And now for some Doom stuff!
So recently I finished up detailing and prettifying Jimmy91′s CC4 map “Suburbia. It took me a few weeks once I started back on it; slightly longer than I had anticipated but I had fun working on it nonetheless. As I’ve said before, I tend to stress out a bit more when doing work on someone else’s map. This time I wasn’t so stressed, although there were a few hurdles to jump over. The map is very varied in the texture theme department; brick n’ stone, techbase, hell, gothic, and a little bit of everything else inbetween. Getting all of those texture themes to mesh in a way that didn’t look weird or just plain fugly took a little bit of thought and care, but in the end it came out pretty good. I think you guys will really enjoy this map. I’ve already posted some shots at the Doomworld CC4 thread but I wanted to throw some here to. So here ya go:
My plans after finishing up Jimmy’s map were to start work back up on Vela Pax. And so that’s what I did! About a week and a few days ago, I started grinding away on the next map in my crosshairs; MAP05. The map is entitled “Delirium” and is going to be a hell themed map. In case you, the reader, have forgotten, this map is going to be a detailed and expanded version of Dominion of Madness; a speedmap I released a while back. However it’s very likely that most of the original map (gameplay and detail) will be changed drastically or even completely different. The basic texture theme is consisting of marble/wood/metal so far while the structures and feeling of the map are going to be foreboding and massive. I’m looking to keep the map’s size and length somewhere around medium-ish, though I may go nuts again and have it turn out to be some huge, 1 1/2 hours marathon 
It’s shaping up pretty well and I’m enjoying the work though! I just posted some screenshots on the Vela Pax thread at Doomworld, so I figured I’d whore them out here as well. Here they are:
The areas in these shots are still very much work-in-progress; no lighting or thing placement done yet and everything is subject to change.
So I’m going to continue working on this map in the coming days and weeks. I’ll be sure to drop some more updates and screenshots when I can on the Vela Pax thread at Doomworld, so be sure to check in every now and again. I’m also trying to keep the Wads in Progress page up to date but it seems that whomever does the update approval has been busy. So it might take a while before my update go through over there. In the mean time, I would love to hear comments and the such 
. It came with Windows 7, which up until now, I’ve never even seen, much less used. I did use Vista for a short time though and my opinion of it was pretty much “I can take it or leave it…so I’ll just go back to XP”. Windows 7 is similar to Vista in many ways, but so far I have found it to be much less annoying and more usable (with a few tweaks here and there). I was surprised to find that some of the wad editing utilities I had trouble with in Vista were no problem at all in Windows 7. Getting everything transferred and setup has been pretty uneventful save for a few niggles here and there. I did have to reformat/reinstall everything when I first got the computer since I was locked out because of the previous owner’s password, but that wasn’t a big deal. Really the only thing I don’t like about it thus far is the terrible flat-keyed keyboard, although I am getting use to it now. I’ll probably end up buying a new keyboard anyways though 
. There may be a potential issue in the future regarding the video card; I’m pretty sure it’s one of those integrated Intel cards. I did run Team Fortress 2 with it’s default graphic settings and it seemed to do ok. Although I don’t really own or play any games that would really require a beastly card…but I’d like to have the option available to me if I decide I want to in the future. I looked briefly at some graphics cards at Best Buy the other day but I’m really hesitant to purchase one until I can get some advice from someone more knowledgeable about those things. Ideally I’d like to get something that is going to do everything the Intel card is doing so far and thensome. Here are some shots of the computers specs taken with 
. Also I’d be very appreciative if someone could help me out on figuring out what kind of graphics card I could get for this Asus computer (if I can get one at all, that is). By the way, now that I’m pretty much settled into this new machine, I should be starting back up on my various projects again very soon.