Agent Strange

Many people falsely attribute the Aliens franchise on having a big influence on Doom. John Romero clarified in his newly published autobiography that the Star Wars Holiday Special had the biggest impact on the team when they were working in Shreveport, Louisiana. Accidental exposure to Louisiana swamp water and Tom Hall's third eye are to blame.

Mini rant about this since I saw my name pop-up. Oh, brother. OH, BROTHER. Let me tell you a story about the Doom Awards. For my part, I took everything they told me about what they were doing at face value. "New Doom community? Sounds good to me. Don't know why you're using drama involving the ZDoom forums as justification for starting this but okay." It was only after I had given them a shoutout that I thought to myself, "I should look into this more. Something seems fishy." Checked the website, read their lauded Transparency Statement, found the connection to the Boomers Dimension Discord, and then joined the Doom Awards Discord itself. All while this was happening, I had the Doom Awards Twitter account (aka Hakros) DMing about their beef with Major Arlene. I very promptly told them, "Hey, that's between the two of you. I don't want to know about it, I don't need to know about it." After that, I took a cursory glance at the Doom Awards Discord and found some posts that looked pretty bad at out of context. By that point, I was starting to realize that a good portion of the people running this thing were not native English speakers. I spent the first half of my life growing up overseas and from that I know that a lot can get lost in translation. Different languages, different cultures, different worldviews, all that coalescing into what I believe was a repurposed Discord that used to be used for a couple of friends to joke around in. That set off some alarms in my brain. I told folks to check out this cool new thing and there's some questionable stuff just floating there out in the open. If this thing becomes popular, then the chances of this stuff getting out there is only going to grow exponentially. So, with all of that in mind, I decided to ask for clarification on the posts that I saw. What followed, was a rollercoaster of smack coming from one the Discord's moderators. "Oh, Agent Strange. You're just some content creator who likes to play God and you're going to try to cancel us like you did with Sgt Mark. You ruined his career. Blah, blah, blah. Cancel culture is cringe and so are you. Long live Freedom of Speech!" That stream of word vomit went back and forth for two or so hours while I tried to politely inquiry about what I had seen. Eventually, I spoke with Hakros about it. He explained that they're Spanish speakers and that it's all just jokes and nothing to take seriously. I knew better by this point but decided to just leave it at that. I thanked Hakros for "explaining", left the server, briefly mentioned their beef to Major Arlene in private, and washed my hands of the whole affair. They were right in that I had unfairly repeated a lot of the stuff that Sgt. Mark was infamous for back in the day. That was wrong of me, and I realized that back in August 2021 when I spoke with Mark directly and buried the hatchet with him. I did not want to go through something like that again with these Doom Awards folks and after the verbal thrashing that I received from this moderator; I wanted nothing to do with this situation period. I didn't want to expose or "cancel" them. I just wanted to move on. If the Doom Awards was truly as toxic as I thought, then I don't need to get on a high horse and inform people of that, they can reach that conclusion on their own. Fast forward to now and that seems to be what's happening. I've heard that some people who were involved with the Doom Awards at the beginning are no longer associated with it. I haven't verified that, but I just remembered one of the names that were involved and deleted a tweet that highlighted some their content to be on the safe side. I am responsible for the community, for lack of a better term, that I cultivate on social media and it's up to me to make sure that it remains a safe place for EVERYONE to participate in. I did take screenshots of my time in the Doom Awards Discord but I don't want to go full Sherlock Holmes/Hbomberguy on this unless it becomes absolutely necessary. I would prefer that this be the final nail in the coffin that was my very brief endorsement of that goober website.

Got three maps left to finish on UV. Vengeance Unleashed was brutal but outside of that I'm having a blast!

Big congrats to all the winners! BYOC, Austrian Avian Association, TNT2: Devilution. What a great year for Doom mods. Want to give a special shoutout to MyHouse.WAD. Genuinely one of the best mods I've ever played for any game.

Yes! You just posted wholesome content. You are going to gain subscribers!

Oooohhh. Lol I completely misread that. My bad.

I like this concept a lot. Looking forward to the full release 🤙

First World War

Ohh I'd love to see Tom Hall make some new levels. Doubt it'd happen but it'd be cool if American McGee made some levels too. Feel bad for him after getting rejected by EA.

I think you have me confused with someone else because I have no idea what you're referring to.

Yeah, hopefully David and Romero can keep him on track if it becomes necessary. I want to hear you talk about Doom not how cool you think Elon Musk is.

Interview I did with Nash Muhandes. Talked about his early days in the scene, DISDAIN, and VKDoom development.

Just Doomguy. I get iD trying to introduce something more definitive in 2016 to help with storytelling but he'll always be Doomguy to me.

Apologies if this has been asked before. I looked through the Help.pdf and couldn't find an answer. I'm wondering if there's a way to add artwork or not. Specifically, I want to add this to No Rest for the Living instead of using the generic cover. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm very impressed with this so far. Looks great in HDR and I love the new compass system.