That Fourth Door

So waaaay back when I was building E1M3, I discovered I needed a fourth locked door for the design to work. Thankfully, Doom supports three regular keys and three skull keys, so I just used the blue skull key space. Being the paragon of maturity that I am, I decided it would be funny to add a reference to the "error 502: bad gateway" problem that plagued fimfiction.net at the time. 

As time went on, I found that three doors really sufficed for pretty much everything else I needed, so this door only appeared sporadically past that level (only one other's really coming to mind right now, and it's a secret level so it doesn't count).

Obviously, it's been a while since E1M3, and fimfiction.net has improved as a site, so much so that this error message has become nothing but a distant memory. I supposed I could change it to a green or orange keyspell or something like that, but at this point, it's been there so long it's basically an intrinsic part of the game now. 

And then today fimfiction.net went down and it's still down as of this writing. So I feel a tiny bit vindicated by that. 

...I think.

oh dear

Me: I'm going to finish this game before the end of season 9!
Netherlands: *releases rest of the season*
Me: o.O

Normal Day

If the date of posting and the 4-1 didn't give it away, that posting was an April Fool's joke. Unlike any of the others, I can assure you there will be no Terry-esque monsters or other... decorations... in the actual game.

I have a goal to have it done before Season 9 ends, so fingers crossed!

Special Day!

Decided to release Open Beta 4 today. Download link here. To play, click and drag raridoom.wad to zdoom.exe and you should be good to go.

Have fun!

It is News

Well, if you haven't heard, it's been confirmed that this upcoming season is the last season of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

It's kinda funny, really. I've been seeing tributes and nostalgia, people saying things like, "Oh, I'll miss the show", "I'm so sad it's over", "what a great run it was", "I don't know what I'll do now" and I'm imagining the show shouting from off-camera "stop telling people I'm dead, I still have one more season!" and the fandom responding wistfully, "sometimes I can still hear their voice".

I have to say, when I first started this project, I didn't expect it to take this long to finish. Season 2 had just ended, and we were looking at a hiatus. I hadn't modded DooM since I played around with sprite replacement with MS Paint in XWE back in 2005 (did you know the original doom.exe will crash if the grimace/EVL sprite isn't exactly lined up? I learned that. There was much confusion), but I figured it'd be fun, a quick little thing.

I was half-right.

I remember editing text strings first. I had a quit message referencing the premiere of season 3, and another referencing Littlest Pet Shop (which, for context if you're new to the fandom, ran from 2012-2016 and had some staff/VAs that were shared. RIP Twilight Barkle). Needless to say, those have had to be updated.

Then it was just the sprites. Then I figured maps might be fun. I figured I'd just do the three levels of five maps each, like Chex Quest. I now have four episodes with eight maps each, and a secret level for each episode.

So yeah. It's grown a lot. It got a lot more attention than I ever expected. I keep coming back to old maps and changing things, redoing things. Maps I was like "yes, this is perfect!" I play again and say things like, "Yes, this is a mess!" or "this is a box" or "wait, what was I thinking here?", "where's that secret again?" or "is this too easy for how late in the episode it is?"

But my own self-doubt aside, it's been a ton of fun. And I can't wait for you all to play it.

Soon.

Personal Update

Source

I'm moving! I'll be in a bigger place, with a better job, with more hours, and my computer in a place where the cords won't get yanked.

Which means I may actually be able to work on the game...

Can It Run Doom?

Source

If given the chance, you should always see if it runs doom.

And, by extension, raridoom. ^^

Development hasn't stopped. But it sure has slowed to a crawl. Again, it's the spriting and the other stuff... but hopefully soon! All your support makes me happy and I promise I won't abandon this project.