MyHouse.wad

[Gregor]

Spoiler

I nominate Vostyok of Ashes 2063 & Afterglow fame. He has the style, he has the chops, and he loves a spooky atmosphere.

And the guy who did Bauhaus.wad. Didy. Because of the Bauhaus room. Get it? ;)

 

I don't think Veddge, whoever he is, would have gone through so much trouble setting this all up, only to casually let slip such a massive giveaway in a podcast he knows many in the community would listen to, and just a couple of weeks before the release. Besides, Nirvana was the one who brought up the myhouse topic, mentioning how he still waits on Ribbiks releasing his house.wad. Alonzo simply responded to that. You don't go through so much trouble and then simply decide on a whim to drop a big fat hint, endangering everything you went to such great lengths to build up in the first place. You wouldn't throw that all away just to make conversation. If it was a deliberate hint on the other hand and he had just waited for an opportunity to arise, then that was damn smooth.

But whoever made this they didn't just take a crash course in Zscripting over the summer; they already knew UDMF and ZScript inside out and have worked with it before. If this was your first GZDoom exclusive project, you wouldn't tackle such a mountain, out of fear of messing it up. Which would be very easy with a map as intricate as this one.

 

[Not Jabba]

1 hour ago, TJG1289 said:

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Idk about Alfonzo since he's Australian, right? Looking at Veddge's post history, he mentioned in 2005 determining what college he wanted to attend. He was leaning toward the University of Vermont since he wasn't sure if he could afford out of state tuition for his other choice, Albany. So that means Veddge is American, not Australian. Though, since I don't know anything about Alfonzo, maybe he moved to the states when he was a teen; idk where he lives now. 

 

Spoiler

For some reason, I did think he went to college in the states. I can't remember where that came from -- probably some random piece of info someone said on Discord at some point, or could be a false memory. But looking back at Veddge's posts with this in mind...wow. Loved AgentSpork, didn't like Tormentor's work, had nothing but nice things to say about everyone else. I can practically hear some of this stuff in Alfonzo's voice, honestly.

 

I'm a little attached to my original theory, so for now, if it proved true that Veddge is Alfonzo, I think that would only make me more certain that the mapper is Tarnsman, as Alfonzo would certainly lend an old forum account to him. But it would also be really cool if it turned out Alfonzo made this.

 

[John Rain]

Spoiler

One thing I can't get out of my mind is that first couple of comments in this thread were like ''cool house lol'', and the first comment mentioning that there is way more to it is written by FishyClockwork, oh you know, the guy who made the Quirky Domain, udmf map with a lot of portals, surreal, weird and non-Euclidean. While I'm obviously not sure about anything, I wonder if he could have helped with scripting or something.

 

[Catpho]

Spoiler

There is no way in hell any member of the Doominati mapped this, especially fonz or Tarns, whose mapping style and personality resembles nothing like what's seen here. I never, ever associate Tarns with this level of sincerity, even if he tries to hide it (Edit: For example, the beach, the wedding ring, milk bottle, S+A, stuff like that is too sentimental for Tarns). They either have to be a chameleon or have been massively hiding a part of themselves for a long time. I know the old adage that a sufficiently good mapper can make anything, but this is ridiculous.

 

Edited April 20, 2023 by Catpho

[Bulletproof Pal]

8 hours ago, Hurricaine Jr. said:

I just want to point out a few mysterious things, I'm not sure how much is obvious so forgive me.

 

  Hide contents

• Tom's obituary states that he was born on June 14, 1987. Which I discovered might actually be the key to this all. This reveals information so shocking that it may require another spoiler tag just to reveal it to you all.
•   Reveal hidden contents

  • On June 14, 1987, after making a crucial error that opened a door to a five run Phillies lead, Mets' first baseman Keith Hernandez allegedly spit on  two fans who heckled him. However, no civil or criminal charges were ever filed against Hernandez, and the claim has been disputed by a mutual friend of the fans, who said the immutable laws of physics contradict their whole account.

   

 

Yes, I called it! Back and to the left! It all makes sense. Veddge knows who killed jfk. 

 

(your other points are also very good) 

[UM-86]

2 hours ago, Gregor said:

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I nominate Vostyok of Ashes 2063 & Afterglow fame. He has the style, he has the chops, and he loves a spooky atmosphere.

 

Spoiler

I agree, Ashes 2063 was the first thing to come to mind when I saw the vending machines and the car. The John Carpenter vibe is also present here. All those invisible transitions made me feel like a character from In the Mouth of Madness!

 

[DavidN]

Answering a concern further up the topic, nobody here is going to demand the author reveal themselves or anything - it’s just fun to speculate, theorize and try to work out the mystery in front of us (although when the answer to a mystery is a person, yes, it’s important that people know where the lines are and they don’t track down where Alfonzo lives and start raking around in his bins for evidence, etc)

 

There are some great suggestions and rationales above - I want to stick my opinion in again and say that the way the map is built points more towards the creator being familiar with Boom “scripting” style (or maybe just an older style of UDMF?) rather than being a UDMF/ZScript wizard, but that they were capable of learning bits of UDMF and ZScript when needed - there’s sometimes a lot of gadgetry involving lock definitions and teleports and sector-affecting Things where a script could do the job much more straightforwardly. But then, creating the impression of being a Boom mapper coming back and learning more could equally be exactly what the author was setting out to do :)

 

Whatever their level of GZDoom experience, being able to plan consistency through such a tangled web of routes is truly amazing. The sink in the petrol station even makes sure to stay synchronized with the north bathroom, even though there’s no way for the player to see it when it’s empty!

Edited April 20, 2023 by DavidN

[Not Jabba]

Spoiler

 

Just to reiterate, I have no idea if anything I wrote is true, no matter how big my wall of text is; I find it exciting to think about it and to find more evidence, but that's not quite the same as believing. I think at this point, I still simultaneously believe two main versions of this map's backstory, not to mention the branches of those realities posed by skillsaw and others in this thread. Which is fitting, I guess. If my house is simultaneously burned down and intact, a meditative concrete skyscraper and a daycare center and a twisted mirror of some other person's life, why can't I just go ahead and believe as many things as I want?

 

I'm about 50% expecting someone to appear and tell me I'm a winner and hand me a thousand dollars, 50% expecting them to tell me skillsaw was a plant and I'm a total idiot and have everyone laugh me out of the thread, 50% expecting this all to be met with more silence, and 50% expecting to wake up back at the end of February. This map is definitely at least 200% of an experience, that's for sure.

 

It's really fascinating how much MyHouse has gotten inside all our heads and how long it's remained there. Please take all this for what it is -- we're just thinking and putting our thoughts down. I've been like a kid in a candy store with this map ever since it came out. It's a lot to think about. Whoever made it, I don't think that takes away from anything that's in the map. The map is the map. 

 

 

 

[ebrl]

1 hour ago, DavidN said:

Answering a concern further up the topic, nobody here is going to demand the author reveal themselves or anything - it’s just fun to speculate, theorize and try to work out the mystery in front of us

To add to that, an unsolved mystery is a lot more interesting than a solved one, and for all its tricks, the contents within the map itself have already been thoroughly dissected... not to mention that whomever Veddge is/are, they almost certainly accounted for this development as well, and planned accordingly, which makes things even more amusing.

Edited April 20, 2023 by ebrl

[SiFi270]

Spoiler

For some reason when Not Jabba first said "there is one and only one established Doom mapper who I believe could have done all this" I thought it was mouldy they had in mind. But I'm nowhere near as good at analiyzing and recognizing people's styles.

 

[Klear]

There is a toilet in the map...

[D4NUK1]

44 minutes ago, Klear said:

There is a toilet in the map...

There are various toilet in the map...

[ebrl]

1 hour ago, SiFi270 said:

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For some reason when Not Jabba first said "there is one and only one established Doom mapper who I believe could have done all this" I thought it was mouldy they had in mind. But I'm nowhere near as good at analiyzing and recognizing people's styles.

 

Spoiler

mouldy offloading music duties to essel and jimmy would be an all-time misdirection, but there's not a single trace of his style in it anyway.

 

 

49 minutes ago, Klear said:

There is a toilet in the map...

 

5 minutes ago, D4NUK1 said:

There are various toilet in the map...

You guys don't have toilets at home?...

[Not Jabba]

1 hour ago, ebrl said:

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mouldy offloading music duties to essel and jimmy would be an all-time misdirection

 

Spoiler

That was actually my first thought about Alfonzo as well. You'd think the person who sought their help wouldn't be a composer, although who knows?

 

Now there's a part of me that wonders if skillsaw actually did make this and got Alfonzo's help to plant a misdirection that he could point out if people started sniffing toward figuring out the mapper. I love how paranoid all this is. Nobody can trust anybody. Did I make this? God, I hope I did. It would make my day if I found out that I secretly made this.

 

[Klear]

5 minutes ago, Not Jabba said:

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I love how paranoid all this is. Nobody can trust anybody. Did I make this? God, I hope I did. It would make my day if I found out that I secretly made this.

 

 

Spoiler

I think it's time to end this charade and admit that all of you made this. Except for Alfonzo. It was probably meant as a surprise for him.

 

Myself, I obviously had nothing to do with it, given that I only joined the boards a week before it's been posted. Not suspicious at all.

 

[Catpho]

More Myhouse brainrot:

 

Spoiler

- It's interesting that the blackboard is a stock image. Mods ripping any available resource is common practice, but I assumed that the kindergarden scene was a deeply personal childhood memory, so I would expect the stuff there to be tailor-made. So many expressions in this wad are made out of stock internet stuff, so it's fascinating how they build into a cohesive image of a specific person's life. I actually went to see if S + A was some stock image after this, but so far that seems to be custom.

 

- I don't have a strong candidate for a popular mapper behind the mapset, and I still believe Veddge to be their own person, but I guess I can't resist a quick shout-out to FishyClockwork. They are known for The Quirky Domain, but I'd say their best work so far is their map for Oops! All Greyboxes, the map "Extradimensional Experiments". It's playful guided tour through the mapper's custom built playground, reveling in the joy of GZDoom's malleable motion and shapes to create a lively obstacle course with a healthy dose of good brio. It has the thoughtful moment-to-moment manipulation that could be a foundation for something like our very own MyHouse here. If there is ever a candidate for a known person to be "Veddge", I'd say their mapping has to have similar qualities to a FishyClockwork map. The only other mapset to tackle something similar to the concept displayed here is JPL's Autobiographical Architecture, which is strikingly similar and still a WIP that I hope to play one day. I hope this map opens the gates to more expressions like this, even if as demonstrated by the rarity how difficult it is to make something this thoughtful and engaging.

 

 

[skillsaw]

10 minutes ago, Not Jabba said:

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That was actually my first thought about Alfonzo as well. You'd think the person who sought their help wouldn't be a composer, although who knows?

 

Now there's a part of me that wonders if skillsaw actually did make this and got Alfonzo's help to plant a misdirection that he could point out if people started sniffing toward figuring out the mapper. I love how paranoid all this is. Nobody can trust anybody. Did I make this? God, I hope I did. It would make my day if I found out that I secretly made this.

 

 

Spoiler

 

I am tempted -- enormously -- to run with this speculation and claim authorship just to see what would happen, but I'll state as flatly and unequivocally as I can that I had nothing to do with MyHouse, and had no idea it existed until "Veddge" dropped it on this forum. But you'll have to take me at my word since I can't prove a negative. Unfortunately, there's no easy way around "trust no one" and all that.

 

I believe that "Veddge" is just a character in the meta-narrative of the wad, and while his pre-2022 posts appear to be authentic, everything from 2022 and on is obviously just building up that meta-narrative. If "Veddge" were a returning Doomer from years past, rather than an alt of a longtime community member, he's completely dedicated to the bit of the haunted nature of the wad having driven him insane, killed him, or whatever, which I'm not sure I buy. If "Veddge" is an alt account, it's almost certainly the alt of someone prominent in the community, just due to the age of the alt account. It's someone that's been around a while.

 

This is my list of suspects. I strongly believe it's someone who has a history with all three of Esselfortium, Jimmy, and Alfonzo.

• esselfortium
• Xaser
• Jimmy
• Alfonzo
• Tarnsman
• Marcaek
• MTrop
• Jazz Mickle
• Scuba Steve

essel and Xaser fit the criteria but I've ruled both out because they've plainly denied it to me and I believe them (which might make me a sucker. "Trust no one", and all that, right?)

 

 

[MugMonster]

1 hour ago, Not Jabba said:

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 Did I make this? God, I hope I did. It would make my day if I found out that I secretly made this.

 

 

Spoiler

well, the journal did mention that the map seemingly possessed the author and guided them to make portions of the map they don't remember doing...

 

[D4NUK1]

1 minute ago, Mr.Unsmiley said:

 

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well, the journal did mention that the map seemingly possessed the author and guided them to make portions of the map they don't remember doing...

 

1 hour ago, Not Jabba said:

  Reveal hidden contents

That was actually my first thought about Alfonzo as well. You'd think the person who sought their help wouldn't be a composer, although who knows?

 

Now there's a part of me that wonders if skillsaw actually did make this and got Alfonzo's help to plant a misdirection that he could point out if people started sniffing toward figuring out the mapper. I love how paranoid all this is. Nobody can trust anybody. Did I make this? God, I hope I did. It would make my day if I found out that I secretly made this.

 

 

Spoiler

Actually, Not Jabba was the second one on comment on the real status of the .pk3, that's suspicious

/s

 

I got no idea who it's behind, but netherless, that's one experience.

 

[Gregor]

32 minutes ago, skillsaw said:

 

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This is my list of suspects. I strongly believe it's someone who has a history with all three of Esselfortium, Jimmy, and Alfonzo.

• esselfortium
• Xaser
• Jimmy
• Alfonzo
• Tarnsman
• Marcaek
• MTrop
• Jazz Mickle
• Scuba Steve

 

 

Spoiler

I don't think knowing essel or Jimmy personally is a necessary prerequisite for getting them to work on something like this. Jimmy for one is open to commissions as far as i know and i'm pretty sure essel would be down with helping such a cool project come to fruition if approached by a member of the community they would trust to be able to pull this off.

Having said that, what about Dragonfly? He's friends with Jimmy for one. And he would have the chops to pull something like this off, having recently worked on Elementalism. Dragonfly is also no stranger to timing a major release like this with a big round anniversary for the Doom community...

 

[SiFi270]

Spoiler

If Jimmy's a candidate for being behind this, then at the risk of opening old wounds, I wonder if it's worth comparing this wad to Project: Kate, if only because they're both tributes to a lost friend. The only parallel besides that that comes to mind is how they both invalidate the Nightmare difficulty in different ways. I guess the question I'm trying to pose is "if he were to do something like that again, is this how he would have done it?" And when I look at it that way it seems doubtful.

 

I've rewritten this post from the ground up a bunch of times, and every time I do something about it still comes across as awfully tactless. Jimmy, if you're reading this, I'm really sorry. I'm still tempted to just not post this but I think I will anyway on the off chance someone appreciates the suspects being narrowed down in any way.

 

If this post was just a horrible idea, I hope nobody hesitates in bluntly telling me that, and if that comes to be, I'll report this post to have it deleted and hope everyone can forget about it.

 

[Not Jabba]

50 minutes ago, skillsaw said:

 

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I am tempted -- enormously -- to run with this speculation and claim authorship just to see what would happen, but I'll state as flatly and unequivocally as I can that I had nothing to do with MyHouse, and had no idea it existed until "Veddge" dropped it on this forum. But you'll have to take me at my word since I can't prove a negative. Unfortunately, there's no easy way around "trust no one" and all that.

 

I believe that "Veddge" is just a character in the meta-narrative of the wad, and while his pre-2022 posts appear to be authentic, everything from 2022 and on is obviously just building up that meta-narrative. If "Veddge" were a returning Doomer from years past, rather than an alt of a longtime community member, he's completely dedicated to the bit of the haunted nature of the wad having driven him insane, killed him, or whatever, which I'm not sure I buy. If "Veddge" is an alt account, it's almost certainly the alt of someone prominent in the community, just due to the age of the alt account. It's someone that's been around a while.

 

This is my list of suspects. I strongly believe it's someone who has a history with all three of Esselfortium, Jimmy, and Alfonzo.

• esselfortium
• Xaser
• Jimmy
• Alfonzo
• Tarnsman
• Marcaek
• MTrop
• Jazz Mickle
• Scuba Steve

essel and Xaser fit the criteria but I've ruled both out because they've plainly denied it to me and I believe them (which might make me a sucker. "Trust no one", and all that, right?)

 

 

Spoiler

 

Thanks for responding. One thing that got me really intrigued about you was that I was like, "wait, was the first Veddge post like a week after skillsaw's "no marked secrets" treatise responding to UV-maxers?" That would've certainly been interesting to think about. The first Veddge post was actually two days before you wrote that, as it happens, not shortly after, and I'm sure the map was started a bit before that.

 

I still believe that there's nothing in the map that feels quite right for it being you, but for the record, I never meant that as "skillsaw couldn't make a map that does X," and I don't believe in trying to pin down mapper skills and interests/ideas that way; it's more complex than that. I feel kind of bad if that's how anyone interpreted it. Like, I believe that you have the skill to do just about anything, it's just that if you did anything, it would feel in some way like it was done by you, and probably in a way that was beyond what words could easily describe.

 

I do hope that the mapper will at least offer us the bare minimum of fair play, which is to say, they will not respond to a direct "Did you make this?" question with "No, I did not make this." Sure, they might come into this thread and play dumb, but not that directly. There's just something weirdly dishonorable about that, I guess. More likely, the actual mapper has not posted in this thread at all, and won't respond to anything we say, unless there is some new event that's planned to trigger at the point where we actually guess who they are. That at least rules out essel and you, and essel also told us point blank that Jimmy didn't make the map. I'd rule out Scuba Steve for a bunch of reasons, even though his name is Steve, including the fact that he's less comfortable with newer GZDoom features and sought help with fairly simple tasks for modernizing the Action Dooms, and also that his reactions in this thread make no sense even as misdirections, and also because I know him.

 

I do also think that someone high-profile but relatively tangential to the Doom community could have made this, such as JP LeBreton, who fits the development and content of this map in many ways, though perhaps not the elaborate prank aspect of it (that seems like such a twid-doominati thing to do, you know?). Someone like that would have at least known who to reach out to among prominent community members for music and quality control, though I'm less clear on how Alfonzo would have been involved in that case.

 

[Big Ol Billy]

33 minutes ago, Not Jabba said:

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I do also think that someone high-profile but relatively tangential to the Doom community could have made this, such as JP LeBreton, who fits the development and content of this map in many ways, though perhaps not the elaborate prank aspect of it (that seems like such a twid-doominati thing to do, you know?). Someone like that would have at least known who to reach out to among prominent community members for music and quality control, though I'm less clear on how Alfonzo would have been involved in that case.

 

 

Spoiler

FWIW JPL has also denied making it: https://mastodon.social/@jplebreton/110030620192333883 

 

 

 

[Catpho]

Spoiler

NJ, your speculation is too infectious. I'll bite some more. Here are some other staff that apparently worked on the project:

Kevansevans (Zscript)
thelostrevenenat (textures)
JereseY (Sprites that were not ripped from Hell Forge or other games, presumably)
martYrmax (Testing)

Kevansevans has already implied that he worked with this person, and has also been fairly cagey regarding his own participation. I also don't recognize Kevansevans from previous Twid/BTSX team works, but it's never too late for a collab, or there was credit but no wiki page to document :P

 

The three others? No clue. Name search on Google doesn't reveal anything. Someone had to draw the Cerberus sprite, or is it an already existing monster? Hey Scuba, know these people?

 

[MugMonster]

the Cerberus sprite is a boss from Blood

[Catpho]

7 minutes ago, Mr.Unsmiley said:

the Cerberus sprite is a boss from Blood

Spoiler

Well, my knowledge of classic fps is showing ;) I saw a sketch of the dog in the drive folder, so I wasn't sure.

[Not Jabba]

12 minutes ago, Catpho said:

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NJ, your speculation is too infectious. I'll bite some more. Here are some other staff that apparently worked on the project:

Kevansevans (Zscript)
thelostrevenenat (textures)
JereseY (Sprites that were not ripped from Hell Forge or other games, presumably)
martYrmax (Testing)

Kevansevans has already implied that he worked with this person, and has also been fairly cagey regarding his own participation. I also don't recognize Kevansevans from previous Twid/BTSX team works, but it's never too late for a collab, or there was credit but no wiki page to document :P

 

Spoiler

Sorry!

 

That's an interesting point about the credits file and especially Kevansevans. I did remember that he'd implied some connection to the map, but it seemed like it was a bit loose. As with many other cues we've seen, I guess you *could* come to the thread and pretend to ask a question about the blue key doors switching that implies you didn't pick up on a particular element of how the map was designed, it just seems like such a specific and random thing that you'd have to be kinda brilliant to fake that particular thing in that particular way. Again, not impossible.

 

My interpretation was that the people listed in the credits file were not involved in the development directly, and that all of their resources were simply borrowed a la the use of Hell-Forged and OTEX. Seems odd to create a puzzle to hide the names of two people who created original content yet explicitly credit others who made original content. On the other hand, obviously the tester was directly involved with the map, so maybe some of the others were too.

 

[Tarnsman]

15 hours ago, Catpho said:

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There is no way in hell any member of the Doominati mapped this, especially fonz or Tarns, whose mapping style and personality resembles nothing like what's seen here. I never, ever associate Tarns with this level of sincerity, even if he tries to hide it (Edit: For example, the beach, the wedding ring, milk bottle, S+A, stuff like that is too sentimental for Tarns). They either have to be a chameleon or have been massively hiding a part of themselves for a long time. I know the old adage that a sufficiently good mapper can make anything, but this is ridiculous.

 

 

Spoiler

This is a hilarious post to read because the things you listed like say a baby's bottle, wedding ring, happy ending on a beach. Are all things that I would put into a "personal expression" work as very important to me. Now whether or not I'd ever use Doom to do that is a completely different discussion.

 

[Catpho]

25 minutes ago, Tarnsman said:

 

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This is a hilarious post to read because the things you listed like say a baby's bottle, wedding ring, happy ending on a beach. Are all things that I would put into a "personal expression" work as very important to me. Now whether or not I'd ever use Doom to do that is a completely different discussion.

 

Spoiler

Hey, I didn't expect you to respond at all! I just want to clarify that it's not like you (or any artist with a defined style, really) can't radically change things up, nor that you wouldn't put those specific things in your maps ever. It's more like an abstract feeling, that you wouldn't have done it like this specific map did it, you wouldn't express this fact in this specific way, if that makes sense. Intepretations can get pretty silly to read when they are outside of my head haha. Hopefully the laugh is in good humor. I meant no claims of inflexibility when I wrote it.

By the way, now that I've got your attention, I just wanna say your maps mean a lot to me, whether solo or community. TPH was a real dream project, and I can't express in good enough words how cool it is that your mapping career is a thing.

 

Edited April 20, 2023 by Catpho

[Not Jabba]

19 hours ago, TJG1289 said:

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Idk about Alfonzo since he's Australian, right? Looking at Veddge's post history, he mentioned in 2005 determining what college he wanted to attend. He was leaning toward the University of Vermont since he wasn't sure if he could afford out of state tuition for his other choice, Albany. So that means Veddge is American, not Australian. Though, since I don't know anything about Alfonzo, maybe he moved to the states when he was a teen; idk where he lives now. 

 

Spoiler

 

Back to this briefly. I'm, uh, not looking through Alfonzo's trash bins, I promise, but thought I'd at least have a look through his early posts (forum archeology is kinda fascinating...)

 

Alfonzo's trademark sense of humor was already basically fully formed as of 2010, which makes me want to ditch the theory about him being Veddge. They don't sound alike at all, though if you take really basic, broad ideas like "Alfonzo is a really nice guy with more classic tendencies in his gameplay tastes," then that stuff generally seems to track. I had figured he would sound different when he was younger, but the gap between 2006 and 2010 doesn't seem big enough. Veddge sounds fairly American in his tone and word usage, while Alfonzo never particularly did.

 

In any event, he did travel a lot as a kid and was in North America for a lot of his time in school. He and Veddge also both seem to hate the 2005 Doom movie, though Veddge simply says so out loud at every opportunity, whereas Alfonzo vividly describes what he think a Doom movie should actually look like on multiple occasions without ever discussing his feelings about the one that existed. I haven't gotten a read on Alfonzo's exact age (whereas Veddge states his a couple times), but I know that both are a bit younger than me, Veddge by only a year.