Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-1496755-20170225142933/@comment-3547390-20170319021115

That is good to hear, you seem to be getting a lot more efficient. Today has been pretty rough for me, had a martial arts test. They believe in making you earn your belt, so needless to say a lot of horse stances and leg lifts later and I can barely walk. Not sure it was the test, but I am not feeling too well tonight, which is why I haven't really recorded anything. Mostly I have just been resting up my legs and trying to feel less sick. I also have been watching a bit of the first season of Doctor Who, I decided I was curious enough about what a Dalek was to actually see at least some of the franchise. This is not going to turn into a Wheel of Time, as soon as I feel well enough to record we will continue with some more levels, but it definitely serves to kill some time at 30 minutes an episode and quite a handful to a story. The hardest part is trying to watch the ones with totally lost footage.

Indeed, it is really weird how fast technologies would be outdated. Look at VQuake. That thing was around for a few months, then pretty much made totally useless by GLQuake, mainly because you needed some specific dying technology for the other. Look at how many late 90s games are a pain to play. You want something recent, look at SecuROM, pretty much any copy-protection method used on disks in the 2000s is pretty much impossible to run on Windows 10. You know, it is really sad when you realize how volatile everything is. Then anything old usually gets archived on the internet, but the problem is websites eventually die. Look at GameSpy. I really wonder how many maps we have permanently lost because nobody cared enough to back up all the maps there. Doom is the same way with certain obscure software. Dalek Doom is actually a remake of a remake, the other two being impossible to find based on my searches. Sure, websites get archived, but the problem is obscure map download links usually do not. As I have said numerous times in my videos, shovelware is quite the odd topic. It was absolute garbage when it came out as it was a premium of content you could get for free on the internet, but now it serves as being one of the main ways maps are guaranteed to be archived for a much longer period of time. I am definitely more concerned about the volatile nature of whatever maps are on the internet. You might not have realized recently, but DoomWorld actually switched to a new forum and thus took the archives offline for about a day or so. That was definitely surprising, especially when I realized I had videos of stuff on my Youtube channel that may no longer be available for download. Luckily that turned out to not be the case, but it definitely is scary to think about. Imagine if Doomworld goes down, suddenly it would be as fragmented as Quake's history and we would need to rely on shovelware to hopefully get most of the important levels. Imagine if the few remaining Quake 1 places went down. Gamespy shows popularity doesn't mean anything, it could happen to any site at any time. A bit depressing, but hopeless to worry about. Still, it is weird to think certain levels may no longer be able to be downloaded in another 20 years, especially when you think of the Internet as being a great way of retaining archives. Who knows if certain maps even exist that are archived in Aftershock.

Wolfenstein 3d to Doom is as far separate as Doom to Quake in my book. The lack of any real editing tools, the fact that any products end up horribly boring, and the fact that the game was even more reliant on spamming every wall doesn't help. I will admit it is annoying that it still occurs in Doom in regards to secrets, but it is a lot worse when it was used constantly to progress in these early games. Doom at least I can distinguish one level from another. I may get worn out, but Wolfenstein 3d pretty much tires me out a level or two into the episode. The combat was even more simplistic, being all hitscan, and the lack of varying ammo makes things feel even more dull. Yeah, there is a reason why I am playing Doom levels but not doing a Wolfenstein playthrough. A Wolf 3d playthrough would be torture indeed.

The nice thing about being the developer of the database and the manager of the server is that I am responsible for everything. I get informed of a bug, I devote myself to fixing the problem. The database in question is rather complex, it covers the entire operations of my company, and thus everyone pretty much expects some bugs to appear. Plus we plan to add more features and functionality as we go along, some things are still placeholders that are not immediately required. Basically this system is to replace a 20 year old system that works and was made with a very early version of some software called Filemaker, but is heavily limited. We pretty much are planning on expanding operations and thus the old database just won't be sufficient, so I have created a new system from scratch using the most recent version of the software. I guess I could compare it to coding (even if no coder would take me seriously, though we simply have no use for using SQL or more complicated methods on an already large database), it is rather simple to make a small database, but it definitely gets a lot more complicated as you make a bigger system. It definitely gives you a sense of pride to see it functioning and continues to be quite the learning experience as new features that seem quite impossible appear. That is the fun part, trying to make it act just the way the company wishes it. The harder part is the bug fixes, trying to test every user case and pretty much click around randomly until something breaks is quite tedious. I tend to find the best development method is to not constantly focus on the database, otherwise you tend to miss the obvious because you grow accustomed to it. Often if I am unable to find something I will jump on the Wikia, which is how you see me reply, or just otherwise read about some technical stuff. Anything that gets my mind off the database just enough so that it gives you a fresher clairvoyance when you go back to it; it works quite well, prior to this I often would devote days to the database without finding anything only to find out some obvious issue existed that I somehow managed to overlook, now I often can prevent most easily detectable things from occurring. The problem with most companies and simply hiring outsiders is that nobody knows how to change or add features, it definitely gives your company quite the benefit to have someone who knows exactly what everything in said database does because they were the one who designed it (being the sole designer means a lot of responsibility is put on me, but it also means I don't have to spend time figuring out someone else's scripts or design choices). I find it harder to work on a place, such as some Wikia pages, where things were created before me. The database definitely appeals to me, I love the feeling of pride of having made something of value, something that you can see someone using and say "that was me who designed that". Combined with my main skill of being efficient with computers (I often get praised for how expedient I am), it works quite well. It is nice to be able to manage the servers as well as it is just a further way I can see its fruition.

Honestly DoomWikia's format, in fact any Wikia format at all, is hard to bear whenever I go to them. They always are lacking some feature or functionality I have grown accustomed to here. There probably are still ways we will find that can improve this further, look at the addition of editor information, but I feel quite confident in saying that this Wikia is better designed than any other Wikia I have been to. If it wasn't, I would assimilate their functionality and bring it here anyway. Wouldn't it be nice if they took our designs too? Then we wouldn't have to deal with their ugly Wikia pages :P