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I love releasing big projects. In the aftermath I’m able to relax in a way that I simply cannot do when I’m working on something. That usually gives me ample time to reflect on my future as far as this whole game design racket is concerned. Not to mention inspiration usually flows like a river when your not having to manage a bunch of people on a big project. I find it slightly ironic that in the process of creating something in a community setting, my creative juices turn sour and I go into a sort of inspiration lock-down. Managing a project is certainly NOT easy by any stretch of the imagination. Especially if it’s a community-made project. I had already decided that Claustrophobia 1024 was going to be my absolute last community project for Doom before the project even officially started. And my decision has only been steeled after the project’s release. As much fun as they can be, it’s a very stressful and labor-intensive thing to do, especially if your also contributing content to said project. But perhaps the biggest decision I made while working on Claustrophobia 1024 was this – my involvement in Doom mapping is going to be drastically reduced in the future. My involvement in the community will likely become pretty limited as well, although I will still be lurking around

So basically, I will not be starting anymore community-geared Doom projects of any kind in the future. At all. Period. I’ve lived through three major, moderately successful community projects and I think that’s pretty dang good. But I’m going to be way too busy to do another one. Not to mention my interest [and stamina] have waned quite a bit with community functions. As far as my contributions to other projects are concerned, I’ve been looking through what I had left to do as of Claus1024’s release. Thankfully there’s not a whole lot left for me to do:

• Jimmy91 wanted me to go through his CC4 map “Suburbia” and spiff it up a bit. Shouldn’t take long at all.
• I have two more claims in the Greenwar II detailing project. I started on the first quite a while back and I would really like to finish it up. As for the second claim, I’m not sure that I’ll work on it or not. Just depends on how my schedule is looking at the time.
• There’s this silly little project called “Vaporware”. Some of you may have heard of it. I’d really like to stick to this project and [eventually] make a map or two for it. This is on the very bottom on my list of priorities since the other contributing authors will likely take quite a while to actually finish anything.
• There’s also this other silly little ZDoom project that I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say anything about. However, unlike with Vaporware, I don’t know if I’m going to stick around and make anything for it. Though at this point it’s looking like I probably won’t

So what’s the big thing that’s apparently diverting my interest and attention from Doom? What, you don’t know? Why, it’s Project Vega of course! Big man Carn has been working incredibly hard on it these days. We’re shooting to have a playable demo ready in time for this year’s QuakeCon, which is sometime this August. Since I’m a mapper, that means I’ve been working on part of the demo mapset that will ship out with the playable demo. Actually the entirety of Vega has slowly but surely been diverting me away from Doom. Since this is a very important project to me and the rest of the team, my free time has been moved over to Vega related stuff. At the current moment in time, Project Vega is at the top of my list of priorities and I imagine it will stay there for a while. If you haven’t check out Project Vega yet, then what are you doing here? Go check out the Development Blog and the Developement forum at Skulltag.com!

For some reason it feels like this post should be more melodramatic since I’m becoming significantly less active in Doom. I guess all of the violent demon slaughtering has left me desensitized But all is not lost! Aside from all the leftover bits of mapping I have left to do, there is one last thing that will likely be my legacy to the Doom mapping community. I won’t divulge any details right now though. But I will say that it’s going to be a personal project; all of the new content will be made by yours truly. I wanted to start on something that would allow me to exercise my laziness to the fullest extent of it’s amazing powers. You know, something that would allow me to work on a map once a month and then post teaser screenshots every other month. My own Mordeth, if you will If such as thing is ever started, I’ll post a bit about it. But until then, I’m a Project Veganaut!