I, Curtis

A few weeks ago I mentioned Doom Builder as a WAD editing utility for Doom maps, but after much unsuccessful attempting to work on WADs, both creating my own maps and editing existing maps, as well as crashing of the utility, I went back diving for a new tool. I came up with Wad Author, which is a much stronger tool. The only problem I have had with WadAuthor so far is that is has no visible way to search for an element in the map, so I still have Doom builder installed for that (more of a cheat some days than an editor).

I have only edited WADs in Wad Author, but it seems like it would be easier to build new Wads in as well.

For the past few months I have been playing a PC video game, something that wasn’t normal for me for the longest portion of my life (unless we include Chess, Checkers, and Minesweeper). For a long time I never had any interest in computer games, especially not first person shooters, I considered them to be pointless. Now I find myself drawn to playing an old game that I played many years ago, Doom. Lately through a tool called ZDaemon, I have been playing the old standard Doom and Doom 2 games. In addition I have been playing with some add-on files for those games (WAD files) which extend what the game is capable of and provide new and more interesting game maps. When I originally started playing Doom again I was worried that I might become more aggressive or perhaps more anti-social, but I have noticed lately that it has made me more calm and less easily stressed about things. In addition, I have been playing in “cooperative” mode and have experimented playing with a specifically cooperative WAD. This type of co-dependent team-based game play is something I have never experienced before, but I have found it to be a good way to become closer to a person and begin to understand the cooperative strategies of that person.
I don’t know why I am posting this, I guess it seems like the only major aspect of my life I haven’t written about yet.