varied results from people, but I want to make sure I can collect all of this data and see how I go about making a solution to this problem.

INTENDED RESULT
FUBARED RESULT

Please tell me what you see between those two (or neither), and please mention what browser AND version you're using.

EDIT: Turns out WRONG RESULT was caused by .css which I was yet to upload. Good thing I didn't, but I don't like fixed-length pages one bit...

I much prefer to speedown bosses. Much more fun then watching some dude go through the entire game in six minutes or something like that, when you can watch some dude kick a boss' ass in less than 20 seconds!

So far I've only done some Turrican 1/2 bosses, but eventually down the line I'll do SMB3 and other platforms too!

EDIT: I decided to sacrifice Vorbis audio to stop the bitching about mkv files not working. This also means that the H264 encoding is not proper (it should never be placed in an AVI file for technical reasons), but oh well!

I'm 19 today on this supposed day of Satan or something!

It finally took me over a month and a half to finally get off my ass and read guitar tabs instead of randomly guessing frets that barely resemble anything. As a result, I attempted a bit of Nirvana - Downer:

http://deathz0r.unidoom.org/junk/19.ogg

I edited out the transition from non-distortion to distortion. Other than that, I did all of it in one go.

Looking back, it's come to logical terms that I am just totally awesome. oldz0r.zip for example. I mean, the excellent detailing and superb gameplay made that one of the best zips of the year. UDM1 (with the exception of MAP06 and MAP17, bleh) is another thing I'm really proud of. This time I'm being serious. The top-quality gameplay and replaybility that this provided is only surpassable (in my opinion) by most of dwango6. And then there's NESDoom (whenever I get around to releasing the demo). Although I've contributed fuck all towards it, excluding those really great sounds that I made (what I shame if I don't release it), the concept and the novelty factor of it is just really awesome. UDM2, same thing as UDM1, except I only did three "Ralphis Approved" maps (there was another three as well, but Ralph bitched and moaned like a little girl) for it. Go play it, you'll realise how awesome I am (MAP03 MAP03 MAP03 (MAP31)). Mock 2... as soon as Hyena reappears from the mists, I'm going to yell at him for delaying it. I put in a (suprisingly) lot of work in making such incredibly... unique levels for it. Not to mention all the other crap I did.

In a nutshell, I rule. Ralph sucks. Just to prove that I rule:



As compared to that picture of Ralph that I no longer have, I look (and more to the point, am) rather sexy.

My b-movie quest now has a purpose, and I managed to drag Hyena and Tom_D into it. Props to Manc for hosting

Not only that, but now that I receive government welfare money directly (instead of mum taking all of it), I can buy a whole bunch of Region 1 DVDs from Amazon for all the crap least likely to make it down here in Region 4 land.

Ok, so yesterday I was minding my own business when the local power grid gets drained completely. No surges, blackouts etc, it got DRAINED, which meant that shit was randomly dying, coming back to life, dying again etc. As a result, my computer refuses to boot (I hope it's nothing more than the power supply) and my TV got reset to factory defaults, meaning it can't pick up any channels and the language is set to Chinese. Fun.

or something that resembles the so-called afterlife

ralphis sfr6: wtf man
deathz0r: what?
ralphis sfr6: We're like
ralphis sfr6: doomworld's married couple
deathz0r: haha i know
ralphis sfr6: we constantly talk about eachother
deathz0r: it finally took you that long to realise that?
ralphis sfr6: what are we gay
ralphis sfr6: im not gay
ralphis sfr6: you might be
ralphis sfr6: but not me
deathz0r: i'm not either
ralphis sfr6: no siree
ralphis sfr6: i mean
ralphis sfr6: its not like
ralphis sfr6: just because i love your aussie cock
ralphis sfr6: that doesnt make me gay
deathz0r: rofl
ralphis sfr6: right?
deathz0r: yeah i guess so
ralphis sfr6: oh ok
ralphis sfr6: phew

So I made this video with TA: Spring's ever-so-useful DirectShow video encoding feature... which doesn't record sound, but that's bearable.

There are a few clips which I need to remake (which are quite obvious when you see them), but it's generally complete.

And for reference, the song featured is Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Two Tribes. Why did I choose it? Because I was listening to it and it kinda connected well.

Comments? Criticisms? "omg deathz0r give me gay sex right now"?

summarize it for me please, I'm out of touch