The Dean of Doom series (companion thread)

[Biodegradable]

Thanks to the delinquent, MtPain never has to review Sunlust which means the show will never end! HOORAY!

[TakenStew22]

8 hours ago, nerdybunny said:

>plays on default compat in gzdoom
>uses brutal doom

>leaves particle effects and decals on

 

Delinquent is every Doom video by a non-Doom YouTube channel I've seen, ever. Points for not leaving bilinear filtering on, though. 

 

Real talk; enjoyable video. Obviously not meant to be a 100% serious thing but it's interesting getting to see insight on Doom from someone who's not a big follower on it.

I kinda like bilinear filtering though. Not sure why, just looks pleasing for me I guess.

[Shepardus]

9 hours ago, nerdybunny said:

>leaves particle effects and decals on

Uses square particles, though!

[RHhe82]

I kinda wish we had gotten a real Sunlust episode, provided the good Dean would get a promotion to a professor of Doom and keep on giving wad reviews. In any case, I really need to take on Sunlust myself sooner rather than later.

[Anarkzie]

On 1/1/2023 at 8:48 PM, MemeMind said:

I dont know how to feel about this, I think the joke goes on for a bit too long.  I dont understand the jabs at titanfall 2. 

They weren't jabs at all. The Delinquent prefers modern shooters so rather than talk about something he hates like Doom, he started talking about something he considers good I.E Titanfall.

 

I actually thought it was quite funny. Maybe since The Delinquent has tried classic Doom, The Dean should try reviewing a modern shooter.

[Jimmy²]

 

Dean, if you're reading this, I honestly wish you the strength to power through whatever's ailing you.

 

Your poignant wording in the last three minutes of this are really what makes you an exceptional person in our already quite exceptional community. You being good or bad at the video game ultimately matters very little - your unique commentaries and outlook on creativity make you you.

 

In just a handful of years you've very radically altered my perception of Doom. We need more great thinkers like yourself, but - and I know this from personal experiences - the creative mind, with all of its foibles and weaknesses, can be a terrible thing to be trapped in.

 

Hit me up if you need a buddy.

Edited January 5, 2023 by Jimmy

[Somniac]

1 hour ago, Jimmy said:

Some nice words well put

 

I think for me what's special about the Dean is that he puts into words, so eloquently, the kind of feelings that I've long held but often either lacked the vocabulary to express, or would feel a bit too self-conscious in doing so because of how personal to me I think they are. I'm personally not too tied to The Mucus Flow, only because I've played it maybe twice and a long time ago at that, but when he speaks about Toxic Touch, Misri Halek or Grove (some examples of my own transformative Doom experiences)....it resonates, and recalls bittersweet emotions and memories within my own individual context.

 

You can feel the visceral, oppressive tension of The Mucus Flow in this video, and the Dean's rawness and honesty of emotion here is compelling. In my often jaded, world-weary eyes, that's really refreshing and sometimes I feel like I've lost something of those feelings with the passing of time and all that entails. They came back in full force at the end of this video. I need to go revisit this map properly.

 

I cut this post down a fair bit, and still feel like I'm rambling. I'm never entirely sure how much sense I'm making, to be honest! =p but, I want to thank both yourself and @MtPain27 for encouraging a moment of reflection. 

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

Some pieces of art can have a huge impact on a person. I think your life situation at that time really gives it the impact.

This is not very doom related so feel free to skip it. 

 

When I was considering moving abroad after finishing school, Dark Souls was that for me. I was disillusioned and hoped for better future, yet I had doubt that my destination will actually be what I dreamt of. But you go on the adventure anyway when you feel like you've got nothing to lose.

The Dark souls level design always gives you options where to go but each of them leads to more struggle. Hopefully a struggle you can overcome but struggle nonetheless. Maybe it helped me finally bite the bullet and decide to move. I left the game be when I moved, and only picked it up years later to play with a friend hot-seat style. That completely transformed the whole experience. I wasn't alone going through the pain, we were together, and that made it bearable. Fun, even. The initial death grip and tension is released when you're in it together. Crack some jokes, call a fight bullshit, and then beat it anyway because you can brainstorm and support each other. Then we've gone through Dark souls 3 the same way. And had a great time. 

Then i moved back to my country. 

Then he did too. 

And years after that, when I come for visit, we started Elden Ring. Everyone was raving about it, that it's the best thing since sliced bread. And you know what, we didn't like it. At all. Maybe it's the open world design. Maybe it's because we were both in completely different headspace. We were both happy with our lives. And the game just felt empty. DS is a sprawling, interconnected mess but there's only a few ways to go. On Elden Ring, you can go anywhere. It never felt like I should be where I am. There was a lot to do, and the world is still impressive and menacing but it's not like it's been. Dark souls doesn't have the same impact either. It's still a great game, and greatly important to me. But I wouldn't want to go back to who I've been when it spoke so much to me. 

Seeing MtPain go through Mucus Flow made me think of this. It's just as important to him as DS is to me. Yet, neither of us have any interest to return to it. Well, he had to because it's a patreon thing. Both offer you a big serving of oppression and frustration, drenched in sense of hopelessness. You'll only get something out of it when you're tuned to the same wavelength. 

I haven't played Mucus Flow and I doubt I'd find the greatness in it. I'm a different person now, and the world feels like a better place. 

[Eurisko]

18 hours ago, Jimmy said:

the creative mind, with all of its foibles and weaknesses, can be a terrible thing to be trapped in.

 

 

Very rarely do I read a truer comment than that. 

[Maximum Matt]

DOOM SCHOLAR: TNT EVILUTION

Y'all gotta see this

[Nefelibeta]

ok not a cool idea to plug this in Dean of Doom thread

[ViolentBeetle]

Mt. Pain himself shared link to it, so I guess it's cool now.

[Foxstiel]

 

[baja blast rd.]

What I love about Brigandine's aesthetic the most: the sheer beauty of its scene composition, and the way the exterior of the world that you can't access in play has seemingly as much work put into it as the interior combined. (Okay I checked: closer to a fifth of the measurable volume of work is the exterior.) 

 

 

 

(Also: MIDGRATE tasting session.)

 

It would be one thing to ladle in thousands upon thousands of linedefs into a map. But with Brigandine I also feel that a "less is more" ideology inflected the choices, that shapes both 2D and 3D were lovingly and painstakingly sculpted and manicured into the right scale and shape until they looked just right. I always got that feeling from this scene, for example. It's just way too pretty to be a one-shot.

 

 

The complex is also built out of walls that are made out of 6-7 different textures, and painstakingly aligned and composited in ways it's almost impossible to notice. Here is a cropped editor 3D mode shot:

 

 

Like seriously, he carved out ONE brick just for a slightly different patina* to that one brick, even though leaving it as the adjoining texture does not actually change much here. 

This is not the first time such an immaculately crafted map hit the scene, and a lot of the design ideas present in this map, like the way the high-fidelity design is coupled with radial off-angle design, would take off more afterwards, through a mix of independent inspiration and Brigandine's influence (probably more the former honestly). But Brigandine when it came out just happened to be something of a tipping point for more authors to work like this (usually with moderate fidelity). Brigandine doesn't quite have the relative wow factor it did in 2017, but I still remember everyone's jaws dropping that week.

 

 

*Originally had the word 'paneer' here when writing this post.

 

I might drop thoughts on another wad. Also while noclipping through this map I found this is a thing. 

 

Spoiler

 

[Catpho]

11 minutes ago, baja blast rd. said:

but I still remember everyone's jaws dropping that week.

 

I think it's worth mentioning that the opening post's screenshots were a doozy, taken specifically with fancier source port settings than it "needs". The map itself is so pretty it's already tough to pick a bad angle, but I think Brigandine was the first time my troglodyte brain had to look up what "ambient occlusion" is.

[baja blast rd.]

A lot can be said about Entropy, but what is interesting about some of the cramped fights is that they are way smarter than they look at first.

 

These two are back to back after the RK. The key with the archie-cyb one is starting up infighting and then taking out the viles. At least I tried to get the cyb to infight them all, which works well if RNG cooperates but that seems ridiculously finicky; one vile (or two!) can easily pop away and target you. So it is a lot more reliable to take them out after the cyb softens them up significantly. If a vile targets you it is not a big deal either because you are in a good spot, whereas the infight approach has you right in the line of cyb fire and too cramped to rocket that stray vile easily. Stuff like that is really counterintuitive because you set up something good, like infighting...and then you undo your own work!?

 

And then with the HK/baron/rev/PE one, you just straight up say 'lol typical target prioritization' and focus on the HKs/barons. You focus on them even if revs are coming closer because splash will often get the revs for you. That is neat. (In the second attempt I err by not switching to rockets for the PEs when I get some space.) 

 

The platforming fight without BFG clapped my cheeks pretty good when I first played this map. It's a pretty wild fight. 

 

 

 

[RataUnderground]

On 1/2/2023 at 9:02 AM, Biodegradable said:

Thanks to the delinquent, MtPain never has to review Sunlust which means the show will never end! HOORAY!

 

Oh... Now I get why christianity is popular. He made the sacrifice. 

[LSC Lasico]

Mt pain’s review of Overboard reinforced one statement i held in my mind.

It’s that Dean of DooM is at it’s best when mt pain 27 actually enjoys what he plays.

His shining enthusiasm for the island hopping wad was the reason why i consider that part pf the episode the best out of all pf them. It is also the reason why i consider 180 minutes por vivre tge best DoD episode.

And that is exactly why, in hindsight, the mento mori episode was as much of a slog for me to get through as the wad was for mt pain to play, despit having two guest appearances and that one funny joke with delinquent.

[baja blast rd.]

It's tiny but this is my favorite moment in Violence m02, the imps placed that make it possible to hurl a rocket at the revenant and take out both of the imps with just splash damage (and the blazing door fits perfectly).

 

 

I don't know how to write at length about fun and good-feeling stuff because the extent you can talk about it is "yeah that's fun" and "this other thing feels good" and "yeah the zombies in this horde placed just so you can gib them are cool" and "this monster composition is perfect to make this fight feel really good" -- but I think about it in imagery a lot. It's cool when either a mapper (or the happenstances of how a fight plays out) creates moments like this. 

 

Here's a happenstance one, one of the benefits of cacos + rockets + fodder coexisting (pushing the caco in the direction of the zombie was deliberate).

 

 

I can't tell if people map for stuff like this intentionally, but that is something I often go for so I know it's definitely a thing. Intended or not, Violence is pretty decent at creating these possibilities.

[baja blast rd.]

One tourniquet map that might also go under the radar is Slaughtermax map11, which reminds me of Darkwave's big nukage-and-brownwall bases like Darkwave32.wad and 3ha2 m28. Slaughtermax is a pretty uneven set as a whole though. 
 

 

[Nefelibeta]

4 hours ago, baja blast rd. said:

Slaughtermax map11

Maps like these are pretty much the reason why I like to scroll through my favourite mappers' wiki pages.

[Foxstiel]

 

[Matt Mello]

I love Dean of Doom. No joke, MtPain27's series is what convinced me to join this forum. 

I've always wondered if MtPain27 would be willing to do Dean of Doom episodes for certain more historically important TC's such as Aliens TC, Zombies TC, or Batman Doom. I know he's not much of a fan of stuff like Brutal Doom (neither am I) but I figured it'd be cool to see his take on the more old-school Total Conversion WAD's that were really out there.

[Mr. Alexander]

Chocolate Island, Map08, kind of got a raw deal here, imo. It's a fun little layout that could be adapted into a deathmatch arena if the Mohawk 2 arsenal weren't so absurdly lethal. The last fight is a bit of a crapshoot on whether or not you clear out enough hell knights to make space for yourself before the arch-vile comes in, and it can be tough to carve out a foothold right at the start, but once the arch-vile enters the last arena, you can leave, and dying right at the beginning of a five-minute map really isn't that big of a deal.

Edited March 12, 2023 by Mr. Alexander : Called Mohawk 2 "Rudy 2" by reflex

[Foxstiel]

 

[CacoTuesday]

On 3/10/2023 at 6:10 PM, Matt Mello said:

I love Dean of Doom. No joke, MtPain27's series is what convinced me to join this forum. 

I've always wondered if MtPain27 would be willing to do Dean of Doom episodes for certain more historically important TC's such as Aliens TC, Zombies TC, or Batman Doom. I know he's not much of a fan of stuff like Brutal Doom (neither am I) but I figured it'd be cool to see his take on the more old-school Total Conversion WAD's that were really out there.

I think that could be good as a supplement to the series, kind of like Sawed-Off WADs

Edited March 23, 2023 by AtomicDonkey : Typo

[Mr. Alexander]

I overlooked Nostalgia because of Anomaly Report's covering similar territory at the same time, and a skepticism of anything that would out-and-out call itself "Nostalgia," but I'm checking it out now that there's a well-narrated YouTube video about it, and it's pretty fun! This is why criticism is important, and why you shouldn't be a moron and judge a book by its cover. Big ups to Myolden for putting it all together.

[Chalibluefin]

Nostalgia has TNT: Revilution music so it gets an A+ out of me.

[Biodegradable]

Nostalgia is just fucking terrific and a testament to Myolden's versatility as a mapper. Right now, I deem it the quintessential example of neo-classic Dooming: modern map design sensibilities imbued with the spirit of the IWADs. It is aptly named, beautifully designed and a joy to play.

[Foxstiel]