I'm always in favor of more tool development, especially as someone who hasn't made any tools =D

But yeah, materials for surfaces so you graybox an area, defining it with tags for materials, and then sub tag an area so it inherits the earlier ones and adds a few more. Say a bathroom/pool area tile bit that has some dirty grout, with cracks that widen to vines growing out, and then some of the tiles are broken with holes showing utility pipes behind it. But for the mapper this is a few brushes and tags.

...for the static artist this is a whole lot of work... Granted you can do a degree of procedural creation for foliage, piping, brickwork, things of that nature.

An aside within that: I loved the illogical never-going-to-see-much-like-it-in-real-life places like Ziggurat Vertigo. Take me to strange new places, not normal places plus aliens/zombies. 

I completely agree - toolsets have by and large only evolved in a linear fashion, while asset fidelity and complexity has increased exponentially. Hell, the Rage SDK is a pretty version of Radiant.

I think there will be some amount of concession to fidelity, and that's OK. There are several artistically valid ways of representing a world and characters that don't involve subsurface scattering.

I was present for a Q/A at Quakecon for the launch of ET:QW, and there was an obligatory question about modding tools. The answer was essentially "Yes, the tools are available, just remember that uncompressed megatextures will weigh in at about 30 to 40 gigabytes". This is a huge leap in demands for enthusiasts, compared to drawing a box on a screen and hitting a button. 

I seem to remember some dev video for the Snowdrop engine (for The Division) where the designer can specify a very primitive shape for the building and then the editor/engine will populate all the walls with windows / fire escapes / details etc and create doors and shop fronts at the bottom of the shape. It was very cool and I believe all the details are set with scripts so it is user controllable. 

You had me at "'ello guys", no need to butter me up.

Except for to prevent chafing. But still. 

Daz - Yes! That's a good example. Assassins Creed does this as well for quickly building streets in Paris. There are possibilities here for the future... 

Best story in a game?
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey comes to mind. 

My brain is SCREAMING at me to try something like this for Quake but the reality gnome who lives in my head is reminding me that this will lead to leaks that the level designer has zero chance of finding or fixing since they won't be working with the compile version of the map in the editor ... *grumble* 

you could always just port Quake to UE4 or whatever and not worry about leaks this way 

That would be fun ... you totally could too. Just import the models, animate them via blueprints ... hmm ... 

That actually sounds like a little project one could do to learn UE4.

Just need a special blueprint to count fish twice... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQog9lkyH8k

A Skyrim TC by the same people who made Nehrim, among other things. I'm properly hyped. 

Super excited about this! Nehrim was really good. I hope it's early 2015 and not late 2015! 

And to this day I still haven't checked out Nehrim despite being on my todo list since forever. I did start their Morrowind project Arktwend a bazllion years back and forgot to continue it...

There's so many damn good project releases for different games it's difficult to keep up with them all! 

 

hm... that's cool, but you can already play strife in the vavoom engine, so... yeah, not sure if there's really any point paying for that. unless you don't have the original strife, of course.

it's one of my favourite games, so if you've never played it, i'd heartily recommend it. it was really quite ground breaking at the time it was released, with lots of fully voiced dialog, inventory, weapon mods and even some story branching, not to mention a really great atmosphere and cool level design. 

Looks exactly like more Skyrim, except, errr, different. Looks rather cool to me. 

Going back and playing Doom1/2 in Doomsday, and started looking for all the wads I've missed out on. I don't know what 'hub' site exists for Doom mapping, but I've found
http://www.doomworld.com/10years/bestwads/2001.php
and
http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_notable_WADs
so far.

As for bigger projects, Brutal Doom looks like a ton of fun and so does that Total Chaos thing. 

Apparently the Doom discussion is over, but saw this on rps fpr those who want more Doom:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/12/16/cacowards-2014-doom-awards/ 

Apparently the Doom discussion is over, but saw this on rps fpr those who want more Doom:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/12/16/cacowards-2014-doom-awards/ 

More more Doom I guess 

Yeah, it went boring fairly fast. Seems like a very short game in any case. I think it progressed too quickly, one cannot really get familiar with new stuff because it is only used for short parts. Boss fights can be tricky and right now I got stuck in the electricity part which was super annoying. Then I accidentally started a new game and apparently my previous state got lost. Fuck that. Not convinced to start anew, it was not that good. So much potential! :( 

Most anything Doom can be found at Doomworld or the ZDoom forums. Once in a while other sites leech content from them, but usually with a week delay or such.

I still feel like a noob at Doomworld though, despite having gone there since 99, because I've only been going there since 99. I also have no idea when it was started, I just saw the link in a .plan update from Carmack.

I love it when a .plan comes together. 

I often refer others to these resources for Doom custom content.

List of Notable Wads @ Doomwiki.org
100 Wads of All Time: 1994 - 2003 @ Doomworld
The Annual Cacowards: 2004 - Current @ Doomworld
One Man's Journey Through Doom - Indepth, well written reviews of Doom Engine wads

I also occasionally review Doom content on my site if that interests you; http://taw.duke4.net/

p.s. nitpick; when referring to the Doom wiki, I recommend sticking to Doomwiki.org and ignoring the 'defunct' Wikia version. 

Seems to be a nice first person puzzle game, made by the guys from Serious Sam, and written by the dude who wrote for The Swapper and FTL.
It's quite pretty at times as well, I recommend it for those who like these kinds of things.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/257510/ 

I like what happened with the Hatred Greenlight back and forth there.

I was incredulous at that being removed, and Gabe proved to truly have a clear mind on this.

I hope the responsible for the removal was spanked silly.