Phobus

I read the title as “The first screenshot you took versus the last one you took of your maps” and did a bit of Googling. Turns out, back in 2005, my first publicly posted screenshot was a map editor shot of Warpzone, posted on the ZDoom forums. Way more impressive than the 6-10 hour maps I’m churning out for NaNoWADMo… So I’d actually look like I’ve gone backwards! Comparing a view of my earliest available map to one of the aforementioned NaNoWADMo efforts would be a lot more flattering, but far from impressive compared to what people are posting here.

As a mapper, I'm thinking Boom hits the sweet spot. Specifically something like prboom+ default compatibility with the UMAPINFO and extended DeHackEd options. Vanilla and complevel 2 limit-removing both have the issue of being finnicky and restrictive, both in terms of line actions and engine behaviour (seriously, some of the bugs I got making 25yoe, or that the Big Ol' Billy-led DBPs were confronted with are just baffling if you don't have intimate knowledge of why Vanilla is so shit). At the other extreme, GZDoom with UDMF has sooooo many features that, unless you're already very experienced and can therefore focus on what you actually want to do, rather than get excited with experimentation, you'll just get bogged down. Meanwhile, Boom (and probably MBF, and to an extent ZDoom's "Doom format") give you a lot of freedom as a mapper (particularly with generic line types and voodoo doll scripting), but aren't far removed from the simplicity of the vanilla format (there's not tons of extra tabs in the editor, for example). So if you actually want to finish making a megaWAD for people to play, the "easiest" way to do it (even though it's still a mammoth undertaking) is going to be something like Boom, MBF or even using complevel 9 in prboom+ as your limit-removing target level. This way you benefit from raised limits, freedom to make more complex geometry, less bugs, more forgiving engine behaviour (whole blockmap sections won't stop moving because an enemy is stuck, for example) and enough features that you can get creative and go beyond what the base game offers comfortably. You'll spend less time fighting bugs and compatibility testing and also less time looking up how features work and fiddling with all of the millions of options. Chuck in UMAPINFO in some versions of prboom+ (and other ports) and you aren't restricted to the traditional 30+2 map progression, and have total control over things like skies, when text screens come up and more. As a player, I don't really mind. They're all good if the mapper knows what they're doing and is making stuff I like to play!

It's often said that everybody comes back to Doom... It seems that get proved steadily more true with time! What a way to return, too!

Just a couple of WIP shots from my first two maps (that are now finished with UV single-player + co-op starts): The PISS isn't quite flowing as it needs to yet, but 2/32 ain't bad. The other map I'm working on is around 40-45% done as well. I sort-of need to get ahead of the month this week to stand a chance of finishing, but that's alright.

I assume, for those of you far East enough who haven't gone to bed yet, the event is already underway! Good luck everybody :) My plans have been altered slightly - I've also got to try and get an extra map done for another project that I'm late for. So 33 maps to make in a month, and then I'll have to do the TITLEPIC, INTERPIC, BOSSBACK (maybe?) and CREDIT art in November - maybe M_DOOM, too, based on one of the others. This'll go well.

Doom, Doom II, Duke3D and Quake II would've been the main introductions to "metal-style" background music in games (obvious Quake II way more so, but the MIDI music of the earlier games was a good enough start), which would've fertilised my mind for the Need for Speed Underground soundtrack to then plant the seeds. The Only (by Static-X), Broken Promises (by Element Eighty), Invisible (by Hotwire), (To Hell We) Ride (by Lostprophets), Out of Control (by Rancid) and And The Hero Will Drown (by Story of the Year) are the ones that stuck with me, providing a range of rock and metal to get me started. Not long after that I was introduced to Slipknot (Volume 3), Metallica (Ride the Lightning) and Linkin Park (Meteora, shortly followed by Hybrid Theory) by my brother. Evanescence had a breakthrough radio hit in the UK with Bring Me To Life around the same time, too. After that I started seeking out bands like what I knew, more games had real music soundtracks (culminating the Guitar Hero series, for me) and my brother kept introducing me to random stuff he was getting into, as did an older cousin who was like a guru of geek culture for me back then. Now we're here and something silly like half of the shirts I own are black, and I'm still picking up the odd song from stuff like the Forza Horizon games. The more music I hear, the more I like, but I'm fairly heavily biased to rock and metal still. Cheers, id software!

This year, I complete the challenge. Or I don’t. Either way, I won’t be signing up again. So for this final, successful, attempt… Prepare for Phobus’ Imitation Speedy Shit (PISS).

I’ve carried a “light” machine gun (7-8kg) and about 800 rounds linked up in belts of various lengths, plus a few grenades and some other bits and pieces, plus a helmet and armour, in a combat exercise running up some Scottish terrain in my previous job. I’ve also carried various other military hardware, sometimes just as a load of weight that needed moving. I’ve never been very strong, but I reckon I’d have been ineffective in combat carrying much over 20kg of weapons and equipment for any length of time even at my peak. Ignoring the energy weapons, as we can assume they’re light and futuristic, I suspect the conventional firearms and the non-backpack ammo counts would be excessive for even 80s action hero builds, mostly because of the sheer bulk and weight of the rockets. You’d be like the guy in the old action parody film, loading up with a load of gear and falling over when you try to take a step! I can’t imagine running around with a chainsaw that isn’t in custom holster would go well, either… Of course, if you just had to transport all of that stuff in an advance to a staging area, and you could physically get 50 rockets in some kind of man-portable container, I suspect the weight would be viable on foot, but a massive struggle. Slogging a few miles with 40kg or more, per man, is a large part of the training.

Sticking to what rd listed in the main part of the post: 2562 - I've not tried this one, but it's a very tight limit and wouldn't be an obvious choice to try more than once or twice. 5122 - I've had a couple of goes at this one, the latter more successful than the former. The better one worked mostly on the principle that most of the interesting stuff is happening outside of the playable area, and re-themed nicely for DBP19. The temptation to make a very compact layout of corridors and steep stairs or cramped lifts to stretch the run time out to a couple of minutes here suggests to me that the limit is a bit too limiting. 10242 - Obviously a very successful one that's turned up in multiple community projects and solo releases. I've had a few goes at it and I think the best ones I've made and played avoid cramping the playable space and have at least some of the key encounters or elements of the map be outside of the playable space. You'll never not know you're in a confined space playing one of these, but it's not too difficult to make a decent level anyway. 20482 - This, for me, is the sweet spot. MAYhem 2048 is a really good community project precisely because the limit stopped most people going over the top (although some people tried anyway), but gave plenty enough space to work with. Plenty of experienced mappers made these maps feel almost effortless, with the limitations something you'd only be dimly aware of a lot of the time. Other projects have used this limitation too, to various success. In my book, these playable space limits are a good way to get things done quickly, with room for experimentation. They work well for various formats, too, unlike some other challenges that can be blown wide open by ZDoom or whatever. My preference is 2048, as should be clear from what I said above. I am interested in trying some variations on these themes, like doing a 2048-square unit playable area, but it's in a map that measures 1024x4096, for example.

Naked, or I’m not impressed.

A couple of months ago Microsoft gave out £8 vouchers for the XBox store for their summer sale, so I took the chance to grab Soul Calibur II HD Online at a considerable discount and got all of the unlocks and offline achievements for that, which was great. Despite previous experience on the GameCube of having Seong-Mina as my main character and being very proficient, I found I slipped more easily back into using Astaroth, so he got the bulk of my play time. Equipped with Thanatos (his Soul Calibur-tier weapon) I was comfortable with most challenges, which made the harder unlocks still very attainable. Still a great game, even if I miss the expanded move lists from 3 and 4, and the graphics felt a bit dated in 1080p. After that distraction, I ended up losing a couple of weeks to Netflix and Youtube, before coming back to Serious Sam Classics: Revolution and the extra episode "Bright Island", which had an arsehole of a battle at the end of the 5th main level (6th if you've found the first secret level) - Forlorn Ruins, where I basically resorted to camping a corner to handle the bulk of it and had to savescum it a bit... Particularly to make it past the Ugh-Zan Candidates who show up in force at the very end. Other than that and a similarly tricky set up near the end of the 3rd level (Sunken Pyramid), the episode was pretty straightforward and enjoyable, even with the inclusion of cut enemy types from TSE. I did both secret levels as well, so got a pretty complete experience. Today I gave in to temptation and tried the first episode of the Quake remaster on Nightmare. Good stuff - but the again, Quake was always good.

You can turn on view bobbing in the menu. There's quite a range of options, including, I think, one around interpolation. So far I've played through the first episode on Nightmare and had a blast. Really impressed with the graphical overhaul and how easy to use it is, even though the base game worked just fine for me. Seems to have the music without needing a CD too, which is cool, and the add-on menu will be a lot more welcome here than in the Doom port, as I've never looked into Quake community mapping. Looking forward to chipping through the rest of this. Having just finished Serious Sam Classics: Revolution - Bright Island on Serious last night, I'm pretty handy for some older-school FPS at the moment.

The first ones I played were off of various CDs, or downloaded/procured by my dad, so if it was my first three downloaded WADs, that'd be around 2002-2004. Pretty sure it was: The ZDoom demo map (came with ZDoom 1.22 and was awesome) The Great Escape (a dodgy ZDoom map set that was named after a map designed to replicate the prison camp from the film of the same name. Also featured a "Monster Zoo" map and a "MYHOUSE.WAD" style map, plus a range of other stuff) An early version of GoldenEye 64 for Doom that... Sort of worked. I was searching for stuff that made good use of ZDoom. Took me a while to get nearer the mark, but when I got there, hoo boy did I get there (ZDCMP#1 and Torment 'N' Torture being early highlights).

GZDoom: 7 prboom+ (various versions): 1 chocorenderlimits: 1 If we were allowed more ports, I'd mention Crispy Doom, ZDoom, Zandronum (all for compatibility testing) and the Unity Port (mostly on XBox One), although I'd need a better way of weighting it back in favour of GZDoom as it gets such a high percentage of usage. It's more like 8.9 to 0.06 to 0.04 up there, really, as anything that isn't GZDoom is normally a testing port.

That's a shame - sounds like the lifelong struggle with a chronic illness didn't get him down much, so at least he lived his shortened life to the fullest!

Welcome back Kyka! I'm glad to see, from the mentions of me in the thread, that Portal Facility continues to go down well. Shame I never got around to making the follow-up to that map, but I gather the megaWAD is very good and benefits from the range of authors.

AKA Walter Confalonieri AKA daimon-reloaded

Undoubtedly my most beautiful map is Abdicate the Throne (MAP12 of DBP23: Evil Egypt), which I've got three pictures of below: However, one scene I really like that isn't in that map is from Winter Wonderland (MAP10 of DBP19: A Doomer Boards Christmas Carol), pictured here: Apologies if these massive images are a bit much.

Reppin' my homeboys in the Doom Building Krew.

4k on every port that will allow it. Max resolution on all of the others.

If there’s clear episodes, then an internal ramp up, then slight step back, then ramp up again is my preferred way of approaching things. Across a whole 32-map set, a ramp up with spikes (the stereotypical MAP32, for example) and breathers is best. The easiest way to manage a ramp up is with the introduction of enemies at staged intervals, but obviously you run out of new stuff to introduce pretty quickly, even in Doom II. 25 Years on Earth was very much a case of measuring out the opposition, with an Arch-Vile putting in a climactic appearance on MAP06, and the Cyberdemon not turning up until MAP18, which is likely to also be the first time you get a plasma rifle. Later in the set, maps become more heavily trapped, and unusual mechanics are introduced (most notably in MAP27, which is also a big difficulty spike). There’s also scale, which I didn’t embrace too much in 25yoe, but did form the main part of progression in Scourge. In the megaWAD, everything from MAP07 to MAP13 was a bit bigger and more complex than the first 6 maps, giving the player more attrition to deal with. Then from MAP14 onwards, the escalation is more pronounced, until MAP20 is capable of taking up a good half an hour and ends in a big, drawn out battle that could kill a player, potentially sending them back to the start. MAP21 is a variation on the Icon of Sin, so it’s not as long as what came before, but has it’s own spike. Then again, Scourge has lumpy progression anyway, taking advantage of ZDoom MAPINFO to change themes often and has MAP04 with one of the hardest starts of any map in the set, as the player has been ambushed and dragged to hell. So, short answer, variety is key, even within a steadily ramping difficulty progression.

I'm dropping in a recommendation for DBK01: Dungeon Synths. They've knocked it out of the park there - lots of fantastic 3D environments, a unique theme and a ton of fun to be had. Plus I learned a thing or two!

Just finishing my first play through. I'm assuming the credits map can't be beaten, so I quit after a while. Very good set! I'm particularly impressed to read that Bear's map was MAP02, as, performance and bug (that you've fixed) aside, it fits well with the rest if the set. Quite the achievement for a relative beginner! The music, theme and changed monsters (and the KeyFG9000) all combined well to make something unlike any other set I've played, and the only mapper that really gave himself away was Glen, who had probably the toughest map in the set (ignoring the credits map and tricky Icon of Synth). Thanks for the hard work Krew - I had a good time with this!

The Doom Building Krew strikes! Downloading now, to have a great time...

I quite liked coming into MAP28 with a continuous load, to be honest. It made up for the tedious grind of the previous level and the utter bullshit of the next two. Also, I made it through 31 of the maps, but after cheating MAP29 (the Arch-Viles were too much), I took a look at MAP30 and decided I had better things to do with my life. A pretty fun collection of bite-sized maps, let down by a few slaughter maps at the end and MAP02 being a rushed puzzle map. Notable positives? Dragonfly did a good job, as expected, and I really liked floofcollie's map, although the music was a bit loud and painful. Probably some other good stuff in there, but I've already forgotten! My memory isn't what it used to be...