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Sorry about not updating for so long... it's because another semester at college is coming to an end soon, so there is lots of work to do. For the past 10 days or so I've been writing TWO tests every day at college, and soon my final exams will be starting. Which means I can't do much Dooming in the next two weeks or so... :(
This update is just to let you know what's been happening all this while. And I did add one page to the Articles/Info Section, this is a table listing out some interesting statistics about all the Doom and Doom II monsters. Now those of you who work with the source code/DeHackEd and stuff like that probably already know this, but others might want to have a look. Here.
And my site is very close to 5000 hits. If you happen to be the 5000th visitor, please send me a screenshot, I'd appreciate that!
Here's the recent news from me...
- 21 Oct - Pablo redesigned Pablo's Place, it has a nice shiny look, and of course, a terrific collection of levels for numerous games.
- 25 Oct - Opulent pointed out a wrong URL (the Chow Yun-Fat picture) on this page, thanks to him for that. I've taken so long to fix it... the correct URL is this.
- 26 Oct - Played a Duke Nukem 3D map called Dr. Doom by Dukebert. Pretty cool map this, based on MAP04 of Doom II. I got that from Mikko Sandt's Site.
- 28 Oct - Out of Phase reviewed at Doomworld /newstuff. It's Info Page here has been updated.
- 29 Oct - All hosted sites at NewDoom have 50 MB of FTP space for uploading files - and you don't need to register to download them! This is all thanks to Grimlock, for providing the space and setting up everything. I am yet to upload all my stuff there, but once I do your downloads will be easier.
- 31 Oct - Varun updated The 9th Gate Website with photos of the team members!
- 2 Nov - Karthik's Home Page reached 4000 hits.
- 3 Nov - Watched a video clip of Doom GBA. I'd like to have one of those!
- 4 Nov - Played Inferno's Waste Management and Opulent's hl_op. Compet-N was redesigned too.
- 10 Nov - Made a small Doom Web Browser in Visual Basic. Took just 5 minutes to make. :)
- 11 Nov - Damian sent a beta version of his 9th Gate E4M4. This is one BIG level!
- 14 Nov - Played E2M2 and explored the level fully. Long time since I played E2, this time I really had a lot of fun. Reminded me of Tobias' Deimos Control Center, which is also E2 style and a terrific level.
- 15 Nov - Thanks Pablo for your Diwali Card - very thoughtful of you!
- 17 Nov - 3D Action Planet launched The Phobos Lab, a pretty cool site - but personally I felt there were things that could have been done better. Listening to AC/DC's awesome song Big Gun - the song which inspired the E2M1 music.
- 18 Nov - This morning after reading AndrewB's regular /newstuff Reviews, I downloaded Nuts - a Doom II map which he said, had 10,000 monsters! I actually thought he was exaggerating, but he was not. It's a terrible level with 10,617 monsters and is probably impossible to play.
I'll resume updating this site more often once my exams get over.
I just spent the last few hours making my very first .DEH file. In the last post I made - about that Chow Yun-Fat picture - the link to the picture doesn't work. I don't know why. Maybe because it's a BMP. Anyway I used that picture and the .DEH file, combined it with a small WAD and called it Action. I'm not going to release it, but if you want to play around with it, email me. The .DEH file has the following tweaks
- The hitpoints for players, shotgun guys and zombies are changed.
- The ammo you start with, ammo of pistol and shotguns are changed.
- The pistol and shotguns fire faster.
- And the zombies and shotgun dudes make the player's death sound when they die.
It was just an experiment to try using DeHackEd, so it's nothing great.
I haven't actually added anything to the site, this is just an update with some news.
- I received a number of new demos for my new level, Out of Phase. Opulent sent me a "first-look" demo, and after that, Varun did a UV maxdemo in 1:31. Albert Valls did UV max in 1:23, a UV -fast demo in 1:28 and a Reality demo in 1:52. Thanks, everyone! Varun's demo is already at the DSDA, the others will soon be available at Opulent's DSDA and the Présage Site. They were lots of fun to watch.
- I redesigned my personal site, Karthik's Home Page! The layout is similar to this site, but it has a white background. And I also made it more Doom-ish. :)
- I still can't upload anything to the incoming directory of ftp://archives.3dgamers.com - it keeps saying "Permission denied"!
- Varun's having fun on his vacation - he'll be back on 24th.
- I also downloaded the recently released PrBoom 2.2.2.
Maps I've been playing recently -
- I was playing Stphrz' Shock 'Em Down (released May 2001) before writing this - what a terrific map! Excellent, large complex Ultimate Doom level, so much fun! The weapon-ammo-health-monster placement is perfect, and it looks great too. I haven't finished playing it yet (I've currently got one saved game where I'm just about to open the red door).
- A couple of days back I was playing Tobias Münch's maps Deimos Control Center and Unknown Fate. These are terrific maps that have an unusual texture style (sort of a combination of E2 and E3 style). They're also larger than his other levels. Doom Center's hosted sites are down at the moment so if you want to play his maps your best choice is to go to Tobias' interview page at Doom Center and download his Best of Toby M Pack which is a nice collection of levels.
On Friday I saw A Better Tomorrow II on STAR Movies - a fantastic John Woo movie, starring Chow Yun-Fat, Ti Lung and Leslie Cheung. I thought the first film was just a shade better - but still, this was great, and the climactic action scene must be seen to be believed (no one can direct action scenes like Woo)! In fact, after watching the movie, I made a TITLEPIC from the poster - it's got Chow Yun-Fat in it and it uses the Doom Palette. I don't know if it will actually be used by anyone (including myself) but anyway here it is (64 KB).
It's been a while since I released a map on this site! A couple of Sundays back, on 30 Sep, I thought of making a map in a very short while (sort of like a Speedmap). I started in the afternoon and by night the map was done. Over the next couple of days I put some finishing touches on it... and it was ready to release on 3 October. Conicidentally, 3 Oct. one year ago was the day I completed my first Doom map ever (I never released that). Anyway, the name of my new level is Out of Phase.
Out of Phase Download and Screenshots
It is for Doom II MAP01 this time. It's a short action packed level and has a music replacement, Eiffel 65's "Dub in Life". It's more detailed than any of the other maps of mine on this site, and has better lighting too. It's got a somewhat weird texture scheme (and the building it is set in is floating in the air), but I feel the overall appearance is tech. My brother however says the texture scheme is unlike anything he's ever seen before... you decide.
I've uploaded the level to the NewDoom Review Center and I'll be uploading it to the /idgames Archives too.
Well, Varun is finishing exams at school on 16th. After that, he will be going on an 8-day tour (organised by his school) along with some of his friends to Delhi, Shimla and Chandigarh and he will be visiting some really great tourist spots there. He'll be leaving on 17th morning, and he'll be back in the evening on 24th. So his work on The 9th Gate (E4M7) will resume after that.
Speaking of The 9th Gate, well, Pablo updated his site with a sort of progress report - basically, Tobias is doing E4M2 now and I've started on E4M3. But things are taking time to do because real life stuff is keeping us busy. We want to get things finished soon, however.
Between the last update and now...
- 29 Sep - I downloaded JDP 1.01 (Joel's Doom Port), which features a number of bugfixes to MBF. One of the bugs that has been fixed is that the "Picked up a medikit that you really need!" message now appears. Joel's Site is also completely database-driven now, and NewDoom has also added some new features to the site, for example, the "File of the Moment" section. The Présage Pages have a fantastic design. And it's compatible with both IE and Netscape! Speaking of that, I also downloaded Cyber Dreams from there and Albert Valls' run through the megawad.
- 3 Oct - Out of Phase completed! More on that in another post.
- 6 Oct - I tried to learn using WinDEU but ended up getting frustrated... anyway, I started work on E4M3 for The 9th Gate (with DoomCAD itself, on Sunday).
- 10 Oct - I'm now experimenting a bit with WADAuthor.
- 11 Oct - /idgames Archives Restored - I was really happy to see these announcements on the Doom news sites - thanks to Ty Halderman and Frans DeVries, the /idgames Archives formerly at CDROM.COM were restored and all the files are now at a new location. So, I've updated links on all my pages to point to the new location of the WADs. All my Downloads work, I've verified those links. But I've not verified all the links from the Reviews Pages, so if you find any broken links please mail me at karthik@newdoom.com and I'll fix it.
Other non-Doom News - Dragonball Z airs every Saturday 9-10 PM on Cartoon Network! The first 4 episodes shown so far were great. I haven't updated my sites in a while... because things are quite hectic at college - I'm designing a HTML newsletter called SINE - which will be published by our college's IEEE Student Chapter. I haven't seen any new movies lately - but I want to see Swordfish...
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