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Hope you get through this. Looking back at hard times, they're not half as bad as they seem in the moment.

Live version:

Enjoyed it. Grew up with it, so watch more from habit than anything. Picked up this bit of trivia - Poland's 2nd place, which obviously didn't contend (but _did_ win the popular vote over there, so barred by the jurors) is pretty damn dark & edgy: Would have rooted for it if it was in, but like wearing 501 Levis, there are some places you just can't go, even in Eurovision.

Viles are archer in two dimensions

Can confirm!

Mom knitted me a pixel perfect Space Invaders sweater, after I sketched out some metrics for her about a year ago :) design: https://imgur.com/CyNLRWW sweater: https://imgur.com/97EHELK

I think I'd need a new engine!

ah-ha-ha-ha-ha

Maybe next decade or something, you never know.

The only ones I'm 100% aware of are my own Cabal series maps, which I definitely don't think should go in. Other than those there are stories from id that there was an unnamed kid whose father wouldn't let him finish the project, but no one has seen any trace of those files. The latter would be cool of course, if by some miracle they should surface in a semi-complete or better state. I'm sure there were other maps considered that didn't make it, but the one guy that would potentially remember this best (project lead Shawn Green) doesn't front himself much as a public person anymore, afaik (he's no longer on FB anyway, which was my last point of contact with him). Could be done "the right way" I suppose - if used somewhat sparingly & with majority participant consent. Though I did pitch Shawn for making a new monster during ML development, I never did finish up that particular creature & I suppose my newer offerings kinda land in a more modern category, like some texture types discussed. However, picking a long used mapper favorite (or three, depending on engine) from Realm 667 seems appropriate enough to me - the Afreet being the first that springs to mind. The baron meta is maybe a too outdated to excite these days, so swapping him out should at least be considered, I think.

Thanks for the kind comments guys! I hasten to add this post was in no way made for this purpose though. x) Looking at it objectively I figured it would be nice to air potential avenues, in case it was every fully embarked on. I know its been discussed a few times in the past without reaching a conclusion in the aspect of what form it would take... If technically feasible within a single .wad this would definetely be a preferable approach, for my own tastes at least. No idea how well these formats mix though. There's also the question of engine/port. Well, these are questions I'm sure the original mappers asked themselves at the time - I know I did. I personally kinda read into it as requiring a bit of doom mastery to beat back then. However, I was culled by id several times for making them too hard, so I that definetely wasn't the main drive behind the name, as is also clear when looking at some of the easier entries in the set (e.g. Willits' offerings). In a perfect world though, every facet of interpretation should be weighed and felt somewhat, as long as they don't leave any unresolvable paradoxes about how such a follow-up package might be implemented. At the end of the day, the project came about as an answer to the ftp-scraped D!ZONE series - so I figure the name is a juxtaposition, in the same way you might compare canned spam and steak. Dzone was about community-created quantity (1000s of new maps, during a period when people were starved for them), id wanted ML to be about community-created quality, a cherry-picked "master set" of sorts, ca 1995. I assume it would still be possible to employ MBF21 in there whilst refraining to use any of its advanced features, for say, an early section of such a mapset? Much like you could remove engine limits throughout, but still include maps made for Chocolate, again maybe best as earlier entries in such a map set? For me, sure - I personally found I had reached the limit of my Doom playing skills while trying to beat the wad everyone were raving about the time - Sunder. Its when I realised I was no longer a "badass" at playing Doom compared to much of the community, so in the aforementioned sense of "mastery to beat" its when I well and truly felt served on that front (I've since seen a few playthrougs on YT & have some ideas on how I might progress further, but there was a definete sense of the meta having moved on for me back then). At a cretain level, it becomes a question of different playstyles being on offer in different wads though - to each his own kinda thing. I guess a "grandmaster" wad could try to encorporate every style, but might again be better served by picking one or several that are close in nature. I won't try to "lay down the law" in this regard anyway, at the end of the day, whichever pathway that might prove to have enough momentum to be carried out would be the "right" choice for this. As to referencing other wads, I guess there should be room for a singular nod to each original author in there, but that any main focus in such a regard would be better served aimed at other great offerings from the community, different from the lucky-fuck early-birds that were having an oputput around the time there was a small window open to get on that disc. The suggestion to have the story be about "re-unifying fractured reality branches" kinda leaves the door open for any & all noteable "tributes to a masterful" level/style in this regard, whether by design or happenstance. Well, statistically I'm sure odds are against it, if one looks purely on the type of post this is, but I'm so inactive on the actual content-creation front for Doom lately, that I figured it would be better to air my thoughts on the subject & leave those here, rather than dissappearing completely and silently, if my current contribution vector should happen to be on a stable course. :] Nooooooo! Hahaha, much as I still like that story-line as its own little thing, I'd never suggest picking up that specific story-tangent in the same breath as trying to sketch out an subsequent extrapolation from ML, as a whole. Definetely counter-productive & reductive of odds, hahaha. ...if I ever was to finish Cabal the way I originally envisioned it (and I won't) it would definetely be by "mapping blind" again using DETH or DEU - making levels with Doombuilder & a constant 3D preview just yields completely different results for me. Echelon was my way of scratching the "make a 32 level map set" bucket list itch. ...having said that, & again playing on the suggestion of "multiple realities being gathered to one canon" (within the confines of the imagined project anyway - I think we all know Doom canon will never be made fully coherent/singular) - there's nothing stopping anyone from inserting a map or two into this set, whose gimmick is to end/continue the Cabal story. It just won't be me doing it, lol. Nor should it be the overall story for an entire "Grandmaster" offering. ...plus, and just so it's mentioned, I certainly wouldn't object to someone picking up the Cabal concept where it was left and finishing that storyline on its own, but I'm 100% sure that would be a seperate project from the one proposed in this thread. :) Thanks though. x)

Check the first post in the thread - Scuba's fourth word is a link to the engine

I might design a level with this thing!

A balanced megawad would be preferable in my book, but yeah - I couldn't get directly involved in this either these days, so not really the one to say about production specifics. I figure the "WISH" part - "way id should have done" gets around this - they called the shots on it after all. Whatever corrections/improvements you might have done to it if you had a time machine type of thing. Fine by me to throw in a pun on its largely observed standard anyways. :) Yeah, makes sense. Instead of the typical "super-expansive mega-map" that limit-removing sometimes invite, one might just use that feature as a way to avoid visplane overflows & keep the general map complexity somewhat close to vanilla, I suppose. I'm not familiar with MBF21 beyond the wiki, but looks to be right on point for the imagined "spirit" of it - I'd have gone nuts with insta-death sectors back in the day, haha. "Grandmaster Levels" would be a nice take on it too. x)

I guess as the only currently semi-active member of the ML contributors in our corner of the Doom cosmos, I figure I'd throw some thoughts out there, for posterity eventualities if nothing else. Observing these factors... 1 - ML wasn't made into a full 32-level map set, though pretty much everyone outside of the contemporary id Software think it should've been. Individual difficulty levels varied wildly. 2 - Map styles were fractured, looking at "the set" as a whole - more so than with Doom/Doom II 3 - Each of the authors interpreted subjectively what a "master level" (or more generally, a continuation of Doom gameplay) was/is/should be - some tried making their maps harder than the original maps, some not - they were largely outtakes or expansions of the authors' own works in progress. ...I figure these might be some of the guidelines if this project was ever undertaken: 1 - 32 Maps, because that what id should have done - played in consecutive order & balanced tighter than Doom/Doom II, at least on the "hard" setting 2 - Unlike DTWID, there's no _having_ to emulate the original authors' style, rather show what else you can do with Doom, after/over/other than the original II games. I suppose minimum of one "emulation" map per author should be included for consistency with the other "the way" sets, but showcasing what else has happened to Doom level design since takes presedence over repeated author-emulations. 3 - More of a focused agreement on what the offering should be before embarking, but absolutely about showcasing participants' individual styles In the sense of "a master set" (as in, a fully comprehensive set containing all variants) ML-TWISHD might try to showcase at least once, every major "trick" or stride forwards made in Doom level design post- Doom 2, which have since expanded the Doom level designer's toolkit. We might take these for granted now, but each of them were great wow-factors back in the day, and much of the early map efforts were focused around creating new entries. Some examples: - invisible stairs - instantly raising/lowering floors/ceilings - "3D" structures where you seemingly can walk over and under solid geometry - strobing light effects (maybe not in any large rooms, we know more about epilepsy nowadays than back then) - exploring successful graphical combinations of the original resources, showcasing surviving "tropes" if you will ...showing these community created "tricks" & methods roughly chronologically from map 01 and onwards could be a neat take, perhaps starting with limit-retained levels, eventually reaching limit-removed ones? This would of course entail creating a somewhat comprehensive list of available "tricks" - no small task in itself I suppose. One might also endeavor to have at least one good use of every line/sector effect available in the game. I figure a benefit-of-hindsight approach might make such a wad better than trying to snapshot the imperfect offering the original package was, while still retaining an aspect of the titular "master" bombastics & focusing on the "level" subject matter. If a plot is needed, I'd suggest the hell gates opening created a series of wildly fractured timelines that the completion of each level "ends", in order to re-form a singular historical timeline, so the demons can't re-invade from the other branches in time. It would be neat to one day reach a full set of "the way" wads anyhow... :) Thoughts?