VortexCortex

Happy 2012 everyone! It’s that time of the year again. Time to make a bunch of resolutions and then subsequently squelch on all of them, thus leaving you fatter, less-accomplished, and probably more depressed overall ^_^.

I kid you not, it feels like I just made my 2011 New Year’s Resolution post. I said this in an earlier post, but this year has went by incredibly, incredibly fast for me. By far the fastest year I’ve had since I’ve been alive. It’s really quite alarming actually. I can only guess that my relative lack of Doom-related work and lack of school this year has contributed to this speedy year.

By the way, I turned 25 this past Christmas Eve. I really need to get on the ball.

So let’s take a look at last year’s resolutions and see how I did, shall we?

• Finish Vela Pax – I stopped working on Vela Pax back in the middle of Summer of last year. I’ve finished three of six maps so far and I was working on MAP04 at the time I stopped. MAP04 is probably 25%~ish done or so. Resolution Failed
• Start mapping for Supplice – There wasn’t a whole lot of work done on Supplice last year. And certainly no mapping was accomplished. Although we didn’t start mapping, here lately there has been a burst of activity which has given the project a new breath of life. However…Resolution Failed
• Start on something for Vaporware and/or SpaceDM9 – Neither happened, unfortunately. I’m unaware if SpaceDM9 has been canceled or put on indefinite hiatus. However essel did release a 3 map set, all of which are beyond amazing in every facet possible. Vaporware is truly living up to it’s name unfortunately. As with SpaceDM9, essel released a demo of one map he made for the project (which subsequently won a Cacoward). But did I accomplish anything in regards to these projects? Welp…Resolution Failed
• Look more into the Doom 64EX engine – This was probably not a very realistic resolution to make given the pretty ambitious ones I made above it. Worth noting, however, is that Kaiser released some editing tools and is still updating the KEX engine. Which is so awesome…I love you Kaiser . The modding future of Doom 64 is looking very bright and I am still planning on messing around with it sometime in the future. But alas…Resolution Failed
• Learn to compose music – The list is starting to become comical at this point. I’m pretty sure I had my head in the clouds while making the list by this point. I do want to learn how to make midi music someday (and then maybe graduate from there to a deeper medium). But that day will not come for a while. Resolution Failed
• Finish up my design document – If your wondering, I was referring to Project Retrograde here; this was before our announcement. Out of all the resolutions I made last year, this is the only one where I remotely met my goal. Since that time Retrograde has really taken off. VortexCortex joined the team and has brought with him an energy, knowledge and skill set that we desperately needed. Things have been going very well for Retrograde so far and I cannot wait and see what 2012 holds for us! As per the “design document”, I am still in the process of finishing it. The roots of the game are still evolving so it would not have been possible to “finish” the doc this year. Most of our solid ideas are out to discuss though, so I’ll cut myself a bit of slack…Resolution semi-accomplished!

The personal resolutions I made last year look just as dismal, heh.

So what sort of resolutions am I going to make this year? I have one, very simple resolution to make.

I am resolving to never make resolutions ever again. Or, at least, I won’t take them very seriously if I do make them. Because I just set myself up for failure :P. I think it’s better to just let come what may. Case in point, what did I accomplish this year?

• Project Retrograde was announced and has made great strides in it’s development.
• I’ve contributed 2 maps to the vanilla-Doom project Back to Saturn X and I’m looking to do 1 or 2 more. I’m learning a great deal about vanilla mapping with this project too.
• I contributed 3 maps to 32in24-11, all of which I was very proud of. And this 32in24 may have been the most successful ever.
• Plutonia Revisited was released and subsequently won a Cacoward. I contributed one map to this project back in 2010.
• I released a 3-map test beta for Vela Pax. This gave me a lot of great feedback and the general consensus on the project was very positive.
• Supplice has had quite a spit of activity lately and is well on its way to map production. I will make a Supplice-related post very soon and go into more depth about the project and its direction.

Overall it has been a good, eventful, and speedy year for me. I’m actually hoping 2012 will go by slower. I’ll be taking some college courses again this coming semester and there is more than enough on my plate in terms of personal projects to keep me busy. So hopefully 2012 will be a good one too