Hey, what's this...?
And WHAT, I ask, might THIS be?
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Hey, what's this...?
And WHAT, I ask, might THIS be?
This site crossed 10,000 hits! I don't know when exactly it happened because the counter was somewhere at 9800 or something when our modem got "shocked", and by the time I was able to connect to the internet again a few days later it was at 10,170. Anyway, I would like to thank everyone who visits this site, it makes me really happy to know that there are people who read the stuff that I write and download the stuff that I make! Thanks!
Speaking of stuff, I guess you might want to take a look at the Drawings Page! Two new pictures have been added.
And I've also got two new wallpapers for you. They have been added to the Downloads Page. I thought it would be better if I also provided direct links right here, so here you go! Both of these are 1024 x 768 wallpapers.
- Doom III Wallpaper - "Things Are About To Go Wrong" - I'm pretty proud of this one!! I've always wanted to make a wallpaper like this. The text you see at the side is pseudo C++ code, and as far as I can tell it is actually valid :). And if you're interested enough, just ask and I'll send you the text file with the entire code that I typed to make this wallpaper.
- Doom III Wallpaper - Dead Fat Zombie - This wallpaper didn't involve any fancy stuff on my part, all I did was to cut out the fat zombie from one of those screenshots I got from Doomworld, and then I smoothened out the blood at the sides. The zombie's in the bottom right corner, the rest of the wallpaper is black. This was actually inspired by one particular Fight Club wallpaper that I have.
More good stuff? Just see the update immediately above this one.
For a while now something strange has been going on with my karthik@newdoom.com email address. Some mails were getting through just fine, whereas others were not! I tried sending a mail to that address myself some days back and it didn't come back to me.
Any mail sent to that address is supposed to be redirected to my Yahoo! account, so I guess it would be more reliable if you sent mail directly to karthik_abhiram@yahoo.com.
If you sent me an email and didn't get a reply within a few days, chances are, I didn't get your mail.
» Please use the address karthik_abhiram@yahoo.com to send email to me. «
You have probably noticed that I haven't been doing WAD Reviews for a long while now. And I guess I will not be doing any more of them in the near future. I feel bad about doing this but unfortunately I don't seem to have the time for them any more.
That does NOT mean there will never again be another review on this site, who knows, one day you might just see a few new reviews pop up on the site! And I will still mention WADs that I found interesting to play, in my updates.
But whatever reviews I do will be only of single level WADs, not megawads or episodes. The reason for that is, I used to take about 2-3 hours to write a review for a single level WAD of considerable length. If I had to spend that sort of time on reviewing a megawad or an episode it just wouldn't be practical for me. And if I wrote up a quick review of the overall WAD just for the sake of writing it, I'd be doing an injustice to the author.
Well, I'm relieved to have finally said all that :). I hope you all understand.
Anyway, I don't like to post bad news (or even not-so-good news) on this site. I have some nice stuff that'll remedy the situation. It's all there in the "Good News Update".
I couldn't connect to the internet at all for several days recently - because of a power surge, something went wrong with the modem!! Still, I have stayed away for a long time from this site, and I'm sorry about that. There is good news and bad news this time though. That will all be covered right now, in this update and the ones above, on this page.
- Jun 4 - My attempts to download the leaked Doom III video continued, again unsuccessfully. I tried using Opera's internal download manager, and after downloading 17.5 MB it just stopped. By the way, nowadays I use Opera 6 as my primary browser most of the time - but I still DO use Internet Explorer.
- Jun 5 - Varun added a terrific Doom III Wallpaper (and some others too) to his site, Varun 20787. Apparently Download Accelerator Plus didn't like me, because I got errors in downloaded files on more than one occasion. So then I asked a friend of mine, Ganeshan, and he told me about a great download manager/accelerator called FlashGet. I have downloaded close to 200 MB of stuff so far using this really nice piece of software. And I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good download manager.
- Jun 6 - Perhaps the reason I like FlashGet so much is because I FINALLY got the leaked Doom III video using it, on June 6. Wow, the footage is great! (What else did you expect me to say?) :)
- Jun 8 - Modem got fried. No internet for several days after that!
- Jun 9 - Did a little bit of work on The 9th Gate's E4M3.
- Jun 13 - Tried doing a Phtga demo again. Still keep dying on MAP28.
- Jun 14 - Browsing with a temporary modem. This site crossed 10,000 HITS!!!
- Jun 18 - Went to the new Doomsday Headquarters and got the latest version of the Doomsday Engine. Also did a drawing of the Doom marine, which has been added to the Drawings Page. Started making two wallpapers of Doom III.
- Jun 19 - Finished those two Wallpapers. See the above updates for more on the wallpapers and the drawings.
- Jun 25 - Something has started. It's in the update that says "We Will Rock You"...
Well, basically that's about it for the Doom-related news. I've watched several good movies recently, these include Titan A.E. (nice animated science fiction), Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (I liked the first half better, overall, I thought it was a good movie, though I suspect the best of the prequels will be Episode III whenever that comes out - because that has to resolve ALL the unresolved stuff in the first two prequels), Dirty Work (watched this on TV, funny movie), Armageddon (didn't watch it when it came out, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, never thought it would be that good), X-Men (watched this in the theatre when it came out, watched again on TV, very nice movie)...
...but the best of all the movies I've seen recently is Panic Room. I've seen it twice so far, and it's a great movie!!! Since it's directed by David Fincher, who has made two of my all-time favourite movies Fight Club and Seven, I knew it would be good... but I never expected it to be this good. It's absolutely excellent!
Speaking of movies, there is a short teaser trailer for the next two Matrix movies, The Matrix: Reloaded and The Matrix: Revolutions available at the website. And of course, I still continue to watch Star Trek: Voyager, and it only keeps getting better with each episode.
Recently I heard Eminem's latest song, Without Me. I really like the song and I've been listening to it a lot of times. I think the music video for it (which keeps playing often on Channel [V] and MTV) is very good too.
I've finally got a Drawings Gallery up on this site! Go to my Drawings Page! Currently there are two images there. One is a picture of the Icon of Sin from Doom II that I did in college a while back, and my latest drawing. This was finished yesterday and it's called Doom III - The Legacy of Evil. Needless to say, it's inspired by the Doom III screenshots that were released recently. I've also added some original-Doom inspired images to the picture. Tell me what you think of the drawings!
And as I already said, I have another gallery on my personal page for non-Doom drawings. This page can be found here, and at present there are 21 drawings on that page.
Are all those links confusing? Let me try to restate that clearly -
By the way, I also updated the About Page today.
I got a lot of cool stuff on my birthday (May 15) - got Hard-Boiled on video (a terrific John Woo movie), and CDs of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (one of my favourite movies!), and Training Day. I watched Training Day on my birthday and it was a very good movie. I've also started reading The Lord of the Rings now (got the book on 19 May). Star Trek: Voyager continues to be my favourite show on TV. I worked a little bit on my E4M3 map for The 9th Gate, but I've also spent quite a bit of time on drawing stuff, and all the new pictures are at Karthik's Drawings Gallery.
And I've also been following all the news on Doom III. Thanks to all the sites that covered the event (E3), and specially, thanks to Doom Center (because they kept the 9 MB version of the Doom III: The Legacy video online when every other place removed the older videos and replaced them with recoded versions... the smallest of which was 27 MB!!). I've even been trying to download the leaked Doom III "shaky-cam" video, but I haven't been successful in getting it so far.
Here is the news for the past 15 days or so -
- 15 May - My birthday :). Varun made a card for me in Flash (thanks to a tutorial by Tobias Münch). My parents bought me some great movies! Saw Training Day. Downloaded Christian Hansen's CH_RETRO Episode. A great set of maps!
- 22 May - The start of all the recent Doom III madness :). Pablo sent me a Quake map as a birthday gift (thanks Pablo). I also did a couple of demos for CH_RETRO. And so did Varun (and his demos as usual are FAR better than mine :)). We'll be sending those to Christian Hansen and Opulent soon. I'll also try to get a demos page up on this site as soon as possible and put them here.
- 23 May - My brother downloaded the Alien Vendetta Demo Pack. Wow!! These demos amazed me just as much as the Doom III screenshots!
- 24 May - Did some work on E4M3. Watched Being John Malkovich - one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen but also very good.
- 27 May - Saw Spider-Man. Terrific movie!
- 28 May - After reading about it on Opulent's site I went to Ledmeister's site and got several demos from there. Amazing stuff (these demos show off things that I have never seen in Doom before - for example, an imp clawing and killing another imp!). I am also trying to do a demo for Wim Vanrie's Phouse: The Great Arena (better known as Phtga - you might have already watched demos of that). And I FINALLY got the Doom III Legacy video (the 9 MB version) thanks to Doom Center.
- 29 May - Went to Christian Hansen's site and grabbed two of his older WADs. I was especially interested in downloading them because they are based on Star Trek: Voyager. I was happy to see a lot of things from the series "replicated" in the levels - the bridge, the holodeck, the turbolift, the warp core, the cargo bay, the transporter room... and I think even Neelix's kitchen was there :). Attempted to download the leaked Doom III video but couldn't get it.
- 30 May - Downloaded Download Accelerator Plus 5, and spent the better part of the day trying to get the 44.45 MB leaked Doom III video (yes, on a modem/dial-up connection :)). At 9:30 PM after literally HOURS of downloading I get a CRC error and the video refuses to play back! Ouch! I've also been trying to record a Skill 1 demo of Phtga where I play all the 30 levels continuously. Tried several times but the best I could do was a demo where I died on MAP28 :(. Anyway I'll keep trying because I believe I can do it. I keep dying on maps 20, 27 or 28... just have to be careful there. Finished a Doom III drawing I started the previous day.
- 31 May - Scanned the Doom III drawing. And now there's a drawings gallery on this site!
By the way I've been watching Star Trek: Voyager every day, so from 14 May till today (both days inclusive), I've watched eighteen more episodes.
Yes, tomorrow - 15 May - is my birthday! I'll be 20 years old tomorrow :)
I thought of releasing something special here tomorrow, but then I couldn't make anything worth uploading. I will be putting up some of my Doom drawings and demos on this site soon though :)
Till then, you can have a look at my non-Doom Art Gallery. I will be putting up some of my best work there tomorrow. And that includes my most recent drawing ("you have to see it for yourself..." hint, hint!!).
Yesterday I did make two textures though. I scanned one of my drawings, took parts of them and made them into textures. They're intended to replace the MARBFAC textures, so they are both 128x128 pixels in size. This is what they look like:
You can click on the image above to download a ZIP file with both the bitmaps (15.3 KB). Both images use only the Doom-palette colours.
Before you say it, I know they're not very good! But these are my first two textures ever, so don't be too hard on me :)
Here is all the news I said I would write last time. I know it's been a long gap, but I've been busy. I thought I'd have lots of free time since I have holidays now, but somehow I'm just as busy as before! :) Anyway, this is all the Doom-related/other stuff I've been doing from April -
- 10 Apr - Varun released Short 'n Quick - a level for Doom II on his site Varun 20787. This is a terrific map that got very good comments from everyone who played it, and I think it's great too. You can find the map on his Downloads Page.
- 19 Apr - Doomworld posted this link to a Russian Doom Art Gallery. These pictures are great.
- 23 Apr - Played Trust by Tommie Quick. Actually I played part of it and watched my brother play the second half. Either way, it's a terrific ZDoom adventure. I also got two albums (Aural Assault and Mellow Doubt) of his music from his site, and since I like techno/trance music I enjoyed all his songs.
- 27 Apr - id Software redesigned their site. I personally thought the new look was fantastic - not at all what I thought it would be! And this was the day my exams got over.
- 28 Apr - Posted the last update :). I tried doing a redesign of this site as well - but it didn't look good. And I finally decided that I liked my current design, so I left it the way it was.
- 29 Apr - Karthik's Doom Pages completed one year of being hosted at NewDoom.com.
As you can see I haven't been doing much of Doom related stuff at all. But there's a good reason for that.
You see, my father bought a scanner (UMAX AstraSlim 600) on Apr 30. And both Varun and myself have been having loads of fun with it.
On May 1, I put up this Art Gallery on my personal site. The URL is http://karthik82.tripod.com/gallery. Go there and have a look at what I've scanned. There are lots of my drawings there. I have done a couple of Doom drawings too, and I'll be putting up a similar Doom Art Gallery here. I thought I'd put it up today or tomorrow, but I decided to wait until I had something really good to show.
April 3 was the day I watched my first episode of Star Trek: Voyager (it was "The Haunting of Deck Twelve" from Season 6). Since then I've been hooked! I saw the original 1960s Star Trek series (almost all the 72 episodes) several years ago, and I watched most of Season 1, 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I often watch episodes from that show nowadays and I think it's one of the best shows on TV currently.
But I like Star Trek: Voyager better than any other Star Trek show! Fortunately, Hallmark Channel shows it EVERY SINGLE DAY here, and I watched the entire Season 7 (absolutely awesome) in a few days' time. After the thrilling concluding episodes ("Endgame" Part I and II... two of the best episodes I have ever seen), the channel has started off from Episode 1 again. How lucky for me! We're already approaching the end of Season 1 now (today's episode was "Faces"... Episode 14). I think the Star Trek site is great too, and you can read all the episode summaries there.
Oh yes, a new season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Season 5) and Angel (Season 2) has also started. But my enthusiasm and liking for those shows has gone down quite a bit :) from a couple of years back.
I also watched A Beautiful Mind (good), What Lies Beneath (great), Kickboxer II (lots of fun), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (I actually enjoyed it) recently. And I watched Fight Club (one of my favourite movies now) a few more times, and read it's script. Will be watching Training Day tomorrow.
And this site crossed 9000 hits yesterday. Thanks everyone for visiting!
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