The title is a poor attempt at me being clever in relation to claustrophobia. I mean the project and the fear. Eh, nevermind. Recently I haven’t been doing a whole lot. After I finished working on IGPack, I’ve been sorta do-less. Probably because I’ve been long overdue for a break from…everything I’ve been trying to get my money’s worth on my XBL gold account since it expires this month…but other than that, I haven’t been doing a whole lot. What I have been doing prior to this large wave of lazy is work on Claustrophobia 1024. By work on I mean I’ve been chipping away at my final submission to the project, giving feedback on maps when I get the time, and doing general management stuff. Claustrophobia is the last big Doom project I’ve got on my plate to finish….erm, besides secret, not-so-urgent stuff. It’s also the last community project I plan on doing for a long time. Geez, community projects sure can make ya tired…and hungry!

As far as Claustrophobia goes, we’re actually coming along quite well. I’ve been gone for a few days, but I’m pretty sure we’re very VERY close to accepting 32 maps; the overflow makes that number much much higher. So far I’m pretty satisfied with how the quality of the maps are and how well the contributors have worked with me and each other. My only regret this far into the project is that I added too many Quake and Quake-esq textures to the resource :fag: Though some of the more recent maps have taken the high road and have went with a healthy mixing of texture palettes, which should help balance out the theme of the project as a whole. But in the end, as long as it’s fun, I’ll be happy. I also need to think of a good way to do testing. Initially when I gained control over the entire project, I was going to have some friends of mine to help test new maps that are submitted in IRC; that plan fell through since I never get on IRC. However esselfortium has been extra helpful with testing and with having enough patience to deal with all of the ignorant-laden questions I keep asking him. I’ll definitely have to give him lots of credit for that. Since we have so many accepted maps, the project should be pretty close to testing. One idea I thought of was just lumping all 32 accepted maps into a .zip and all of the overflow maps into a separate .zip and send them off to various trusted folks for testing. Beyond that I don’t have any other ideas, though that one seems to be the quickest/easiest way. I also need to set a map deadline pretty soon as well.

All that really remains for me in terms of work for Claus1024 is to finish up my map and fix the resources (and maybe give more in-depth feedback if possible…though the last batch I did took me 6 hours to do). I’m working on a MAP32 replacement. It’s using an entirely different resource set from the 1024-2 set. I decided that I wanted something that looked different, and luckily for me around that same time esselfortium made a pretty awesome batch of new textures (which he’s still working on). So right now it’s using 95% esseltex, and I must say I really love how the map is looking because of it. There are a few edits by your truly in it as well as a handful of 1024-2 resources, but so far it’s coming together nicely. No screenshots yet, though it is pretty close to being completed in terms of layout/detail. I haven’t added any monsters/items/gameplay yet…I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that portion will come together well. Oh, I forgot to mention: the map is somewhat inspired by MAP32 of Congestion 1024. Except that it’s horribly symmetrical (I was shooting for something asymmetrical…yet somehow, that didn’t work). Oh well…enough blogging for today :hurr:

I’m freezing. I’m huddled next to an electric radiator while I type this, yet my hands are still so cold that it feels like I’m trying to type in molasses. Unluckily for me I have to squat down in the basement, though I could be upstairs where it’s warm right now (…what in the hell is wrong with me?!). Last night I was working pretty diligently on my last Claustrophobia 1024 map when the power suddenly went out. I was actually working pretty fast and I had lots of ideas I was going to implement that night…but no, the cold weather had other plans. Gah! I don’t mind the cold if it’s snowing. But for the past few years we’ve hardly got any precipitation of any kind (I live in the south-western part of Virginia). Even during the warmer months it has been really dry. At one point a few years ago, farmers around the area where I live had to resort to buying hay for their animals; normally they would be able to grow and cut their own with some to spare. This has really hurt a lot of the people economically around here, though last year wasn’t quite as bad (thankfully :scared: ). While it seems some of us are in a bit of a drought these days, other people are trying not to drown from the excessive amounts of rain. I remember when we use to get lots and LOTS of snow during the colder months, but that seems to be non-existent. Nowadays when it’s cold there’s rarely any purdy, fluffy snow to go accompany it…and that makes mek sad. I swear, I’m moving up north next to the great lakes where it still actually snows. Or, uh, maybe not.

Blarg, end of pointless blog rant :psy:

I needed to take a short break from my computer. I did this for various reasons. Besides the most obvious one (I spend too much time during the day while online), there were other, more varied reasons. I’ll start with the lighter ones.

I just recently got over a yucky ole cold. A few days ago it was pretty bad, so I didn’t bother getting online :aww: For some reason I was having pretty harsh headaches…I’d say something pretty close to migraines. Light and loud sounds made me wince so getting on the computer wasn’t going to happen until they went away. I still have some remnants of the cold lingering around…but for the most part I feel a whole lot better.

However, to completely contradict what I just said about having bad headaches, I’ve gotten myself readdicted to a game. Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (or Advanced 2) is the sequel to the GBA game Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced…which in turn was loosely based off of the mechanics of the PSX game Final Fantasy Tactics. I had never actually played the PSX game, but for some reason I looked forward to the release of FFTA. I even reserved a copy of the game and bought a strategy guide when I finally got my copy. I instantly feel in love with the game, which I found to be sorta odd since I usually didn’t play those kinds of games. I became addicted to it pretty quickly and I had lots of freetime to play it while taking the 45 minute bus ride to and from Governor’s school. Before long I racked up over 200 hours of play. Eventually I sold all of my GBA games, including FFTA…but a few years ago I re bought the game and played through it again (thank goodness GBA games are cheap now, heh). All-in-all I’ve probably played that game in excess of 300 hours. So when I heard that a version of the PSX game was coming out for the PSP, I hopped on the chance to get it. Unfortunately the PSP version of the game (which is basically a port of the PSX version) was a lot harder to get into. The game mechanics are really quite different from the ‘Advance’ series and the game has a somewhat slower pace and a slightly more frustrating interface. I stopped playing it a few hours into the game because I got stuck. Maybe one day I’ll come back to it and try to finish it up. However, around the same time that the PSP version of the game was released, I heard rumors that a DS version of the game was coming out in Japan…and that it was a direct sequel to the GBA game. Once I learned that it was coming stateside, I was never happier that I had bought a DS. My aunt bought the game for me for my 22nd birthday (it was an early present) and so far it has been quite an amazing game. At first I played it off an on because I was busy with a lot of other things. But during my short computer hiatus, I’ve played it almost non-stop. FFTA2 is probably 3 or 4 times longer than it’s GBA sequel, and twice as deep and 4 times as awesome. The game expanded so much in terms of player jobs, different types of units, weapons, armor…just about everything. They also redid some of the more annoying things from FFTA like the Law system (which I kind of loathed to tell you the truth). All in all though, it’s nice to actually get addicted to a game again. Most of this shit that comes out these days isn’t even worth looking at :noes:

I’ve also been thinking about other things…other things that will likely hit closer home for some of you readers out there. I’ve been thinking about the Doom multiplayer community, where I sit within it, and what I think about it these days. Of course this is related more towards Skulltag directly since I don’t dabble with ZDaemon or Odamex, but what I think probably applies to all three of them. I’ve been sorta disappointed with the community as a whole…or maybe more accurately, I’ve been disappointed with myself in said community. Things have changed quite a bit since I first joined up…and at the same time some things haven’t changed at all. It seems to me that no matter how much work is done on the modding and mapping side of things, the players don’t want to take part in it. It seems that all the player base cares about these days is COOP and duel on the same set of maps over and over and over and over and over and over. I can understand COOP to a point since it’s usually replayable by an order of magnitude over almost all other gametypes. But what makes me sad is that people play the same duel/dm maps over and over until their eyes bleed; of course I’m referring to D5M1 and GW20 and whatever else I’m missing. Sure, they are really good maps with really good layouts and item placements, but after a while it gets ridiculous. There are so many other maps out there…I mean, Doom has got to have the largest selection of user-made content available to any game in existence, yet the community would rather play the same 3 or 4 maps over and over until the end of time. So what’s the point of any even making new content if no one will play it? Especially if it’s something you’ve spent lots and lots of time and energy on. If it’s good, it should be played…and there’s lots of good stuff out there to be played besides DWANGO and GW, etc. I also think the server maintainers are partly to blame for this as well – if they recognize that this is a problem, they could help quell the problem by not hosting the same stuff all the time. Vary it up a bit, host stuff that’s hardly ever hosted, get people interested in other things! I will say that there are exceptions to this (like Ghouls vs. Humans…kudos Cutman!)…but I’m tired of going into IDE and seeing everyone play the same thing all of the time :arg: *SIGH* But in the end I guess it doesn’t really matter now. I’ve pretty much decided that I won’t be working on anymore Doom multilayer stuff…well, I won’t be contributing massive amounts of anything anytime soon. If I do something multiplayer related, it will be via 32in24 or because I’m bored and I might contribute a map to a community project. Other than that though, anything Doom related you see coming from me in the future will most likely be COOP/SP related. I have other things going on in the future for me anyways, so I won’t have much time for Doom. I’m trying my best to finish up some Doom things now so I can free up my time. Those things include Claustrophobia 1024 first and foremost, reworking of Obsidian Oblivion (maybe), and then Vaporware (I’m hoping to work on Vaporware when I don’t have to worry about any other Doom things). I was going to work on Sabbat Martyr DeathMatch v1.2 but I doubt that’s going to happen now; no one plays it and I think it would just be a waste of my time.

So yea, it was fun while it lasted but I’m pretty much through with working on Doom multilayer stuff. I’m not going to completely resign myself from Skulltag though…you’ll see me around

One last thing: before my hiatus, I did quite a bit of updating on the ‘Design’ page. I still have a long ways to go, but I updated most of my most recently completely stuff. Go check it out will ya!

IGPack v1.1 was released today! Want a download link? Mkay:

IGPack v1.1
v1.1 changelog

If you don’t like that download link, you can get a large list of mirrors at the Skulltag release thread or the Doomworld release thread. If you’d like some screenshots of all 31 maps, check out the original release blog post.

I have already uploaded v1.1 to /idgames; it should be reviewed some time in the future in /newstuff. I’ll also be updating the IGPack WIP page very shortly with a download link.

In other news, I finished playing through Plutonia 2 and it was good Also, the final version of 32in24-8 has been released! I uploaded a mirror for it since it’s likely it won’t make it into /idgames because of the nature of the project. Also, I have a very bad cold and it’s wearing me dowwwwwwn :noes:

So happy gibbers everyone :gib:

Shaikoten surprised me yesterday when he popped up with 2008′s final 32in24 project. I participating in 32in24′s and I pretty much drop anything I’m doing at the time to help out. The theme this time around was Single Player to Multiplayer; take any maps from Ultimate Doom or Doom II and use them to create a deathmatch map from. Basically, think D2M5…except with more kickass 8] I knew exactly which map I wanted to work from as soon as I heard about the theme: E1M3. So I grabbed the slot and got to work.

I was able to finish up about a 1/4 of the map that night, but I must say it felt really weird taking an original Doom map and modifying it into a map of my own. Since I usually prefer to do my own work, about 2/3 of the map ended up being my original work and the rest of the map was taken directly from Ult. Doom E1M3 (with some additions to decor on my behalf). The next day I was busy all the way until about 7 PM, so I didn’t have a whole lot of time, relatively speaking, to finish the map the way I wanted. But thankfully I was able to complete it around 10:30, and I’m really happy with the result I named the map “Contagion Purifier”:

Ok, so it’s 10:30 and I want to do a 2nd map. I usually try to do atleast 2 maps for 32in24 if I can. So I called for E3M8; it’s basically just a big, open type arena map. My plan was to alter the layout ever so slightly and then do some speed decorating. For those of you who aren’t in the know, speed decorating is a complicated set of processes that only mapper’s with razor sharp skills can pull off. It entails the use of the two keystrokes Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. It’s highly advanced stuff :yup: Since the map is basically a mirror of itself in both the x and y directions, I decided that I would decorate the hell out of one corner and then just skillfully copy/paste it into the four other corners. From there I worked a little on the middle area, fancied up the north/south and east/west walls with trim and stuff, and then gave the map a new sky texture. Unfortunately for me I went over the deadline by 20 or 30 minutes :doh: I went ahead and submitted it anyways, though I’m not sure if it’s going to be used or if it’ll end up in overflow; we’ll see. Though for such skillful work, I think it came out pretty cool looking (thanks for some rather slick decoring which I could copy/paste easily). The deep, thought-provoking name I came up with was “Return to Dis”:

Also something noteworthy that happened this New Year’s (yet I had nothing to do with it) was the release of Plutonia 2. This thing started in 2000…so it took these guys nearly 9 years to complete. I’m getting ready to play it now! For those of you who don’t have it yet, you can download it HERE. Isn’t this New Year’s just fucking awesome or what?! :awe:

Happy New Year’s everyone!