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I have finally released Forsaken Overlook now that it is finally finished, and I have posted a postmortem of it here, which you could also find bundled in its archive in plain-text (although it would have 100% less screenshots and general eye-candy).

Forsaken Overlook was created in the end of 2012 into 2013 for a project headed by Brian "Snakes" Knox called the "Secret Santa Imitation Project." For this project, map authors in the Doom Community were told to create a map in the style of another author, but you were assigned one at random out of the pool of participants.

What's up, everybody.

I've just posted a thread on DoomWorld about making a series of small utilities for Doom. I'm hard at work writing them and procrastinating on other things, so if you ever want to check up on my progress or join in at the discussion, head on over there.

Okay, that's all I wanted to share for now. Just wanted to show you that I'm not dead.

The idGames Archive Public API (not calling it REST anymore - it's not quite REST) has been officially announced on DoomWorld. There have been a bunch of changes to it since I first announced it here, most notably JSON and SEARCH support.

Hey, guys. Long time, no update!

While I was doing nothing notable in particular, Dennis 'exl' Meuwissen created a really cool app for Android that will allow you to view the contents of the idGames Archive right on your (Android-compatible) phone! Neat!

I gotta say, it's pretty awesome to see stuff that you had a hand in making used by other people. I could get used to this! Who knows, if id makes a port of Doom for Android, this could be an invaluable tool for extending its value!

Meh, enough showboating for one day. Gotta get back to making stuff.

See you next time.

Another month, another update.

But this is not about the "Secret Santa" project - this is about a project that I haven't talked about ever and finally got around to releasing! Introducing, Coffee Break Episode 1, a set of 11 short maps designed with gameplay in mind, rather than length.

Anybody who knows me knows that my Achilles Heel is long maps, so I decided to remedy that with a group of several short maps. Originally, this was going to be a megawad of them - 32 maps replaced - but I guess laziness and lack of interest got the better of me, this time. I started making this in 2009, and planned on finishing it around the end of 2010. Totally not the case.

So a while back, I was asked by Mike Mancuso to contribute to this project he was starting - a mapset for Doom featuring all new textures, themed in such a way to evoke feelings of another planet, inhabited by humans for mining purposes or something.

You know what? I'm sure that there's a wonderful story, given what Mike is putting together with everybody's contributions, but I don't really know exactly what it is. You get to kill a bunch of demons and stuff with lots of really interesting architecture and scenery and music, so it should be really great, anyway.

So, Valve has finally released their in-game editor. And I couldn't be more thrilled.

I've always wanted to make maps since Portal came out back in 2008, but lack of personal time and the difficulty of learning Hammer, along with a lack of prefabs for some of Portal's common elements, kept me from starting. I mean, I've used WorldCraft, Hammer's predecessor, but the time and effort to relearn it wasn't something I wanted to invest. And, when it got right down to it, the time it would take to create a simple puzzle wouldn't be worth it in the end, I felt.