lunchlunch

I think 99% of the time, trolls don't belong in DOOM. In Kaizo Super Mario World ROM hacks it can be hilarious but that's only because those levels only take 30-60 seconds to complete. The setback for getting trolled is a matter of seconds. The average DOOM map is between 7-10 minutes, and even with frequent saves, your setback is much longer. The other thing is that in kaizo, there's only so many things happening onscreen at one time so it's immediately clear when you've been trolled and what the troll is. In DOOM it's often not clear that you've been trolled, the cause and effect is not as clearcut, it takes more trial and error to see exactly what went wrong and why. Then by the time you realize it was an intentional troll, not a mapping error, not a puzzle you misunderstood, not a fight you had any chance of beating, the "troll" has lost any chance of being humorous and is just an annoyance, if not a reason to abandon the wad entirely.

From a utilitarian POV, making and playing mods is probably a huge waste of time. For the majority of people, I don't think learning to use editors for thirty-year-old computer games will prove a "useful" (read: marketable) skill. But that's just the case with art. Spending time making it is usually not particularly "useful," it's just the best way I know of to have fun. I want to do nothing more with my life than draw, sculpt, write, customize, mod, create according to my heart's every whimsy. The only way to be "useful" with your artistic skills is marketing- drawing business logos, composing commercial jingles, 3D-modeling environments for military training exercises, or obtaining a creative-writing degree just to pen HR-culture empty-virtue BS for a company's social media page... In making art "useful," it's bastardized to the point that it doesn't resemble what we learned these skills for in the first place. For me, art is the joy of living, any job or career is just a way to support myself so I can while away the hours with my own creative passions. For most artists, we're not going to make a living from people buying our artwork, our books, our albums, or (more relevantly) getting hired on as full-time level designers somewhere. Usefulness, the ability to be productive, I don't think is really the point with art. Art hobbies might even be anti-productivity. People can dress up the benefits of art in many ways- it's "culturally enriching," it "allows for therapeutic reflection," whatever, but at the end of the day art is really just a form of escapism for both the artist and the audience. Schopenhauer believed that life is entirely suffering, but he valued art because it allows one to momentarily forget oneself. I've gotten way off-track from OP's topic but I wanted to humor this rambling thought on art's usefulness. I no longer know if I actually believe the things I say or if I'm just spitballing hypothetical ululations for my irony-poisoned contrarianism, but at this moment I feel that art itself is just pointless fun, a masturbatory, nihilistic exercise, and I would have it no other way.

@TeK (⌐■_■)About Norwitch Lane's secret, you should just be able to walk over the teleporter pad on the left side of your screenshot unless it somehow broke in the two years since I completed it. Edit- Just downloaded the latest version and tested it, I had no issues using the teleporter.

Jaded is now finalized on idgames

Great maps, I had fun playtesting

This is my favorite community project I've ever taken part in, I love revisiting it every year. Great job e/vr/ybody : )

@TheMagicMushroomMan The first time I saw The Devils was the censored version. Every time after that I've seen the uncut version, which adds the full Rape Of Christ sequence as well as the bone masturbation scene you're alluding to. It's definitely nowhere near three hours long though, if there ever was a cut around that length I imagine it was just a workprint. Ever since I first saw it like seven years ago I've wanted an official blu ray release but I don't think we'll ever get it. WB still owns the rights and they've wanted to bury it ever since it came out. I do have a decently wellmade bootleg Blu Ray copy of it though and that's good enough for me. Edit- I actually like the cheap props. The campy outrageousness mixed with serious performances and heavy themes is a vibe that only exists to the same extent in one other movie, and it actually came out the same year: A Clockwork Orange

I'll go with directors who are acclaimed but I find to be boring, hacky, or overrated- Nolan, Bresson, Cassavettes, Wong Kar-wai, Refn, Spielberg, and half of Tarkovsky's output. @TheMagicMushroomMan The Devils is top five for me, it's a perfect movie. Witchfinder General is pretty boring but if you're in the mood for a similar movie that's actually good, check out Witchhammer (1970). Alternatively, there is Mother Joan of the Angels (1961) which is based on the same historical event as The Devils.

@LadyMistDragon Ha, I own the Vinegar Syndrome release of Pigs aka Daddy's Deadly Darling (it was a blind buy). I used to try trading it away to users on r/boutiqueblurays but no one in their right minds has a desire for a physical copy of friggin' Pigs.

Don't Turn Your Back On The City

Some of my favorite pieces of art I've ever made (right next to The 10x10 Project) Edit in case someone gets butthurt because they're missing the satire-

My first and third maps I ever made. Not sure whatever happened to TestingMAP02.wad or if it was ever finished. Both are UDMF format, haven't made changes to them since their original conception in the first half of 2020. Haven't even played them all the way through since then, any time I've had a hankering to, I get a couple minutes in and get irritated by the mapping naivete present and then quit them. Edit- TestingMAP03.wad is in mapslot 04 for some reason

Crystal Castles is my favorite music artist of all time. For the last couple years, about once a month I've obsessively Googled to see if anyone has suddenly created a CC MIDI that I can use in a DOOM map. So I'm jealous of the project haha. I've only played a short bit of it and I've liked the gameplay, I have no problems on that front. However, I think that for making a proper tribute to Crystal Castles, you've gotta get in touch with a MIDI composer to commission them to making full versions of the songs with more instruments than just the stripped down piano versions that are currently in the wad. These are noisy dance songs, simplistic piano renditions can't do them justice. I'm assuming you took 'Vanished' from the Online Sequencer version, I've been aware of that version for a long time but have never used it because it's only the first ten seconds of the song on loop! Sure, Vanished is fairly repetitive, but there's more to it than that! The other thing about the MIDIs is they're so quiet that even with the music volume cranked all the way up, you can't even hear it over the sound of slaughter combat. To do this project right, I really really really have to urge you to do whatever you gotta do to get a MIDI composer to sequence these songs the right way. I can't let myself play it until then.

For me, I want to play a wad that has the mapper's soul in it, something that took a lot of time and effort. As far as Keagan's sentiment goes, I agree with the premise but not the conclusion. Mappers (and artists in general) should create something that is true to their individuality, which will sometimes mean taking risks and doing things a little more esoterically. But just because an author is doing something their own way does not make it impenetrable against criticism. Let's take movies as an example. I don't particularly love Ari Aster or Robert Eggers' work, but I will go see everything they make because I want to support Hollywood putting money into making mainstream auteur works. I'm glad filmmakers like Tarantino or Wes Anderson are able to make the movies they want to make. That doesn't mean though that just because their work is personal/individualistic that it can't be bad. Asteroid City is a directionless mess with almost nothing to say, overly reliant on its meta narrative device that Anderson has already done in his last several movies. All this is to say, if my criticism of your map is that its labyrinthine to the point of being unnavigable, "Well I wanted it to be that way" is a trite way to respond as the mapper. In this example, I'm not reductively suggesting that anything mazey is bad, but that a quality like that can get out of hand, if there's no unique landmarks to orient myself around, progression is unclear, et cetera et cetera. So be true to yourself as a mapper/artist but be aware that you still have to entertain and respect the audience to some extent.

I was just gonna DM this to you but figured I might as well bump the thread- Early Mass (Commentary) Edit: just editing my comment to mention that this was very enjoyable, looking forward to what else you make