The Doom Master Wadazine #21 - Feat. Roofi, Biodegradable, the Wadawards 2022, Why E4M1 is the Best Doom Level, and more!

22 minutes ago, WH-Wilou84 said:

Congrats on releasing this new issue !

So far, I've only read Biodegradable's take on playtesting, the Roofi interview and your E4M1 apology. The latter reminded me of Coincident's retentless UV Max attempts on that map that I had watched a couple weeks ago, and yeah this map is indeed a banger, easily top 3 material in Thy Flesh Consumed along with E4M6 and E4M2. Wouldn't call it the best Doom level (it's obviously E1M5), but despite all the pain it causes, E4M1 is definitely fun to blast through and a very strong opener for E4.
 

 

If you do decide to fix these errors in an updated release, here's some other ones I've noticed along the way :

- Roofi interview, page 17 : "ubt" instead of "but"
- Roofi interview, page 16 : the legendary mapper Roofi alludes to is "Iikka" Keränen, not "Likka"
- Pictures gallery, page 87 : netcurse2000's screenshot is actually taken from a Tarnsman map

 

Thanks a lot! Glad you enjoyed my article. I think it being an opener for E4 is what really left a big impact on me.

As for the errors, it is particularly hard to do so now because we don't have the original raw edited files anymore, and would have to start from zero to fix even small mistakes like that. It seems even if we read the entire issue multiple times with multiple eyes, we still miss those damn little mistakes lol but thanks anyway, we aim to improve.

10 minutes ago, Endless said:

As for the errors, it is particularly hard to do so now because we don't have the original raw edited files anymore, and would have to start from zero to fix even small mistakes like that. It seems even if we read the entire issue multiple times with multiple eyes, we still miss those damn little mistakes lol but thanks anyway, we aim to improve.

Ritualistic deletion of all source files as soon as an issue ships?

6 minutes ago, pavera said:

 

Ritualistic deletion of all source files as soon as an issue ships?

Straight to the furnace!

43 minutes ago, Endless said:

we don't have the original raw edited files anymore

This issue of the Wadazine was posted two days ago, which is not a long period of time. How do you not still have the original files? This feels very shortsighted.

I've got some other issues as well, if I'm honest. I've never found the Wadazine particularly engaging to read; it is a frustrating blend of "overly bloated" and "surprisingly insubstantial", especially when it comes to WAD reviews. I wouldn't mind "too many words" if they felt worth reading, but at least to me it doesn't tend to be the case. The KDiKDiZD segment is a prime example of this. Multiple paragraphs giving an excessively broad-strokes overview of its origins and roughly what the project is, but no real specifics. Nothing to read that captures my interest, nothing that gives me reasons to play it. You can say "you have to check it out for yourself" all you want, but all of this fluff vaguely speaking of the project's technical wizardry and rampant creativity does not capture my interest, which is the opposite of your goal. What was clever about it? What was fun about it? What was so impressive about it? I'm sure there are thousands of things you could potentially bring to a reader's attention.

I've had this problem with your writing in the past, Endless. You write a lot of words but often manage to say very little. I remember a write-up of yours about the NRFTL MIDI Pack from a couple years ago. Multiple paragraphs of broad overview, and maybe a couple sentences of actually describing the music. I remember this vividly, due to it being the impetus for having a go at doing a soundtrack write-up myself. You need to start going into details. Start picking out particular standout moments and write about them. Highlights. Lowlights. Peculiarities. Surprises. You don't need to switch to a polar opposite approach and write about every single little thing, but we need something of substance to chew on, something to give the reader a reason to become interested in the subject matter. It seems like you can do this for single maps, but it can be applied to larger projects as well. I apologize if this reads as picking on you in particular, but your writing feels the most prominent within the Wadazine's pages.

Additional editing and proofreading would help considerably as well. People in the thread have found a good few typos and errors, and who knows if there are more, but having some people specifically to improve the writing and crack down on errors would be beneficial. If these people are already present, then they could be more thorough in their approach. You clearly care about Doom and all the community has to offer. The more polish and care you're able to put into the Wadazine, the more we'll be able to see that passion.

Best of luck on future issues.

5 hours ago, Endless said:

Straight to the furnace!

... are you serious? Why?

5 hours ago, Endless said:

 Straight to the furnace!

On 8/24/2023 at 11:23 PM, TheEvilGrin said:

 

Feel free to write a counter-article explaining why it's the worst Doom map then :-P

Ain't the worst one either - worst opener, possibly.  

Certainly very atmospheric, the green-and yellow color scheme is used well, very evil looking, it's the first Doom map to advertise a rock band - and if by your metric of 'best' means 'most difficult', then yeah, everybody's pistol-starting this one, but best of all time? Over Romero's efforts from the same episode?  Over the E1 maps, and Containment Area, and The Living End, over HABITAT? I'll reiterate my "aw hell no" comment with gusto and the quickness.  

But I may indeed be moved to write a textwall about Thy Flesh Consumed, the misunderstood episode of UDoom.  

8 hours ago, AD_79 said:

This issue of the Wadazine was posted two days ago, which is not a long period of time. How do you not still have the original files? This feels very shortsighted.

3 hours ago, fraggle said:

... are you serious? Why?

No I wasn't being serious. The truth is simply that @TheEvilGrin designed a great amount, almost half of the articles in this recent issue. She is actually learning design and has helped us a lot. IIRC she mentioned that she doesn't keep the source files because she doesn't have enough space on her PC for it, but she can probably explain it better.

Thanks a lot for the general comment @AD_79, so I'm going to pick some things first:

8 hours ago, AD_79 said:

I apologize if this reads as picking on you in particular, but your writing feels the most prominent within the Wadazine's pages.

8 hours ago, AD_79 said:

Additional editing and proofreading would help considerably as well.

These two things in general can be boiled down to the fact that we are a very, very small team and lack a lot of the manpower and time to properly cover. If it feels like my writing is the most prominent, is because it is.. We don't have a lot of submissions and there's been cases when entire months go by and I don't receive anything new from any new faces. Articles in particular we don't get that many nowadays, so I try to make up for it. I feel lucky from the fact that I still can count on some prominent and constant contributors, like @Immorpher , who manages to keep some diversity with his D64 write ups, but the truth of the matter is that we haven't gotten anything new in months. @Biodegradable was the newcomer this time around, and I was pretty excited to have him.

I'd like to think that this is because writing and editing is hard and time consuming, and not a lot of people can afford to join a free project without anything in return. I can understand that.

I would love more people, that is for sure. We would welcome pretty much in any field, be writing, proofreading, editing or designing. Our current team doesn't have the resources or time we used to during the pandemic when I first started this, and each issue it gets harder and harder when we have less and less time and new faces to help us out. I think it is unrealistic to expect only a pair of proofreaders to be able to catch every error. Heck, probably doesn't help that we only have one English-native proofreader that helps the most with editing and typo fixing. @Arrowhead has been helping a lot with our project ever since Wadarcheology, two years ago.

I know this might sound a little rude, but I would love if the people that point us out our typos and errors during release day, would also offer the help for editing or proofreading for future issues too. It feels a little disheartening considering we are doing this as a passion project with no profits at all and it takes a lot of effort to even make one issue. But I understand that just like us, you guys also probably don't have the time or energy to join such a task.

If you guys like the Wadazine and want to keep it going and improve, I would love some help with it too, because damn, a magazine like ours does use a lot of work.

9 hours ago, AD_79 said:

You can say "you have to check it out for yourself" all you want, but all of this fluff vaguely speaking of the project's technical wizardry and rampant creativity does not capture my interest, which is the opposite of your goal. What was clever about it? What was fun about it? What was so impressive about it? I'm sure there are thousands of things you could potentially bring to a reader's attention.

Thanks a lot for this! I will keep note of it and try to improve on my writing, hopefully I'll be able to do better with the next write ups I do.

-

As a little tangent, honestly, reading this is a little... sad, I guess. I can totally understand the issues with my writing, and I truly want to improve, but the other issues about the errors also bring back to my attention the fact that the Wadazine doesn't seem to have the support I wished it had.

Why is this? I have wondered myself many times. I'd like to think it is because people can't really help due to the effort it takes, but I also wonder if there's something else. Do people don't like it anymore? Or is it just such a little niche thing that even the market itself is getting smaller each day? Or is it something personal I did? If so, I would like to hear more to try and improve, but the truth is... I really can't do that much anymore on my own. With general life being in the way, this passion project is a dwindling flame in me, one that I'm trying not to extinguish. But yeah.

As @AD_79 mentions, sometimes the magazine feels more like half me, and that's not what I wanted. I wanted to try and make this a hub for the community to write what they want about Doom. @AD_79 you could have sent your MIDI review to us and I would have gladly published it, even if you did it as a reaction to mine, but you didn't, why? I don't think our submission guidelines are hard to grasp, or I'm unapproachable, but if there's something, I'd like to know.

In the end, thanks for the comment, it helps bring some light into stuff I needed to know, and also finally made me open up a bit more about the Wadazine and the current situation. Anyway, the Wadazine is public, will probably be free forever, and if I can, I'd like to keep working on it for more years to come. If you really like it, don't be afraid to contribute, even small things like proofreading are big help.

58 minutes ago, Endless said:

We don't have a lot of submissions and there's been cases when entire months go by and I don't receive anything new from any new faces.

What immediately pops out is that you have certain soft barriers in place.

One is that despite mentioning that you accept submissions in the first post of these threads, there's nothing that plants an image in anyone's mind of submitting anything.

Quote

If you want to participate, either by writing an article or creating a review, PM me or join the Discord, you are most welcome!

Reading this, what I'm thinking is "What sorts of articles are okay? What subjects can they be about? What reviews are okay or not (recent wads? anything goes?)?" Don't answer those questions, just rhetorical. 

Compare that to:

Quote

If you want to participate, either by writing an article or creating a review, PM me or join the Discord, you are most welcome!

 

Here are some examples of articles we have accepted in the past: 

 

- Why Dannebubinga is underrated and it's annoying when people keep calling Sunlust a "Ribbiks mapset" (1200 words)

- How I came to fall in love with Doom 64 (1600 words)

- A thesis on the shapeliness of cyberdemon posteriors (7800 words)

 

For the next edition we are especially looking for 300-600 word community reviews on (I'll cross these out if they become unavailable)

 

- 10x10 Project

- Junk Food

- Sunlust 2

- 100000 Levels

 

as well as anything else you have found very interesting lately.

Now that gives people an prompt of some kind. They have examples of what an article might be about (for other readers, these are not actual Wadazine articles -- just filler for my post :P). They know what's in demand with reviews, and what reviews might be accepted.

Maybe the more important part is they immediately know if they are capable of writing a review that fits. ("You know what, I write 500-word reviews all the time, I might take a crack at the Wadazine this month.")

Another effort barrier in that the submission rules/guidelines in the Discord are a .docx document, which seems unnecessary. Not everyone has software installed that easily reads that. By default I get sent through some annoying MSWord trial. While I'm not really the target submitter anyway (having other obligations and wanting to keep those separated) I do think it is surprising that I didn't even know what the basic submission specs were; that's the sort of thing people should be able to become aware of without really trying.  

58 minutes ago, Endless said:

Why is this? I have wondered myself many times. I'd like to think it is because people can't really help due to the effort it takes, but I also wonder if there's something else. Do people don't like it anymore? Or is it just such a little niche thing that even the market itself is getting smaller each day? Or is it something personal I did? If so, I would like to hear more to try and improve, but the truth is... I really can't do that much anymore on my own. With general life being in the way, this passion project is a dwindling flame in me, one that I'm trying not to extinguish. But yeah.

Writing is a less popular medium than video these days, so if you are judging interest by the standards of video formats you'll be disappointed. Like, Not Jabba and Woolie Wool are on par with basically anyone as far as reviewers go. But working in a written thread format their popularity pales in comparison to Doomtube -- and even with a more visible magazine or ebook format it would too. And that's just kinda how it'll be. 

This is a bit of a left-field suggestion, but try scaling back the size & length of the next few issues: focus on writing quality, not quantity. Maybe try and get a few contributors to collaborate on articles, get some feedback going, and build up a team of folks who help improve each others' work. It works for wads; I'll bet it'll work for the Wadazine too.

4 minutes ago, baja blast rd. said:

One is that despite mentioning that you accept submissions in the first post of these threads, there's nothing that plants an image in anyone's mind of submitting anything.

You mean like posting a prompt/guideline along the threads, like in the first comment? I could certainly do that for the future.

5 minutes ago, baja blast rd. said:

Now that gives people an prompt of some kind. They have examples of what an article might be about (for other readers, these are not actual Wadazine articles -- just filler for my post :P). They know what's in demand with reviews, and what reviews might be accepted.

I will keep note of it. I do want to mention that we do have examples/templates on what to write and how. The .docx yo mention has one.

7 minutes ago, baja blast rd. said:

Another effort barrier in that the submission rules/guidelines in the Discord are a .docx document, which seems unnecessary. Not everyone has software installed that easily reads that. By default I get sent through some annoying MSWord trial. While I'm not really the target submitter anyway (having other obligations and wanting to keep those separated) I do think it is surprising that I didn't even know what the basic submission specs were; that's the sort of thing people should be able to become aware of without really trying.  

I wasn't really aware that .docx where difficult, so I will change that. I actually started with a PDF but someone mentioned me years ago that didn't had the tools to open a PDF, so I think that's why I stuck with that. But also, our submission guidelines are also available in the website, no downloads required. Here's also some examples of different ads we've used to encourage people:

They don't have the guidelines pasted on them, but I think I can work one like that for the next issue. I will try to make a better version of the guidelines and make it more open to the eyes of the readers, but I don't particularly think that's a soft barrier other than the basic effort to understand how the submissions works. I think the actual barrier is joining the Discord, but I do it that way because it is the easiest way for me to coordinate, receive write ups, send corrections, new versions, etc.

Thanks for letting me know!

2 minutes ago, Xaser said:

This is a bit of a left-field suggestion, but try scaling back the size & length of the next few issues: focus on writing quality, not quantity. Maybe try and get a few contributors to collaborate on articles, get some feedback going, and build up a team of folks who help improve each others' work. It works for wads; I'll bet it'll work for the Wadazine too.

Thanks for the comment, I understand your idea and sentiment. This is something I've been trying to do for, well, more than a year now. It is harder, much harder than trying to get people to join a WAD community project. As rd mentioned, writing and reading is a waning hobby, so getting people to contribute to the Wadazine has become a challenge on its own by the simple nature that its market is, well, small.

And yeah, I'll try to focus more on the quality than worrying about filling different articles and so on.

14 minutes ago, Endless said:

but I don't particularly think that's a soft barrier other than the basic effort to understand how the submissions works.

These might seem nitpicky but that's just how human nature works. If the early steps have a layer of effort that makes something less automatic, a lot fewer people are going to end up moving down the whole chain -- and there can be a 10-fold difference, easily. 

14 minutes ago, Endless said:

But also, our submission guidelines are also available in the website, no downloads required.

The website's landing page is not linked to in the original post so there's no guarantee everyone finds that. 

But that existing makes it really easy because you can go with something like:

Quote

If you want to participate, either by writing an article or creating a review, PM me or join the Discord, you are most welcome! Check out our submission guidelines. 

14 minutes ago, Endless said:

I will try to make a better version of the guidelines

This would be a good idea. One simple tweak is that the order on the site seems backwards: formatting nuances, article guidelines, then review guidelines. But you probably want review and article guidelines to come first. It's more important to know reviews are "Between 300 words minimum to 600 words max" than a lot about fonts, spacing, ellipses, etc. 

Happy to be a contributor as always!

It was a pleasure to take part in the wadazine interview!

I'm not sure if I can take any significant time off from full time weapon meta arguments on the forum. God knows I'm needed to keep burying those in a pile of words at the slightest provocation. But if there's one thing that galls me more, it's the death of the well written article in favor of a 30 minute cancerous Youtube video that has a script that could be read in 90 seconds. 

58 minutes ago, Endless said:

It is harder, much harder than trying to get people to join a WAD community project. As rd mentioned, writing and reading is a waning hobby, so getting people to contribute to the Wadazine has become a challenge on its own by the simple nature that its market is, well, small.

That said, I have the background for most of this stuff you're looking for, funnily enough. Proofreading is second nature and most of my education is in English Literature, as well as (out of date and rusty, but extensive) graphic design and the like. I'd prefer not to do a ton of layout or graphics from a creative standpoint but I have the knowledge to do a lot in photoshop/GIMP or any layout software if there's a need for splitting up part of the work. 

I can certainly edit although it's not something I'm experienced in; I'd rather not be heavy handed with the work of others. I skimmed through the latest issue and it's not nearly dense enough to where it'd be time consuming to proofread, especially since I assume most submissions come piece by piece. I'm also not the one to spot the type of issues like Deepest Reaches being listed as map 15 in TNT instead of 16, but when it comes to spelling and grammar I'm pretty dependable. Not to brag, but I did slam like S-h-a-q-u-i-l-l-e on my entire school in the 4th grade spelling bee. My knowledge of Doom itself is pretty solid though I'm not the most well versed in WADs and community history; however I have played plenty of popular stuff by this point and that's enough to sound like I know what I'm talking about.

As far as creative writing, probably half of my posts on this forum are 500 words or more and it doesn't even take me that long. I'm usually very productive if I have anything to talk about. The kind of shit we argue about may not make good content, but I can certainly write something coherent on a given topic and I have a sense of humor. I have done WAD reviews in the past when I first joined but mostly strayed from it; I'd probably focus more on being descriptive rather than critical if I'm featuring maps for the zine but I feel I can put the experience into words fairly well. 

I'll add that I was surprised you're so hard up for contributors; it seems like asking for submissions is just a thing you'd say, but I figured writers and proofreaders would be a dime a dozen. And in spite of the long gap between issues, it seems like a pretty nifty thing you're making here. So if you and the team don't think I'm cringe and have need of my services just shoot me a PM. Otherwise, I'll probably at least submit a content piece or two to help out. I think it's a pretty unique project in the fandom and it's definitely a positive to have a community publication like this.

7 minutes ago, Lucius Wooding said:

Stuff

I can't speak for Endless or the whole crew but I would say I am interested at least for proofreading and such.  Feel free to drop by the Discord as well.

Thank you for featuring Oculus Malus & I'm happy you enjoyed it!

Can't believe it's been 4 years already since I made it. haha

11 hours ago, Endless said:

@AD_79 you could have sent your MIDI review to us and I would have gladly published it, even if you did it as a reaction to mine, but you didn't, why?

It was already posted in a thread about soundtrack reviews.

I've considered contributing to the Wadazine once or twice before. It's possible you may remember this. I lost interest because I wasn't convinced the sort of things I wanted to do (more in-depth critiques of projects, talking of both positives and negatives, maybe with some sort of score? I'm an avid reader of a particular metal review site and wanted to do something vaguely similar for WADs) would both be incompatible with what you want the Wadazine to be, as well as being unnecessarily close scrutiny of what is, at the end of the day, free content created by hobbyists for fun.

On 8/23/2023 at 8:38 PM, Immorpher said:

I was very fortunate to have @Steppskie, @Twilightsoul1, and Zoyahu helping me out with this one! We all kinda get involved in each other's projects in the Doom 64 community as modders, so it was important to have the perspective of the player's side. And their prolific Doom 64 mod playing really made the three articles for Doom 64 projects possible!

Happy to help with such an amazing event. Excited to read all of the articles!