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

The site has just been updated to run on WordPress 3.0. Cool beans! Also, at some point, I have a few more bits of content that need adding. I’ll get to that…eventually

I have probably been somewhat inactive the past week or two. For one, there has been a lot of family-related drama going on (which I will not bore you with). So that’s been kind of draining on me. But more importantly/excitedly, I have come into possession of a brand-new computer! It’s actually somewhat related to the silly drama…but long story short is this: my Aunt bought this person a brand-new computer. We don’t really even know this person at all and my Aunt is just too nice. So it turns out that this person is a complete alcoholic and a general retard. She started making various threats (including burning down the house where she was allowed to stay temporarily), so the computer was taken away, among other things. At any rate, it was too late to take the computer back to Best Buy or wherever she purchased it, so she was stuck with a $1600 piece of hardware that she knows little to nothing about. That’s the extremely short version of the story.

Rewind to about a week ago. My Aunt offered to give the computer to me, which I was somewhat hesitant to agree to. Instead, I offered to try and sell my laptop to help pay it off (and then pay off the rest of the balance gradually). She was eager to offload it to me as soon as possible though, so she went ahead and gave it to me. I’m looking into a way to sell my laptop…but for now, here’s a picture of this beast:

My future plans for a new machine were going to be me building my own until this turn of events…but I’m not gonna complain. It’s a pretty slick looking machine. I don’t know anything about the Asus brand; I’ve heard of it, I just haven’t researched it or heard much about it from word-of-mouth. My impressions of it are pretty good so far though. This thing is incredibly fast. The monitor (that either came with it or was purchased separately…although it is an Asus monitor) is friggin’ massive! As far as desktop computers go, my last one was a Win98 machine from 1998. So I’m use to those old, boxy CRT monitors . 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 Speccy:

Incidentally, I am still looking into selling my laptop. If anyone reading this is interested, drop me a post or an email. It’s an Alienware Aurora M9700. It’s not quite 3 years old, still has a few months left on it’s warranty, and is in excellent (but used) condition. Not to mention I’ve kept every single accessory, piece of paperwork, etc for it. I’m not sure what medium would be best for selling it…maybe ebay or craigslist? But anyways, I’ll be happy to go into more depth on it’s specs and condition if someone is interested . 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.

TL;DR – Yay, I got a new computer!