i've been meaning to post this for a while now, so here it is

The Gateway GP6-400

this is my retro pc setup - a modified gateway gp6-400 from 1999. this model in particular really appealed to me; it's powerful enough to run most games up to around 1998 or so, but it still has fairly realistic performance for a typical gaming pc of that era. i still went ahead and swapped out some parts as well as added some new ones in order to get exactly what i want out of it, however.

here's the specs:

- Pentium II 400mhz

- 128mb RAM

- 250gb HDD (win98 partition only uses 6.4gb for accuracy

- Voodoo3 AGP graphics card

- Integrated Ensoniq AudioPCI audio

- ES1868F ISA audio card for DOS gaming

- DVD-RW drive

- 3.5" floppy drive

- 250mb ZIP drive

on the pc there exist two operating systems: windows 98 second edition and ms-dos 6.2 with windows 3.1. now, you likely find this odd considering that ms-dos 7.1 is already accessible from windows 98, but i reeeally wanted a true early 90s dos experience. so, i have a full installation of dos 6.2 on a separate 425mb partition (the size of a decent hdd from 1994 or so) that i access via boot disk.

as you can also see from the pictures, there's a crt monitor as well: the 17" princeton eo710. it was expensive - well-kept crt monitors tend to be that way unfortunately - but it works wonderfully and the display is gorgeous. i try to keep it at around half brightness and contrast, which can make seeing things in games hard at times, but i really would rather not risk wearing it down lol.

overall, it works splendidly. i'm able to run any games made up to around 2001 or so fairly well, and while there's been issues dealing with stupid win98 bullshit, it hasn't been too bad to work on. it's been a dream of mine to own a computer like this for ages, and now that i finally have one...i'm really happy :)

here's some more pics

the windows 98 desktop:

running dos:

@esselfortium 's KDIKDIZD looking amazing on the crt (it looks so much better in person):

and finally, some half-life along with a better view of the front of the pc:

myhouse.wad-adjacent facts and blatant shilling for the musicians who soundtracked it

As has been largely disseminated, new mappers making levels based on their own houses are a common trope in the doom community, and they are often referred to generically as "myhouse.wad". The earliest myhouse maps are actually some of the oldest Doom maps in existence, predating Doom 2 (also at least one Doom 2 map was based on Sandy Peterson's house...)

A lot of people are impressed with myhouse.wad's room over room. I'm more impressed that in the first house myhouse used a boom-style silent teleporter to implement room-over-room sloppily so that the illusion very easily breaks (just step back up the stairs while one of the basement doors is open: it will snap shut because you are being teleported back into the version of the house with an upstairs, and thus there can't be an open door there), just like an inexperienced mapper might in 1999, before using modern GZDoom portals to do it more convincingly in the second house.

There's been a lot of theorizing about myhouse's author, probably because veddge is a very very competent mapper and also because everyone who does know who the author is has stonewalled inquiries at the author's request, implying that the author has a meaningful identity in the Doom community. Or maybe they're just shy. However, DavidXNewton noted in his analysis series on myhouse that it does a lot of things in a ways that are unnecessary using modern UDMF and ZScript but would be familiar to someone coming from a less advanced mapping format like Boom or Old ZDoom. This is indicative of Veddge being more along the lines of what he says he is: either someone truly returning after a long absence, or at the very least someone who isn't terribly familiar with modern GZDoom mapping. Either that, or the entire map was mapped in character. I genuinely don't know which I'd find more impressive.

"doomcute" is a term used to refer to maps that recreate real-world items or environments in doom (usually because the immediate reaction from players is "oh that's adorable!"). Myhouse maps are invariably trying for doomcute, but another early doomcute map was Shamus Young's Doom City from 1995 (yes, Shamus Young of DM of the Rings fame. I discovered while researching that he actually died last year. Rest in peace). Doom City recreated a couple of real-world looking buildings, but the thing everyone seems to remember about Doom City is its recreation of... a gas station. Food for thought.

Hilariously, myhouse almost got lost in the shuffle on Doomworld, because most people weren't looking for a myhouse.wad to play. Several of Veddge's collaborators posted in the thread to keep this from happening.

I believe Veddge's confirmed collaborators on myhouse are Kevansevans, esselfortium, and Jimmy. I don't know much about Kevansevans, but I believe he helped with the scripting and some of his scripting work from other sources made it into the wad because he's officially credited (as is everyone whose work was used in the map: it's all inside the PK3). Essel and Jimmy are credited only in anagram form because they are responsible for the music, which is actually wholly original (also Jimmy gave no indication he was involved until it was revealed by players unscrambling the anagram, which was very very funny).

I'm actually going to talk about Essel and Jimmy in detail over the next few bullet points, because I feel like it. And they're both really neat.

Sarah "esselfortium" Mancuso is responsible for memory=entryrrrr/////, the piece the plays in the burned house and various other places throughout the wad. She's composed professionally for video games and has several albums, but in the Doom community she's probably best known for creating and managing the Back to Saturn X project, a trilogy of megawads (only two of which are presently released) being developed by a massive team of modders, with custom assets, a custom palette, a complete original OST, and some very impressive maps... all intended to be playable with a vanilla doom2.exe. Which is insane: Vanilla Doom is brutal to map for, on account of harsh limitations that it's hard to be confident your map or project falls within. Back to Saturn X was so ambitious that it found previously undiscovered ways that Doom can crash. Of course, in addition to running the project, Essel also mapped for it, made textures for it, and composed a significant portion of the soundtrack. And because that was not impressive enough apparently, Essel also (with some help from a few others) created Knee-Deep in Knee-Deep in ZDoom, a joke wad that takes the (in)famous Knee-Deep in ZDoom, a mapset designed to show off the features of ZDoom, and recreates as many of its tricks as it can entirely in vanilla. A feat I can only describe as black magic of the highest order. She also went out of her way to say Trans Rights during her bethesda interview, so that's cool too.

James "Jimmy" Paddock is responsible for the increasingly glitchy and messed-up version of D_RUNNIN that plays in the second house. Which figures, because Jimmy's music is everywhere. He takes commissions for music, he's contributed free music to the community, and his music is very very popular. Notable wads he's contributed tracks to include Plutonia 2, Speed of Doom, Reverie, Back to Saturn X Episodes 1 and 2, Eviternity, and Doom 2 In Spain Only, and the MIDI soundtrack to John Romero's SIGIL, which some consider to be even better than the Buckethead soundtrack. He also is the project lead and mind behind The Adventures of Square, a standalone, free game made in GZDoom, he's done texture work, he's made several award-winning doom mods (cacowards, that is), mapped for numerous other projects, and had just done a whole ton of stuff. The doom community gave him an award for lifetime achievement. Oh, and he did an alternative MIDI OST for Prodeus? Genuinely didn't know about that.

While researching this I learned that Jimmy is going to be evicted in a month, so now's a great time to check out his music online and see if you're into it. I'm not a super fan of his vocal delivery, but I really like some of his instrumentals and MP3 versions of his MIDIs.

The Performative Romance of "Yuri Is My Job"

Content warning: Yuri Is My Job contains depictions of homophobia, bullying, and sexual assault.

My friend @esselfortium recently convinced me to read "Yuri Is My Job" (which from now on I'm going to refer to by its fan abbreviation, WataYuri), written by Miman. I'm glad she did, because WataYuri turned out to be an extremely pointed and engaging commentary on the yuri genre. I'll try to keep this review/recommendation mostly spoiler-free while highlighting what I think are the most interesting parts.

Hime Shiraki is a high school girl whose dream is to marry into money and to that end, cultivates a "facade" of the perfect people-pleaser. She is coerced into becoming a staff member at Cafe Liebe after 'injuring' the manager on the way home from school. Cafe Liebe is a roleplay cafe where the waitstaff perform in character as student council members of the Liebe Girls' Academy, a setting intended to mirror a Class S romance novel. The manga explores the character relationships between Hime (performing under the name Hime Shirasagi) and the other members of the staff as she settles into the new job.

At a surface level, WataYuri functions as a criticism of the Class S romance genre, which focuses on close, hierarchal relationships between women within girls-only schools. These relationships often take on the shape of performative romance as a form of emotional fulfillment in the absence of "real" partners (men) within the setting, justifying itself as preparation for courtship after graduation. These close relationships often doubled to disguise intimate same-sex relationships at a time when these relationships were illegal.

The Class S genre leans into the ambiguity between the real and the performative; simultaneously providing a form of quiet affirmation and a cautionary reminder to its audience. This dynamic is understandable given that it is a subversion of pre-war publishing standards and laws regarding same-sex relationships, but many of the themes and plot beats inspired, influenced and survived into modern yuri.

Miman crafts their story in a way that digs into the nature of these legacy ideas with a certain perverse glee. The ever-watchful eyes of the authorities are replaced by those of the parasocial audience Cafe Liebe cultivates. The ambiguity - and often painful miscommunications that result from it - come less from "relationship/situationship" and more from the distinction between performance and the raw emotion it draws from.

In an early comedic moment, the latter dynamic is illustrated when Hime's cafe senpai Sumika Tachibana (an aloof, bookwise character on duty and a somewhat meddling gyaru off duty) and Mitsuki Ayanokouji (a caring, big sister character on duty and a curt, socially distant person off duty) argue in character over how to best handle a floor situation where Hime is struggling. Hime and her friend Kanoko Amamiya (a painfully shy girl with a secret crush on Hime) misinterpret this argument as a genuine romantic argument, and Kanoko uses the opportunity to flirt in character under the guide of expressing support for Hime's ability to do the job. Hime then reads Kanoko's intervention as a purely professional step. Nothing the characters are attempting to communicate gets through, because no one is certain on which side of kayfabe the communication is being made from.

Later chapters begin to tackle darker subject matter, exploring how the job both creates and exacerbates insecurity, conflict, and unhealthy relationship dynamics among the staff. As this tonal shift occurs, Miman writes a fantastic (sometimes horrifying) series of character sketches. Each of the story arcs these sketches support dig deeper into the relationship dynamics and shapes that are commonly adopted in modern yuri, illustrating just how toxic and ingrown the relationships produced by these story patterns can get.

Miman is not afraid to take the story into fraught territory - WataYuri covers a range of subject matter from childhood bullying, coming to terms with acearo feelings, internalized homophobia, and sexual assault - but they handle these matters delicately and sympathetically. These events ultimately highlight the strengths of the working relationships at Cafe Liebe - for as much hurt as the job is capable of generating, the staff's knowledge and personal relationships with one another equip them with the tools and resilience they need to begin resolving these issues as they come up.

Despite taking on the trappings of a shallow workplace dramedy, WataYuri delivers a wickedly sharp exploration of the roles we assign ourselves when building and maintaining our relationships. As it builds off of its consistently great character moments, it argues that our own self-enforcement of those roles is ultimately harmful when using those roles to soften or shield ourselves from the possibility of hurt that comes from expressing our true feelings. At best, it prevents us from finding genuine connection; at worst, it prevents us from moving on while our emotions turn poisonous.

32in24-10.wad: 32in24-10: MAPS FOR THE MAP GOD MAP19: Doublequick (-736, -464, 0) Author: The 32in24 Team! Date: 2010-11-01 Description: "In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the Yeoman Engineers and Designers of Software." Their assignment this week was to produce 32 levels suited for 4-8 player free-for-all deathmatch within 24 hours. Thanks to a timely ambush by dastardly terrorists, it took them 48 hours to accomplish this. In spite of this, YEDS hopes that this megawad will be worthy of your perusal. The levels in this iteration of the series are: MAP01: Lawn Wake IX by esselfortium MAP02: Grayscale by Mechadon MAP03: Wood, Stone, and Steel by The Green Herring MAP04: Techbase, Bloody Techbase by Tib MAP05: Baseheads by Melon MAP06: Boxed In by Solarn MAP07: Lord Assburger's Manor by Craigs MAP08: Perfect Blue by Walter Confalonieri MAP09: High Roller by Icytux MAP10: Terror Towers by TrueDude MAP11: Eat Dirt by Jimmy91 MAP12: See and Hunt Thy Enemies by Philnemba MAP13: Mithanthaya by tm512 MAP14: Delirite by Mechadon MAP15: Five Piece Chicken Dinner by Revenant MAP16: Abandoned Mining Complex on Tiberius Alpha by RottKing MAP17: Stretch Mark Labs by 40oz MAP18: Need That Soulsphere by Forty-Two MAP19: Doublequick by Icytux MAP20: Canyon Target by kuchikitaichou MAP21: Stoned Grasshopper by Xtroose MAP22: Big Trouble in Fuzakistan by Walter Confalonieri MAP23: Oh No! Alien Pee! by Melon MAP24: Too Many Pizza by The MisterCat MAP25: Tech Initiative by purist MAP26: Cannonball by esselfortium MAP27: 3D TREE TEMPEST by RottKing MAP28: Viridian Complex by The Green Herring MAP29: Base Battle by killer ninja MAP30: Jeremiah's Museum by TimeOfDeath MAP31: Quinoline by Mechadon MAP32: Choco by Mechadon (lol, one day late) Since the WAD ended up taking two days to make instead of one, here are a few levels that didn't make it through quality control, but were kept anyway just so the mappers wouldn't feel bad. You're welcome. MAP33: The Fly by Joshy MAP34: Ballistic Base by KingLunar MAP35: Symmetrical Shit by ClonedPickle MAP36: Welcome to the DWANGO by Walter Confalonieri MAP37: Hell Arena Deathmatch XL by RottKing And last, but not least, here's a pair of levels that were made for previous 32in24s, but didn't quite make it. Think of these as 3.5th anniversary bonus levels! Or don't! See if they care! MAP38: MILITARY BIJW by Bucket (originally for 32in24-8) MAP39: Filler Techbase by Icytux (originally for 32in24-9)

memory=entryrrrr///// by Esselfortium...please come to Spotify....I love you so much.

Today's spooky tune:

Esselfortium - memory=entryrrrr/////

album cover art for future human by esselfortium

@peppermintschnapps tagged me in something a couple weeks ago and i totally missed it. well anyways im here now :3

some songs i've had on loop lately:

• Call This # Now - The Garden

• Cocn Rolla - Begnagrad

• Thrills - Cake

• Superlove - Royal Republic

• memory=entryrrrr///// - esselfortium

included mostly the less convential songs. i listen to plenty of weird al and lemon demon but youve already heard of those guys.

@vermilionstarlight @timblum @summonfish @shiftwux @thquib

Friday 29 September Mixtape 378 “Garden of Echoes EXCLUSIVE” Retro Space Electronic Idm Wednesdays, Fridays & Sundays. Support the artists and labels. Don't forget to tip so future shows can bloom.

Herbstlaub-Schneeflockengleich 00:31

Chris Prine-Rain Consuming 04:17

Hawke-Garden Of Your Mind - Bluetech’s Mountain High Mix 08:17

Metamatics-Vocodor Odour 15:52

Higher Intelligence Agency-Re-echo 22:19

AFX-Laricheard 28:11

Qeshi-Schem 30:24

Xploding Plastix-Sports, Not Heavy Crime 36:32

Norwell-Circulated 41:26

Sick Robot-Core Level 46:45

Harvey Sutherland-Time On My Side 52:32

Julien Mier-In Your Iris 58:24

Hoavi-Can't explain 1:02:12

Frequency Control Centre-Ventral Tegmental 1:07:23

Felix Laband-Sqeeze The Trigger 1:13:29

The Metamorph-Flesh & Steel 1:21:46

Plod-Aptaxi 1:24:36

The Metamorph-We Are Tonytronic 1:27:33

CV Vision-Insolita 1:29:28

Chris Prine-The Effort 1:32:02

Futuregrapher-Dagur 1:35:50

Esselfortium-Knipling Pin 1:39:52

I'm also gonna start

Concorde's Cultivated Chords

A nice weekly segment where I pick a song that's really been doing numbers in my head!

Starting off is this strange track featured in the popular Doom 2 mod "MyHouse.wad"!

This track has a very eerie sound that I cannot get enough of! And that brief segment at 5:12 is truly the highlight of the entire track! A perfect ambient song (⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)

Doom WADs’ Roulette (2009): Introduction

...

Half-Life can wait. I miss Doom already.

click

Ladies. Gentlemen and Others, welcome, to the Doom WADs’ Roulette, where I review the best WADs according to Doomworld’s Top 100 WADs of All Times and (now) Cacowards. Today, we are starting to check out the “Cacowards” BEEP “2009” BEEP roster. Here are the rules:

#1 We are playing on GZDoom (ver. 4.11.3).

#2 We are playing on Hurt Me Plenty.

#3 Vertical aiming is on.

#4 No infinitely tall monsters.

#5 The WAD will be downloaded from the archives unless it’s not there among other reasons.

#6 We are playing WADs shown on a current roster from top to bottom split into three leagues (top 10, runners-up and honorable mentions, and other WADs).

#7 Lighting is set on modified Classic along with modified fog effect.

#8 Deathmatch WADs and the winners of the Worst WAD award do not count.

click

Welcome to the end of the beginning... of the third millennium that is. The year is 2009; Usain Bolt sets a new world record in three running competitions, Facebook ends up with over 350 million users (it also adds a like button) among a billion people using the Internet, Michael Jackson passes away, and, unfortunately, the year 2009 is also a year where the word was introduced to the webcomic knows as Homestuck. It would later become a plague for people who read it (including me), to the point of having one of the Zodiac signs branded into their brains.

In the video games department, 2009 has many sequels that can be considered GOATs, such as Assassin’s Creed II, Modern Warfare 2, and Left 4 Dead 2.

As for the Doom franchise, id Software, the company that started it all, is purchased by Zenimax, the company that owns Bethesda. Not to mention the second Doom 3 novel being released along with Ultimate Doom on iOS.

Cacowards 2009 was once again written by Scuba Steve, along with Patrick Pineda (Metacorp) (returning from Cacowards 2008), Ryan Nematollahi (hobbs), and Sarah Mancuso (esselfortium) contributing to the ceremony. It introduced the section I’m bored, where you would have to create a map before New Year’s Eve based on the idea from the random idea generator. It also swapped Action Doom with its prequel in the Did You Know anniversary side section.

When it comes to that year’s roster, I have to say, that I won’t be ableto review at least one or two WADs. I am 100% sure, that I won’t be tackling Ghouls vs Humans, due to it being a multiplayer WAD, and I wouldn’t care more for these WADs. The other WAD I am not sure if I’ll be able to review is Tribute – a Skulltag-exclusive, singleplayer WAD. I tried to play it on Zandronum, Skulltag’s successor, but it had missing textures and broken scripts.

And Skulltag, from what I’ve seen, is kind of an ancient source port at this point (no mouselook that I am used to, not to mention being unable to use mouse in a menu, arrow keys used in movement as a default option and much less player-friendly options changing), so if I’ll come out of my comfort zone and play that WAD with clenched teeth, I’ll do it based only on my blind playthrough without any screenshots.

Now with that out of the way, let’s take a look at the first WAD on the list.

You check the roster.

-_-

Oh, great… another Mockaward winner.

Let’s hope I’ll be able to finish it, unlike the previous winner.

23, 32

23. Who are five of your favorite bands/musical artists? To name a few in no particular order... Jamie Paige masarada Sweet Trip Nana Mizuki Sarah Mancuso/esselfortium

32. If you could live in a fictional world, what world would you pick? It's not the most exciting answer and it's for a lot of reasons the same answer has been already given, but Pokemon I guess.

myhouse.wad was fun but its best aspect was definitely it's music. what a goddamn banger

32in24-10.wad: 32in24-10: MAPS FOR THE MAP GOD MAP16: Abandoned Mining Complex on Tiberius Alpha (928, -944, -8) Author: The 32in24 Team! Date: 2010-11-01 Description: "In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the Yeoman Engineers and Designers of Software." Their assignment this week was to produce 32 levels suited for 4-8 player free-for-all deathmatch within 24 hours. Thanks to a timely ambush by dastardly terrorists, it took them 48 hours to accomplish this. In spite of this, YEDS hopes that this megawad will be worthy of your perusal. The levels in this iteration of the series are: MAP01: Lawn Wake IX by esselfortium MAP02: Grayscale by Mechadon MAP03: Wood, Stone, and Steel by The Green Herring MAP04: Techbase, Bloody Techbase by Tib MAP05: Baseheads by Melon MAP06: Boxed In by Solarn MAP07: Lord Assburger's Manor by Craigs MAP08: Perfect Blue by Walter Confalonieri MAP09: High Roller by Icytux MAP10: Terror Towers by TrueDude MAP11: Eat Dirt by Jimmy91 MAP12: See and Hunt Thy Enemies by Philnemba MAP13: Mithanthaya by tm512 MAP14: Delirite by Mechadon MAP15: Five Piece Chicken Dinner by Revenant MAP16: Abandoned Mining Complex on Tiberius Alpha by RottKing MAP17: Stretch Mark Labs by 40oz MAP18: Need That Soulsphere by Forty-Two MAP19: Doublequick by Icytux MAP20: Canyon Target by kuchikitaichou MAP21: Stoned Grasshopper by Xtroose MAP22: Big Trouble in Fuzakistan by Walter Confalonieri MAP23: Oh No! Alien Pee! by Melon MAP24: Too Many Pizza by The MisterCat MAP25: Tech Initiative by purist MAP26: Cannonball by esselfortium MAP27: 3D TREE TEMPEST by RottKing MAP28: Viridian Complex by The Green Herring MAP29: Base Battle by killer ninja MAP30: Jeremiah's Museum by TimeOfDeath MAP31: Quinoline by Mechadon MAP32: Choco by Mechadon (lol, one day late) Since the WAD ended up taking two days to make instead of one, here are a few levels that didn't make it through quality control, but were kept anyway just so the mappers wouldn't feel bad. You're welcome. MAP33: The Fly by Joshy MAP34: Ballistic Base by KingLunar MAP35: Symmetrical Shit by ClonedPickle MAP36: Welcome to the DWANGO by Walter Confalonieri MAP37: Hell Arena Deathmatch XL by RottKing And last, but not least, here's a pair of levels that were made for previous 32in24s, but didn't quite make it. Think of these as 3.5th anniversary bonus levels! Or don't! See if they care! MAP38: MILITARY BIJW by Bucket (originally for 32in24-8) MAP39: Filler Techbase by Icytux (originally for 32in24-9)