29/06/2004 @20:28:46 ^22:50:11

PANFLUTE MORE LIKE SAUCEPANFLUTE

To go with your whistling kettle, you can now blow through the handle of this wonderful device and practise music as your vegetables boil over! Warranty excludes having your your lips burnt off.

This update is about Doom

Time to download random maps again

Crusader This is kaiser_9, I've done and enjoyed something like the first three but not being particularly taken with the Doom64-graphics-laden fourth I stopped downloading them. Perhaps this was a mistake. This is really well made bricks'n'metal techbase in a valley, a common theme in Doom 2 maps, but still. The architecture is excellent and the gameplay refreshing but not too challenging (that means it's easy) I had some trouble finding the secrets, indeed although you can bump the BFG out of the hole it's in at the start I don't think you can get the megasphere as well. Also there's four switches you have to press to get the yellow key at the end and one of them was very hard to find. However the rest of the map more than made up for that and I suggest you download it right now. Excellent.

Palace Palace is not a palace. It's an old map that start of in a featureless maze of corridors, doors (way too many doors) and tiny cramped rooms full of zombies and imps. I nearly stopped playing at this point if I had been killed, but it's really easy. Anyway it switches styles a few times and is sometimes a bit less cramped as you progress, but apart from a couple of places it's pretty much all bland. There's a kind of a throneroom which I suppose is why it's called "palace" but ends in something more like a seaside resort(!) The crampedness makes it annoying but it's pretty easy and has over 300 monsters, so give it a go if you've nothing better to do.

raid Okay this is probably one to avoid I guess. The storyline gives you the idea that it'll be all cramped underground tunnels but it's pretty themeless. Indeed it feels bit like a deathmatch map, but I think it'd be crap for that as well. There's an outdoor bit, a couple of weird tunnels and side lifts, then it finishes up another lift in an outhouse opposite a waterfall. It's all over in no time at all, but in spite of its smallness it manages to use all three keys. I think this cheapens the value of keys but hey.

Paradise Click on the link and read the description. Barons getting married? I downloaded it out of morbid curiosity. I was presented with what turned out to be quite a good map in the classic Doom 2 style. It divides into four sections via teleporters. The first is a bit crap, with bare straight brown tunnels and stuff. The second one is probably the better one, it's centred around a big graveyard with a balcony going round three sides. Monsters rain fire down on you from above and the height variation makes it entertaining. The third part is an oddly coloured church with the aforementioned wedding ("if these two Barons get married it will be the end of life as you know it"!) and the fourth is a in a computer centre. So as you can see the theme varies pretty wildly. Anyway the second bit with the graveyard is good so ignore the plotline and give it a go if you're bored.

Good lord that was a lot of words

28/06/2004 @22:42:03 ^23:52:14

BUGGER OFF, YER BASTARDS, BUGGER OFF

FUCK YOU!

Subversion

As I may have promised ages ago, here is the reverse (that is, black on white) colour scheme I made for PuTTY to make it less obvious you have it open on a typical windows desktop.

Remarks:

• The primary design objective was to do black text on a white background. ANSI terminal colours are strong and show up well on a black background, so are very faint on a white background. Many of the shades I've chosen are pastel.
• The secondary design objective was that it has to work well with my somewhat customised irssi colour scheme (in which everything is either white or cyan, except the status bars which are red) It also needed to work with the default colours in mutt, and slrn, although the latter was less important. There are a few colour combinations in which the foreground text is a bit illegible on the background, but they are few - off the top of my head, I don't think green on blue or magenta on red were very visible, but I didn't find them irritating enough to try to fix and potentially upset some other balances.
• The colour numbers are by and large multiples of 50. I realise this is totally wrong but I found it a lot easier when creating this thing to be able to type in numbers like "100" and "200". PuTTY's colour dialogue box isn't the easiest thing to work with here, especially when you're doing this on the sly at work.
• PuTTY doesn't change the font to do bolded text, it just uses a brighter colour. Conversely in this scheme the bold colour has to be darker. I solved that one by giving bold background/black (which is actually white) and bold foreground/white (similarly, black) slight blue tints to distinguish them. Bold backgrounds don't appear very often, thankfully. I generally favoured blue tints over other colours because blue is corporate and more importantly doesn't jump out and catch the eye as much as red (a kind of watery pink) or yellow (orange or brown, sounds disgusting, doesn't it, well it works quite well)

Finally, if you have access to the registry on your computer you might be able to paste in the following extract into the relevant part of an exported registry file. Be careful when you do this. I would advise making a new session in PuTTY, saving it, then doing the relevant registry export and doing the replacement in there. The registry section you're looking for will be something like "HKEY\BLAH\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions\reversed" where BLAH might be ALLUSERS or LOCALMACHINE or some random string of characters or god only knows what Windows does here, just search for it okay, and reversed is whatever you called the session.

"Colour0"="0,0,0"
"Colour1"="0,0,100"
"Colour2"="250,250,250"
"Colour3"="200,200,225"
"Colour4"="250,250,250"
"Colour5"="0,0,100"
"Colour6"="250,250,250"
"Colour7"="200,200,225"
"Colour8"="200,150,150"
"Colour9"="250,100,100"
"Colour10"="100,200,100"
"Colour11"="50,150,50"
"Colour12"="150,100,0"
"Colour13"="150,50,0"
"Colour14"="125,150,250"
"Colour15"="50,100,200"
"Colour16"="200,150,200"
"Colour17"="200,100,200"
"Colour18"="0,150,200"
"Colour19"="0,100,150"
"Colour20"="0,0,0"
"Colour21"="0,0,100"

Then obviously you have to re-import the file back into the registry, and restart PuTTY. Enjoy!

27/06/2004 @21:37:23 ^23:08:54

have nice dreams

remember you're better than lots of people

BYE, EVERYBODY!

Following a week of coding people's exam results onto the system - don't get me started on how dumb SITS is for that one - I had my last day of work in the academic office on Friday. I hoped to get out unscathed but I was dragged into a little room and presented with a card and some chocolates and a voucher and there was cake and everyone was really nice and sorry to see you go and and and

I realise I sound ungrateful, it was really nice of them, but, oh god I was so embarrassed

Anyway later on I went to another barbecue in Leamington. For some reason - possibly due to feeling exhaused before I went, I don't know - I couldn't really get into it and wasn't in the best mood ever. On the other hand, I managed not to totally embarrass myself like last time.

polygon base

polygon base is a single map for Doom 2. It claims to be "totally non-linear" and although I don't think it's quite up to such a claim, it still remains one of finest examples of exploratory Doom maps I've seen.

It comprises a sprawling techbase of considerable size. Sometimes it's a little bare on detail and the texturing is boring but the architecture is fantastic. High ceiling, enormous rooms, lots of secret passages, windows everywhere... You can almost always glimpse a new area long before you access it, and as such the map draws you in.

Despite having well over 300 monsters, resistance is fairly low, the monsters are all spread out pretty thinly and are mostly the weakest types of zombie and imp. This is probably a good thing as there's nothing worse than trying to find your way round a complex map only to keep dying all the time; however, since it is so easy, it reduces the replay value.

There is one obvious complaint in that there are probably about fifteen or twenty secret areas. This would be fantastic, if they were all actually marked as such, but only three of them are. This annoys me. At least there is a computer map available, if you are lucky enough to find it, so you can find all these places even tough they're not proper secrets.

The low resistance and architectural style - along with the super shotgun being very well hidden - gives it the feel of a Doom map converted to Doom 2. Comparisons are inevitably drawn with the definitive UAC Experiment, of which it falls short in quality, but it's still one of the best of these types of map that I have played. Recommended.

22/06/2004-23/06/2004 @01:06:10 ^01:27:20

I CANT BELIEVE THIS USERNAME ISNT ALREADY TAKEN

I am a huge faggot! I made this because I have no will of my own and I just copy what everyone else does to fit in! Please laugh at me

we must be freeeeee we're going to a better place

Okay so about my shitty job it seems putting it in writing did the trick and they're letting me leave. I mean yeah okay I'm a lazy git but having no income's better than sitting five days a week in some huge building with faulty air conditioning sitting around waiting for people to give me boring tasks like filing.

Various people I hardly know have come up to me going "oh I heard you're leaving" and indeed one woman said so was her secretary and somebody else and would I like to..? I was like, uh, thanks but no thanks.

I might as well stay on Unitemps but apply for stuff that looks more technical or if I really want some more money not get roped into staying in the same place for nine godsforsaken months oh man nine months christ alive

zzzzzzap

caco disappeared off the internet earlier today and I discovered it had fallen victim to a powercut whose characteristics had caused both baron and the cable modem to fail to reinitialise afterwards. baron was especially scary as I pressed the power button and nothing happened. I thought its mainboard had been fried but it was okay after I turned the PSU off for about two minutes.

Once again I find myself needing a UPS. Well, I've always needed one, but I never get round to buying one because it raises all sorts of issues with the very functions my machines provide:

• caco doesn't have a spare serial port since the Risc PC is plugged into it as an emergency serial console
• baron does have two serial ports but using a desktop machine as the master controller for a UPS instead of your gateway box seems retarded
• The UPSs they sell these days are all USB anyway and the version of the UPS daemon in Debian stable doesn't support USB

What to do, what to do

PS wow just wow, it's been ages since I did an update after midnight

20/06/2004 @22:14:51 ^00:49:56

"We just have Guy Faulkes Day, celebrating some bloke who made a spirited attempt to blow up the entire country's government"

Don't forget new tracks but don't download doinit2me as it's rubbish even as a parody record, I'm told.

HILARIOUS BID FOR FREEDOM

The latest line in the long running saga "Rob hates his job and wants to leave but they won't let him": The following is an extract from a letter I left on my boss's desk on Friday afternoon

I am writing to you to give my week's notice of leaving my job. As we discussed before your holiday, I feel that, following the completion of the checking of scanned records, now is the time to move on.

Many thanks for the months of valuable experience and may I wish you and the team the very best for the future.

Yours sincerely,

Rob Young

I'm actually quite worried now that this will cause confrontations and awkward questions. But I have to get out of there. Sitting around for hours waiting for people to think up boring tasks for me to do is not how I want to spend what seems like the rest of my life, even if it means I have to lose my income.

rogue channel have post-exam party

They insisted that I go to this thing. Okay but I have to get to Leamington. I missed the bus I was supposed to get as everything seemed to prevent me getting out the house on time. I couldn't cope with this and flipped out. I missed the next bus an hour later too; I was in time for that but it was early. I very nearly gave up but my mum said she'd give me a lift. How embarrassing.

I gave it my best shot, but already being quite upset and drained (and many others being exhausted following the completion of exams) I failed to extract all the humour and make the evening live up to its hype.

snafu and livejournals

A couple of weeks ago I discovered that if you do a HEAD request on a LiveJournal's RSS feed it actually gives you a Last-Modified header. That is, livejournal.com/users/xXxaNgELpIe69xXx/ won't give you one, but livejournal.com/users/xXxaNgELpIe69xXx/data/rss will. Since I wrote snafu to support checking a different URL from the one to which it links, it's all good.

I also have found a couple of journals written by people I know and am going to piss everybody off by putting them on the list.

obligatory doom section

I hadn't touched the game for ages until yesterday when in order to pass some time I just went and found a bunch of random maps off idgames. Here they are

• therion I remembered the filename when I found this, and as it turned out I've done this before and even went as far as posting a bug report in the thread about it on Doomworld... It's four levels (not five) which are in general well made and easy but quite fun to play. There are a few problems but it didn't deserve the panning it received on its release. Hints: on map 1 one of the crates lowers if you push it on the correct side; on map 2 there's a door that won't open no matter what you do; and perhaps critically map 4 doesn't have an exit, it just stops. I think an old version was uploaded accidentally.
• theatre2 This is a map from 1995, recently reuploaded, that is set in a multi-screen cinema! Its construction is pretty authentic, if a little simple, but you'd expect so from the age. It has a high number of monsters, most of which seem to appear in a few large traps. Handy hint: When you get the yellow key run back down to the entrance hall without firing a single shot; if you do, an archvile will teleport in next to the pool of water and start resurrecting all the monsters there. Recommended.
• pcyber This looks really nice. It's very open, a huge landscape separated into two pieces, on which there are buildings which architecture that is sparse and massive. Unfortunately it's designed as a cyberdemon fighting training map, and you get a load of bullets to pistol two cyberdemons to death. Fuck that shit.
• polution This is a whole 10 map thing with a dehacked patch. The maps are pretty short and irritatingly linear. There are annoying puzzles, mazes, and lots of backtracking. The patch makes a few changes to some of the monsters and a new weapon. Unfortunately it doesn't work properly in PRBoom. In particular, you can't walk through the small flame objects. That's okay for the most part but when you get to map 8 you get stuck. There were some impressive setpieces, large outdoor canyons and so forth but it's probably not worth the bother.

14/06/2004 @17:31:52 ^19:45:23

11 YEARS OF anARCHy TRACKS

I sit here thinking of this time last year and I figured let's release some more stuff. Usual disclaimers apply. Read the text file, download it if you want to but if you don't like it, I don't want to hear about it.

Anyway three months since the last time I did this, I have three more things for you, in order of how much I don't like them.

• snare364 (text) A lot of people liked aBoUt tImE! and if you did you'll love this; it's a bit slower, a bit more of a broken beat. If you do nothing else listen to the last part with the pianos.
• the clouds the sky (text) This is a remix of something Elliot did, his was named The Sky The Clouds. He wanted some trancey thing doing, but the melody descended in pitch and was all wrong so I had to muck about with it a lot. It turned out really well, in spite of being godsawful hard house or trance or whatever.
• doin' it (2 me) (text) This was an attempt prior to the clouds the sky to parody shitty euphoric hard house music. It has the world's cheesiest vocal sample and an obligatory melodic build up that's so long you can go to the bar before the beat comes back in. It's as awful as its name suggests and is meant to be that way.

That wasn't the most well-written update ever but who cares.

13/06/2004 @09:53:35 ^11:11:41

H A T S

WHERE CAN I FIND HATS IN THE UK

Deus Vult

I always start with a link to a previous update. Deus Vult is, let's get this straight, one map. So large, only the most recent versions of ZDoom, which increase the sidedef limit or something, can run it. Fortunately it was split into four smaller pieces which do run in PRBoom.

• Map 1 starts off in some kind of a space station. Parts of it are reminiscent of the Vrack series, and of course Equinox. It's very colourful, using many vivid blues, greens and reds in amongst the darkness. Then you jump through a river of lava to find it changes style completely into massive gothic architecture.
• Map 2 transfers you to Hell. Through another curtain of lava you find a massive cavern with monsters crawling on every surface. Apart from some side tunnels it's all completely open. Cover is highly limited and I found the constant charge, hit, run for cover cycle to consume a vast amount of game time. You also get to the blue area you can see from map 1.
• Map 3 and you find yourself back in enormous gothic architecture land; it's a cathedral in hell. The initial firefight is fearsome but there are several invulnerabilities available. The second half of the map takes you along a low lava river crawling with monsters.
• Map 4 is in some ways the opposite of map 3 as you go up another river of lava to a Great Hall. Having cleared out this and the unholy circle behind it you get to climb up the lavafall to the second half of the river and eventually the end, which is an enormous eye on a tower in a valley.

I should point out I played it on HNTR as UV is way overstuffed with monsters. Its main influence being Alien Vendetta this is not surprising. My descriptions are not doing the grand scale of these maps any justice so I very much suggest you download Deus Vult and run round it, even on a low skill level like I did or perhaps even with -nomonsters.

PS it has a number of comedy secrets which range from "not obvious" to "fucking impossible to find" but they are worth it, if only to scream "Copying JeffK was never funny" or "Keep present-day politics out of this, moron" at your monitor. Unfortunately a couple of teleporters at the very start of map 4 don't work on the lowest skill level as their exit point is not flagged to exist.

01/06/2004 @23:30:55 ^00:13:31

I didn't put a belt on today

My what a jape that turned out to be.

ANCIENT MAPS FROM BEFORE THE DAWN OF TIME

On that D1000 CD I found some more old classics that I remember playing years ago.

• hall2 one of a set of about seven maps that I found in a zip called mrr-wads or something, this is a whole mission that goes through firstly via some underground tunnels then into this large haunted mansion via a very clandestine entrance. It is riddled with secret passages and all sorts of cool stuff and then you get the spectacularly large hall that gives the map its name at the end. There is a fantastic hint that shows you how to make the ending a lot easier if you can find it.
• bigopen another of the mrr-wads but nowhere near as subtle as the previous, this one is primarily an enormous plain whose only fault is that it doesn't have a larger number of monsters crawling all over it. It is enormous for a map made in 1995 and great fun to run around in. There are a whole bunch of interesting side areas which are similarly large. Half of them are optional. It finishes up in a central keep stuffed with large monsters that you can get to fight each other. This is the sort of map that you just play when you have ten or fifteen minutes to waste. Excellent.

And these were previously unseen

• nuclear a base, well, a load of stone corridors and some big rooms. There's a big thing that could be a reactor in the middle, hence the name. Ammunition is pretty scarce though there's loads of secrets I didn't find before I got killed. It's pretty good.
• cool (I can't find this on idgames) yeah I don't really think you can say what this thing was supposed to be because the texturing was pretty random but it was interestingly put together, not just a bunch of rooms and corridors, there were windows to shoot through and so on. Unfortunately I got trapped in a room the only exit from which was red locked and I only had a blue key. Old maps have bugs.