40oz

There's a zombie killing game called Dead Rising for xbox360. There's not enough detail in your post to tell if this is what you're looking for, but on the UI there's a "x KILLED" tracker that keeps track of your kill count throughout the entirety of the game. I don't know why but that little statistic always sitting there on the HUD like that is really fun.

I made my own little Doom frontend out of a batch file that records how many monsters I killed after every level I complete, and adds it to a total. I started using it a few years ago. I have a little over a quarter million kills.

When Carmack was designing the monsters for Doom, which one do you think was the very first actor model to be made? Things like the Cyberdemon, Spider Mastermind, and lost soul sprites didn't appear until the final game. The pinky demon sprites seem to have some frankensprited parts from the hell baron (you can see the baron of hell's back on the pinky demon's forehead) which would indicate that it was made after the Baron of Hell. The zombiemen are modeled after the player sprite which indicates they came after the player. The player and Baron of Hell were made from digitized photographs of clay models, while the imp and Cacodemon were presumably drawn from scratch. Which of those four models do you think was made first before anything else? 

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. A lot of what has been linked to here sounds like it's prepping me to watch a documentary about galaxies and constellations. I'm not really sure what instruments are contributing to it, but hopefully someone gets what I mean by that. I'd rather be hearing something more grounded and motivating if I'm making any sense here.

Steve D, those tracks you've linked are the closest to what I'm thinking so far. From your post, it sounds like you get what I mean. Something about the juxtaposition of fighting bunch of hard monsters against quiet, nearly inaudible but ominous music smells like paradise to me. I realize my tastes are really specific here and I'm running out of vocabulary to make it make more sense. I've been avoiding using a MIDI sequencer for so long because I'm too stupid to figure it out and understand the terminology.

Does anybody ever collab on MIDIs? If I could maybe make a few basic examples, would someone be willing to extend, modify or correct them?

6 hours ago, Khorus said:

Nuclear Chunks is a limit removing Plutonia project where I'm limited to using a 32 grid size for linedef (allowing myself rotation for a bit of flexibility) and things placement,

It's awesome that you're doing the 'one map a week' thing. I might consider doing something like this myself :) 

I imagine that this 32 grid rule might siphon out your creativity (unless you really do like mapping this way) so if you feel like ditching this rule at any point to continue mapping, do it. I think anyone who would seriously hold you to it is an asshole.

11 hours ago, KVELLER said:

Wow... just... wow...

 

Also... uhh... is the background supposed to be upside down?

 

Dead in the Knee Deep

If my luck with searching for it is any indication, this kind of music doesn't have a real name. There are parts in movies and in tv shows that are pretty dramatic and suspenseful and they have really quiet background music. It's barely audible over the sound of the dialogue or the sound of what's going on in the environment. I've been dying for music like this in my Doom maps but I can't find anything quite like it. 

I haven't had much luck finding this kind of music on youtube. Often when I search background music from TV Shows I get the actual songs they use for the montages and stuff. I've heard of "Dark Ambient" which is a pretty popular music genre, and it's close. However, most of what I've heard is just too spacey or 'rainforesty' for lack of better descriptive words for audio. PSX Doom music and Doom64 music is also pretty good but to me it better resembles 'noise,' like the sounds of metal bending or machines moving in the distance. It's very close but it's still not quite what I want.

The kind of stuff I'm thinking of usually has a kind of pulsing drone sound, or a low octave strings sound, a heart beat, a single note bass line or all of the above. I suspect it could be really good as a midi because the length of the track could have a progression that starts quiet, slowly builds up, then fades back down for a neat and tight loop. It doesn't really have a noticeable or 'catchy' melody which actually works in the music's favor. It's a really quiet cacophony. The indistinct noise makes it very easy to listen to on repeat for a long time without getting old, but it still has some repeating tempo in the form of the aforementioned bass line or heartbeat to still be 'music' rather than literal random noise.

The best midis I can think of that are closest to what I'm thinking are MAP06 from Sunder (originally used in Scythe 2 MAP16, which was based on a track from Super Metroid Advance.) and MAP07 from Memento Mori

I've talked to a few people about this like @Ed and @Eris Falling and a few others. They seemed to have an idea of what I mean, but I'm still not totally sure I'm describing the best I can. I'm hoping someone here is following me and give me some direction towards what I'm talking about.

Try watching an intense TV series with really diabolical characters in it. Take the Walking Dead for example. Pay close attention to the music that is used in situations that aren't a complete panic, but are rather a buildup for something crazy that is going to happen later on. There are enough TV series and movies for people to produce this kind of music professionally. What is this stuff called???

This music track from Nightmare Creatures linked below kinda has the thing I want. 

1. A distant 'boom' on a metronome + funneled wind for about 2 minutes
2. the distant boom gets a faster tempo now, plus an echoing bass line
3. send in some strings with it
4. quietly return to (1.) for a few moments
5. repeat (2.) but include a churchbell
5. quietly return to (1.)

It starts off sounding like funneled wind, then there's a distant boom on a metronome, the tempo of the boom gets faster, now with an echoing bass line. Send in some strings for a few moments, tack on some distant church bells to coincide with the booms. Then quietly fade back down to the funneled wind. It's so dark, imposing, and ominous. I love everything about it. It's perfect.

It doesn't need to be long, it just needs to be right. I don't know anything about making music so I don't know if this request is a lot to ask; but if someone sequenced like 10-15 of these tracks in MIDI, each with slight deviations from one another it's the exact kind of soundtrack I'd want for my more serious projects.

Nice! I saw videos of Industrial Zone A and Industrial Zone B but I've never gotten to play them. I'd love to play GBA Doom 2 as a PWAD.

That's interesting. I've never had an issue of caring too much for people who probably don't deserve it. I can't really think of any good advice for something like that. What keeps you from ignoring these types of people until they go away? Do they just keep coming back? Do you not realize they are a lot of baggage until after you get too close?

in my experience its always easier to remake something into something better from scratch than it is to fix something that's fundamentally broken.

If it's too complicated to recreate from memory, keep a backup or sketch the layout on paper. You'll waste a lot of energy and time holding on to something you don't want to let go because you're not sure you'll be able to make it the same way. If you can do it once, you can do it again.

Always love sillhouettes against an orange sky

13 hours ago, therektafire said:

I wish there was even a basic map editor for mobile too friend. But I'm sure that would be a pretty difficult undertaking considering the aforementioned limits of touch controls. A full port of say GZDB is definitely out of the question for example. Personally though I would be just fine with a simple Boom/vanilla compatible editor that just let you do really basic shit shot as long as it can successfully compile maps I probably wouldn't care too much

Definitely, 

I couldn't tell you how embarrassing it is when I release a project I spent weeks on, then I see the screenshots and videos people post and I can see a missing texture here, a door that doesn't work there, players running out of ammo at a certain part, or always dying in the same place. Sure, the GZDB interface couldn't possibly work from a phone, but a really lightweight editor with some basic features like moving a thing or a vertex a little bit, or changing the sidedef or sector properties, or being able to find and replace stuff to quickly address those teeny tiny little gamebreaking things from my phone would be soooooooooo convenient for everyone.

I found this on /idgames but it's not that great. "Post your status bars" thread is a cool idea though, I'm sure the graphic artists here could whip up a few.

2 hours ago, fraggle said:

I feel like for Doom you really need a keyboard and mouse to play it properly, or perhaps a gamepad in a pinch. Touch screens are basically awful for playing games on; that's why particular games tend to become popular when someone can devise a very basic game that will work with the touch screen interface (Angry Birds; Plants vs. Zombies; Candy Crush; Flappy Bird, etc.)

I once received a private message from someone requesting me to test their map. For days I couldn't get to my desktop to play it. When I finally had the time, the map was only half finished, and took me a few minutes to play it. I located a few texture misalignments and other little bugs but mostly I didn't have much to say. It felt rude that I made this person wait so many days for such a limited response that they could have gotten from anyone else.

I've played Doom enough to be able to look at where monsters are placed and have some sort of an idea of what the gameplay would be like. If I could just take a stroll around the map just to review it, snap a few screenshots, and give the mapper direct feedback on my thoughts, I could be a little more present as a tester in the community. But at this moment, they have to wait a long time just to have 5 minutes of my time to look at their map. 

There once was a time where it was a question whether Doom would be compatible with certain devices. There's no question that the devices we have today have to processing power to run Doom very efficiently, but now it's a question of making these devices compatible with Doom.

My motivation to continue mapping and developing projects for Doom is still very rich, but I'm being held back because I don't really have the technology that allows me to be as present as I can. I'm not alone in feeling that there's kind of a wall here that needs to be broken down, right?

Is it a coincidence that every fucking thing ever wants to be a social media platform? Where is all this motivation to create communities, notification systems, and constantly update the interface coming from? Why can't anything just be good at doing what you want it to do?

I don't know if I want to lug it around with me, or leave it in my car. I have a macbook at home which is nice to sit in the living room with but I never feel good about taking it outside of the house.

I've never had good experiences with a laptop. Is that what you use?

I do a majority of my stuff on my desktop computer, but I'm not always home and I'd like to be able to work on the big boring menial tasks of Doom editing while I'm away from home. I don't like to use my time at home to test little Doom experiments or manage my files or take screenshots, etc. I want to use my desktop to do the fun stuff that I need a big screen for like mapping and playing.

I'm in the market for a new phone and I'd like to do my Doom work with it during my down times when I'm away from home. I see advertisements for tablets that business professionals use like it's the most important thing to conduct their business with, but I doubt they are very efficient for doing the kind of Doom stuff away from home that I would need it for.

I'm not really sure what to get that will fit my needs. I'm getting the feeling that as the internet and technology keeps moving forward, it's on a path that is become more and more unfriendly towards Doom. I'd like to have a handheld device that I can use to make texts and calls, but also double as a personal computer to do my Doom related stuff with when I can't get access to my desktop.

Being a Doom fan, I have a lot of needs that aren't met by the common marketing trends. I download and manage a lot of Doom wad files, I get requests to test people's maps, and I like to view maps for mapping inspiration. I don't really want to be in a position where I buy a new phone where the company that makes it wants to put their fingers in all of my stuff, and provide a streamlined and user friendly interface that limits my freedom. Doom is complicated in some ways and it's important to me that the phone doesn't fuck with it just because it doesn't understand it.

If I could have it my way, I'd like to have the ability or arrange and sort my wad files, either on the cloud or on the actual device hard drive so that I can download what I want and transfer it directly to my computer to play when I get home. I'd like to be able to play Doom PWADs on the phone, even if the controls are weird. I'd probably play it with nomonsters or notarget so I could view it and take screenshots without having to play it normally, or perhaps view maps from an editor or automap view. 

I've had some friends show me their phones but I find it to be severely limited in these particular options most of the time. They also customize their phone to fit their own needs too, so I don't really know what I'm missing most of the time either. 

If my primary focus is doing Doom playing and editing with my devices away from my computer, what kind of devices should I look into that provide the best benefits for my needs? Are there portable devices that I can use to run common doom editing programs or good parallels to them? 

34 minutes ago, jmickle66666666 said:

* Isometric automap

wowza!

Nice work Lokust, this looks pretty cool!

Sorry this is doesn't address the thread topic directly, and not trying to play down my expectations for future Doom goliaths, but I've been clued in recently about some long time doomworld members who will be releasing their own projects for the first time in a looong time and I've been pumped about that.

when master say you gotta come in work on Saturday and she dont even bring bagels

Doom is a rare shooter where you get the opportunity to fight many hundreds of monsters at once. There just isn't enough fun and chaos to channel through a single or few giant boss targets. Dealing with different arrangements and presentations of monsters just has such a larger range of opportunity for fun and complexity. Unfortunately that doesn't really leave much leeway to innovate with when it comes to delivering a sense of finality to a set of maps. But as a diehard space marine that's a charge im willing to eat as consolation for a game that does just about everything else right.

@Octavarium that beard works for you!

@Doom_RO so does yours!

On Thursday, January 4, 2018 at 1:02 PM, GoatLord said:

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This is the best picture yet!