Jimmy

Honestly not very sure what to do with Earthless. Happily accepting suggestions!

There's only a handful of maps missing, but a small amount more that are lying at half-finished. So I still have time to change the direction of the project without an inordinate amount of redoing, but the question is do I just need to push through to the finish in the direction I'm gone? Or is it worth taking an about turn? Ignoring the sunk cost fallacy for a moment.

My goal was for it to go on the Unity port, and therefore keep it Vanilla. But I think the rigidity of this format is making me feel creatively stymied.

I could repurpose it for MBF21/DSDeHacked/UMAPINFO, and that would (a) help it stand out a bit more on its own instead of feeling like "just another Vanilla megawad" and (b) remove all the biggest stumbling blocks and let me make the maps I wanna make, but then it wouldn't be accessible on the Unity port when Earthless: Prelude (the first 12 maps) already is. The problem is, I'd probably find it even less fun to work on repurposing the maps for this format. I've been mucking around with this format to create new assets and that's been fun - so I do have stuff already made that I could conceivably add in, but whether it would fit in with Earthless or not is a different story.

I think at this point I really wanna branch out and do something I haven't done before, but I feel like I've done... a bit of everything. I've done vanilla maps, Boom maps, UDMF maps, Heretic maps, even maps for my own game(s), and most recently something for my sibling, which employs their custom weapons mod. (That's releasing on Christmas Day.)

Maybe I need to bounce to another WIP project, or find a good collaborator who I can bounce brand-new ideas off of, or do something for a new IWAD altogether like Hexen or Strife. Or maybe I just need a break from Doom altogether. I dunno, it's not that I don't want to create, it's just finding where to put  that creativity. The drive to map for stock Doom has been largely absent for about a year or maybe two, now. Only time pressure from external sources seems to be able to discipline me to do so, and the intrinsic motivation to create, even though I have ideas, has waned quite a bit, with tiredness and distraction becoming a daily thing I have to deal with.

Gotta figure out how to get my mojo back.

Ideas appreciated!