The Machinations of myhouse.wad (How it works) - Part 3
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- čas přidán 27. 04. 2023
- myhouse.pk3 continues to cause a sensation on Doomworld - it's a multithreaded descent into madness. Here is an overview of how it performs its tricks with clever use of the Doom, Boom and UDMF features!
www.doomworld.com/forum/topic...
Part three ends the game in a further two ways, then goes into some of the side secrets. What a journey. - Hry
![[Platform 8] Can you see what is wrong?](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/K-WFOF3mi84/mqdefault.jpg)
checking every possible code related to the body in the hospital because you're afraid it might jumpscare you is one of the most relatable things i've seen in a while
And I still wouldn't trust it, just in case some magical bullshitery caused it to
I still don't trust it and never will
That's like being cautious of even opening any image associated with the Scary Maze Game.
I mean, you never know.
Ya horror game and creepy body no not moving the camera off it just going to close the game
11:05 it's also worth noting that attempting to noclip away from the final beach will simply teleport you back to the same beach instead of to the backrooms. It is literally impossible to go anywhere else from here.
That’s right! I’ve never seen so many anti-cheat defences in a Doom WAD before
@@DavidXNewton Well that's not quite true. The console command "warp" accepts a set of coordinates and teleports you there. Because it doesn't take you through the intervening space like noclipping would it can bypass the actor enters sector teleporters to the backrooms, and also get you out of the real beach of course.
Speaking of anti-cheat stuff, one can get around the idkfa and idfa cheats not working by using the "summon" command. It works like the "give" command but drops things in the world in front of you instead of directly into your inventory and isn't altered by the mod.
@@BeatCrazed What do you mean that's not quite true? This map does have the most anti-cheat defenses.
@@cowrocks3630I see, I replied to the wrong person. I meant that it's not quite true that it's literally impossible to go anywhere else from the beach. It's definitely the most anti-cheat defences I've seen in a Doom WAD as well.
@@BeatCrazed Ah okay, then yeah you're right
fun fact: nearly every single place in myhouse.wad has the same layout as the original house, even the airport, brutalist house, and daycare. it just adds to the uncanny atmosphere in tiny ways.
It does! I hadn't realized this when I first started the series and I said there were 21 variants of the house in the map, but if you count all those there are even more
@@DavidXNewton and apparently the house itself is shaped like a keycard too??
Another small easteregg is if you look at the flight panel at the airport, you'll notice the call signs of the last 6 planes have their first letters spell "Help Me"
Yes! Someone noticed that in the Doomworld thread on this a couple of days after I finished this series - I can't believe I didn't notice it before. And in the jumble of "CANCELLED" flights, you can read the name "ANNA" vertically - maybe that's our A in the S+A heart?
@@DavidXNewton Even more creepy, could also be "Help Me Anna"
:o
@@DavidXNewton i personally believe that the A in S+A heart stands for Tom's last name and that the map creator was secretly in love with his best friend
@@brittlekneesmgee3674 There's an argumet to be made that part of the story is about suppressed transsexuality; one example of a sign for this is the changing male/female signs in the airport bathrooms.
I saw it as there being 3 people total: the person who worked on the map after the friend passed away, the friend who passed away, and the other guy who also passed away. By reading more closely, you can see both obituaries list the funeral being celebrated on the same day. So Thomas couldn't have been the one posting the wad of his friend's house.
My theory is that the 3rd person is a woman who used to date one of the men (likely Thomas?) but for some reason or another, it didn't work out between the two and both men ended up dating each other. The bloody bathroom and the text of one of the items ("it wasn't meant to be") made me think of a miscarriage, an event that can cause enormous distress and can break relationships.
The car accident of the first world and it being found by a crime scene in the inversed one could be one of the reasons why both guys died, as the cause of death isn't mentioned in the obituaries.
I have to say, I really love Myhouse's intricacy. No matter how hard you study it, you keep finding new things.
There's so much of it! Far more than I realized I would have to explain when I started this video - I never realized it would be a trilogy :)
Cruelty squad PFP based
Now wait till someone figures out how to add multiplayer functionality
Even though wad is ancient at this point, I'm still most impressed by the fact that the author(s) managed to fit an entire horror game into a single map.
@@DavidXNewton it's gonna be like scream, left at a trilogy you never saw coming, but one day, its gonna need a part 4, possibly a part 5, but by part 6 we might be questioning life itself lol
I swear every time I see this map, I start to notice that more and more areas share layouts with rooms from the house. The room where the player wakes up in the hospital has the same layout as the upstairs bedroom with the labyrinth closet. The rooms even share the exact same painting.
You’re right…! I counted 21 variants of the house when I did part 1 of these videos, but I don’t think I counted things like the airport and bathhouse which share a lot of its layout.
@@DavidXNewtonhe daycare has a staircase in it that mirrors the one in the basement; it's blocked off by a baby gate, however.
And the house layout is the same as the keycard
@@JediSteve-J3- what
@@Pixxeell___ Pull up an image of a Doom keycard, and then go to 11:12 in the video. They look pretty similar, but the outlines aren't perfectly identical. I'd be willing to dismiss it as coincidence if it weren't for the fact that a blue keycard is one of the three drawings shown in the photos in the myhouse Google Drive. Both of the other drawings have meanings more connected to the map than just "It's a Doom thing," so I think it's reasonable that the third is more connected than at face value as well.
I looped through Underhalls so many times, hoping to see some kind of change persist across separate visits to the house. I can’t believe there actually is something that works that way, and it’s the gas station Sludgie machine of all things!
In the Fake Beach, if you interact with the radio on the table, you can turn off the beach sound effects. Really creepy when the whole place goes silent.
Yes! It’s very weird that it’s that, of all things - so far into the level, long after you would think of going into Underhalls
It's such a random thing to persist across level changes, it makes me think it's an oversight. Like, why would you go to Underhalls after reaching the Gas Station?
@@NicknineTheEagle I find that a bit hard to believe. You don't just randomly decide to define something as a global, persistent variable, unless you really want it to be a global, persistent variable. Globals are generally viewed with suspicion by most programmers.
However, I'll grant it is possible that the author originally persisted a larger amount of data in an earlier iteration of the project, and forgot to un-persist the sludgie machine after changing their mind. That would make more logical sense to me.
@@NYKevin100 globals are suspicious to modern* CS-student programmers.
If you do embedded or were writing assembly code on early computers, it would be all globals all the time, baby!
Or even better, hard coding memory addresses.
If I remember correctly, another change that persists is the size of the player character
It's worth noting that the "Television Room" isn't actually the only yellow room you can jump across to in the brutalist house, there are 1 or 2 others you can make jumps to. There's also one that you can't jump to that has a shadowy figure staring at you that moves away once you see it.
yep, there's a megasphere in one of them.
@@maxidejf and the portal across from the garage can be rocket jumped and takes you to the backrooms without noclip
John Romero kept seeing that shadow figure in the yellow room. Was trippy.
Apparently, if you use the CC "fly" to fly over to the door with the shadowy figure, you can hear a door opening somewhere. If you fly back to the front door equivalent in the smaller brutalist house, you'll see a regular door slide down instead of a concrete one.
I haven't tried this yet, so take this with a grain of salt. If it doesn't work for me, I'll edit this comment.
EDIT: So, when you get to the "front door" of the smaller brutalist house, you'll want to jump to the window in front of you. I turned jumping on because I suck at strafe running and I'm not sure you can even do it without jumping.
Once inside the window, turn on "noclip" and "fly" before moving through the adjacent area to the doorway with the shadowy figure. BE CAREFUL because there's a line teleport at the front of the opening that will send you to the backrooms.
Once on the porch area, hit "use" on the door. That door won't open, BUT the sound of a door opening will come from behind you. Quickly go back the way you came and back to the starting point. You should have enough time to see either
A) A concrete door slide down from the ceiling if you're still outside.
B) A wooden door like all the others from the regular house if you've made it inside.
Two things about this door: It comes down from the ceiling instead of up from the floor like all the concrete doors in the brutalist houses, which means this is a totally different door and not just some random retexture. Second of all, you CANNOT open this door again from either side. The only way to open it again is by triggering it from the shadowy figure's door.
No idea what this door is for, if it's even for anything in the first place. Might just be a red herring.
@@MangetsuSAMURAIdid it work? what does that other door do?
I feel like it should be noted about Steve’s obituary that it lists his death as exactly the same day that Tom “died in his home” in his obituary. Also that Steves “joint ceremony” will be held at the exact same time and place as Tom’s, though Tom’s obituary does not mention the joint part as Steven’s does.
and theyre side by side. @ 25.12 Toms obit is to the left.
Also, both obituaries say that Steve and Tom were married (doesn’t mention to whom), but none of them mention being survived by a spouse or a husband, but talk about family members.
At 12:21 you can actually reach that area!
You enter the non-existent house area and then no-clip into the backrooms, then finish the backrooms which leads you to the staircase and therefore the fireblu room.
Without editing the map you can never "restore" the house, which is an impressive amount of detail.
It really is - even taking into account where the player can go by cheating!
There is actually an oversight where if you no-clip into the backrooms from Empty House or Overgrown House, fireblu portal will lead you back into the previous house you visited (either Altered House or Burnt House).
@@NicknineTheEagleWith that way, can you go back to collect the missing artifacts and then reach the good ending anyways?
@@MondySpartan In theory, yes, but keep in mind that there are only two ways to get to the Brutalist House without going through the Burnt House and each can only be used once. Furthermore, you only get one shot at the Bathhouse area, if you fall from it, there's no way to return.
I love how all these things are achieved by actions that make conventional sense, and sequenced in an incredibly intricate way. I find that very elegant.
They are :) It's incredible to see how this once-innocent scripting language is used to sow such chaos and confusion
I hope the author of this pk3 makes more maps. They're extremely talented.
Yes! And I think they already have - we just don't know who they are :)
@@DavidXNewton Which 6 mappers have the initials VEDDGE when put together? 1 or 2 people did the music. Someone did all the unique sprites and textures. Someone is a master programmer. And another 1 or 2 people did the layout.
@@GeronimoPlaz According to DoomWiki, the distorted version of Running from Evil is called memory=entryrrrr///// and was made by Sarah Mancuso. Everything else can have been made by a single person.
Plus, Veddge is an old account in the doom forums. There's no way someone has been playing such a long game.
@@flaetsbnort has anyone deconfirmed the idea that Veddge could've been an old vulnerable account that the map maker could've exploited and hacked into?
@@DanielFerreira-ez8qd it's possible also that they created a new account to have a fresh start years ago, or maybe they got the account from a friend in real life who hasn't been active since way back then.
Your script writing is phenomenal. There's a hundred things I'd point out, the careful expository sentence structure, word choice, but the one that finally made me comment was "The mirrorvile can theoretically be killed but *it rejoices* in having 5 million hit points..." IT REJOICES is SO GOOD. HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THAT.
British expression. E.g. locked up criminals in the UK are said to rejoice at Her (His) Majesty's pleasure (in prison).
@@televiizija No, they reside at His Majesties pleasure
Bro I'm like that when anyone speaks English. My language is the bottom of the barrel basic as fuck so I'm easily fascinated
eh, nothing fancy for those of us who learnt English as a second language
They smart
Remember how way back in the day being an incredible doom map maker could get you a job at ID doing it? We need to find this person and bring back that practice.
Who knows, maybe it’s John Romero himself.
I wish Konami find and hire them to create a new silent hill
They could be the reason why Doom Eternal runs better than Doom 2016
Wait, really?
@@jamesrosewell9081 Yep. And it's not only them. IIRC there's a relatively big group of RPG Maker developpers in Japan who got snapped up by big studios specifically for their skills, I know that Bethesda hired modders for later instalments and I know for sure one of our lorebeards (Lady Nerevar) got promoted into an official moderator and lore-checker after unofficially doing that (even ended up marrying one of the lore writers for Morrowind and Knights Of The Nine)...
Pretty sure that Ultima and Wizardry and Might And Magic all also promoted dedicated fanmodders to their official ranks with actual paychecks, too.
Basically old school gaming culture was REALLY great back when it was entirely made out of indies and still the Wild West
On another note, as much as this map is clearly inspired by House of Leaves, to me it feels just as much like a Doom adaptation of Yume Nikki. The apparent theme of imperfect memories, subtle indications of sexual and/or gender trauma and other traumas of violent or gruesome nature, doors transporting you to other sinister realities and having to follow convoluted paths across said realities to find mostly function-less artifacts of which you need all to get the secret ending. Scratch that, to me this is Yume Nikki in 3D doing a Houe of Leaves cosplay.
The only thematic difference I can think of would be how this map's secret ending is quite hopeful and uplifting even while Yume Nikki's is so famously depressing.
Buddy you are insane there is no such crap…on this no such gender trauma
That’s abunch of junk theory’s from you my buddy
I must say, I really like many of the old school techniques mixed with the new ones. With portals, you can just solve a lot of issues. But they when the extra mile and really applied all manner of tricks. Maybe it really is there to fool us who know what to look for. With the mixture of techniques, it after all harder to figure out what they were doing. But it also is a part of the storytelling itself on a meta level. Which makes it just so much more impressive.
Absolutely :) I later found a set of linedefs that look like they were mistakenly left in, doing the bathtub script in a much more awkward way without using a script. If the author’s doing this deliberately then they’re just on a whole other level of trickery
Maybe this is influenced by my personal experiences with dreams, memories, and trauma but one of the theories I have about the story of this map is that the house represents either the map maker or his dead friend's (or both?) mental state, or specifically the way they reflect on their childhood memories. The house is basically the hub of the world, there's tons of alternate versions of it with many of the different looking areas actually subtly being reskins of the same layout as the house, and all of the locations completely different from the house (the bath house, the gas station, the airport, etc.) are still accessed by a path starting in the house and it's varients.
I think the house in the beginning, where the doors are still the generic doom doors and the house is less decorated, represents the fond memory of childhood still untouched by reflecting on trauma. After you leave the house to pursue the elusive power up, you notice the house has changed slightly. It's small changes at first, but it gets gradually more confusing until you (or the person(s) the map represents) eventually start mentally unpacking the more traumatic memories.
Most of the more frightening areas of the map seem to be based on fears they have or used to have. Iirc you mention that the larger version of the brutalist house may be implying that you are child sized. The larger version of the house contains the hellish, nearly unkillable two headed dog monster, while the smaller version contains the cute harmless normal dog. I think this represents this person being afraid of their family dog as a small child, since it was so much bigger than him then. But as they grew older and taller, the dog is no longer scary to him.
You also point out that the evil Shrek in the daycare's file name is "childhood fear." It's funny to us, but I think the meaning of that is pretty obvious. He probably was afraid of Shrek as a child, and maybe it was actually because of a shoddily painted mural of Shrek in a daycare like the one depicted in the daycare house. I could definitely see how a child could be afraid of that.
There's lots of other areas that could represent fears, but I think the one most relevant to the plot is the scene of the burning house. This scene occuring locks you into the bad ending, and I think this is because, if the house represents the perception of childhood memories, then the fire represents allowing the trauma to fully consume and ruin those memories. Iirc the diary entries in the google drive mention that the creator had a nightmare about that exact scenario occuring, and then after waking up he realized this may have actually been a memory of something that actually occurred. This traumatic childhood memory was probably a defining moment in his life and it would be easy to let that memory completely define your childhood. Letting the house burn down is symbolic of allowing that memory to consume all the happy memories in flames, figuratively and literally.
But in the good ending you don't let the house burn down, and instead have to find artifacts. I think these artifacts represent defining memories of childhood and life in general, some good some bad, but you are able to reflect on them without letting them consume you. Reflecting on these memories allow you to access the true ending, sitting on a peaceful beach with your childhood dog, who is the cute good dog and not the horrible beast you had to evade earlier.
I think the good ending represents coming to peace with your memories, both the good and the bad. You aren't in the house anymore, but you didn't let the house burn down either. The house remains intact in the back of your mind, but you aren't trapped there. I think this means that you are no longer navigating those confusing memories and you can let them rest just as you can rest. Considering this is supposed to be a map made by the author's dead friend, and apparently the author is also supposed to be dead(?), maybe this also means their soul(s) are able to rest as well.
Basically in conclusion I think that everything in this map is representative of a memory, and the house itself is representative of the map maker's perception of their childhood. You can either let those memories be tainted by traumatic experiences in the bad ending, or be able to come to peace with both the good and the bad in the good ending. I know this doesn't explain everything about the map or the grander narrative in general (like what all these memories are even of in the first place), it's just my opinion on what the general theme of the map is, rather than a true timeline of actual events.
Very well said! :D
I think a lot of what you said about childhood memories is correct, but not everything is a reference to childhood. If you read both obituaries, they're both littered with clues that Thomas and Steven were married, and that this was Steven's childhood home - thus the childhood memories. Most notably, they died on the same day, and neither cause of death is specified. One of the photos included in the folder with the map is a photo of what looks like a DIY renovation job in the basement room where the pool table sits, showing a doorway to the electrical closet where it would be in the map later. The electrical closet with the sparking breaker that, when touched, teleports the player to the burning house. The implication I got from this is a bad electrical connection created during their renovation resulted in a house fire, killing both Thomas and Steven as the house burned down. That's why once you trigger the house fire, a good end becomes impossible without going through Underhalls and trying again. Nothing good can come from a house fire.
The other notable thing is that the journal doesn't provide a name for the author until after a year or more of entries had gone past. It's quite some time until the childhood friend repeatedly mentioned is named as Thomas, and only towards the very end, when the author has endured months of severe mental stress, does he name himself as Steven. This implies to me that he was not Steven at the beginning of the journal, but he BECAME Steven over the course of writing it. After all, Steven and Thomas died together, before the journal was started, and before the disc came into the author's possession. This author was an unnamed third childhood friend of the pair, or perhaps only of Thomas, and by working on the .wad obsessively, the spirit of Steven gradually exerts more and more control over the author, until full possession takes place. A Fight Club situation of sorts - the author, and his Tyler Durden. The author published the .wad, and Steven published the .pk3 alongside it. That's why it keeps coming back. Steven needed his and Thomas's story told, at any cost.
Also worth noting, the entire daycare/airport sequence is a nightmare. It's mentioned in the journal that the airplane crash is a recurring nightmare of the author, and in-game once you jump out of the airplane, you spawn back into the main house on top of the master bed. You died in a dream and woke up in bed. The uncertainty of exactly when you fell asleep for that to happen is intentional, I'm sure, and representative of the author's chronic insomnia and degraded mental state.
@@fresnel149 I think this is spot on re: the narrator. I wondered if the house burning down was intentional; perhaps Tom intended to leave after a failed attempt at a surrogate pregnancy, and Steve - unwilling to part with the only source of joy in his life - decided to burn the house down with him and Tom in it. This may have happened while he was off of his medication and in an altered state. The game may be a sort of limbo housing Steve’s guilty psyche; an attempt to “get it right” and face his (symbolic) demons rather than burn it all down.
@@fresnel149 That's pretty much what happens in the book House of Leaves, which this whole mod is clearly very influenced by. in the book, the protagonist finds the unfinished documentary this Navidson guy was making of his strange house and attempts to piece it together, with the book shifting focus between what's happening in the documentary and what's happening in the protagonist's real life as this project slowly consumes him and he descends into madness in a very similar way to our supposed 'steven' in the google doc journals, so I would definitely agree that, given the source material, your second paragraph is likely the intended narrative, or at least very close.
i love when a story/experience is so completely intertwined with it's medium like it is here, and using doom as a full medium is absolutely sensational. i know very little about doom, and you went into such depth that I could really understand the level of detail put into this. really awesome analysis!!
Thanks, I’m glad you enjoyed it :) It’s really an incredible way to use the GZDoom features!
hopefully a Part 4 one day if the story behind the mod gets unveiled
Eu Também!
I only ever buy real, authentic Tiny Sector-brand hotdogs
That was a trip... I have nowhere near the stomach or patience to discover all the secrets of MyHouse myself, but this video series was amazing.
What an astonishing map this is!
Thank you :) It really does go deeper than I’d ever thought - and I deliberately avoided going into the black hole of mad story speculation here!
I noticed today that there are way fewer enemies when playing on nightmare mode, especially a lot of the custom enemies are missing. For example in the "bathhouse" area there are no ghosts spawning and the whole of the "skybridge" section is completely clear of enemies. Also on nightmare difficulty the airport bathroom has these freaky blood blob enemies that crawl on the floor instead of the red pinkies. Not sure what to make of all that.
I believe it's the subversion of nightmare being super hard by making it substantially easier.
@@deliriumsd142 Or that by accepting and understanding that you're in a nightmare it affects you less.
@@DMGSL the sludgie machine's health presses do go back up to 5 in nightmare mode so the semi lucid dreaming theory works with that too
@@DMGSL lucid dreaming mode
It's interesting to note that the mod changes the text for the warning the game gives when selecting Nightmare! More specifically, it changes from "this difficulty isn't remotely fair" to "this difficulty isn't remotely difficult", or something to that effect, I don't remember exactly. I noticed it while poking through the PK3.
14:06
What do you mean, the meaning isn't known? Have we already forgotten so quickly?
When a CRT TV is turned on from an external input device (AV cables) it defaults to channel 3, which is a static channel for most jurisdictions. Unless you had cable, it was always this case. In this case, you unplugged the TV, and when you plugged it back in, the TV turned on, but not the external input.
How strange, was this a universal american thing? Seems strange that it would be so consistent across all tv manufacturers!
I think the bloody bathroom in the airport might just be a reference to afraid of monsters, the game begins in a similar looking bathroom, albeit only with 3 stalls, has the whole "normal'ish place turns into bloodied decayed hellhole" thing going on, and the whole game plot revolved around the main character ODing on pills and killing a bunch of people, thinking theyre monsters.
i feel that with the gender signs swapping and the prescription pills, a trans reading isn't out of the question
@@fawndoe1917 a trans man associating bathrooms with an unpleasant amount of blood is kind of on point too (and one of the airport toilets is full of it)
Oh, maybe! I took a look and I don’t think it’s going to be a game I can play but the premise sounds similar. There’s some of that in Silent Hill 3 as well, an implication that the monsters you’ve encountered in the game might not be truly as you see them
They're most likely pain killers
@@fawndoe1917 I actually like that they did that. It really adds to the sense that something is off.
As an indie/hobby game developer it's projects like this that convince me beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's never the tools that hold you back. It's a poor musician who blames his instrument.
GZDoom gives you piles of tools to play with though, because the original engine is severely limited. I don't really see the correlation
Absolutely loved this series and was eagerly awaiting the finale! I've never even played doom at all, but this experience will stick with me for a long time.
I’m glad it interested you :) Especially with the modern GZDoom extensions, Doom is now an incredible platform for making all sorts of things
One thing to note is that the player is able to collect a Megasphere in the Brutalist House by jumping off the ledge in the 2x size area where you collect Pumpkin Jack; it's slightly visible through closed curtains. The only way out of this small area is to jump out and into the Brutalist Entrance into the Staircase.
edit: more precise location
Oh, interesting! I didn’t know about that second reachable window
@@DavidXNewton Another neat thing I found is that in the normal size area, when looking out one of the windows/holes you can see a creature peak out at you from behind a door. When you look at it, it quickly hides behind the door. AFAIK it does not peak out again, but I haven't done much experimentation
@@09kingarthur in John Romero's run he encounters it repeatedly, indicating that it indeed peeks out again.
@@Mordecai02 Ah ok. I haven't spent enough time in the brutalist location to see if it peeks out again, thanks for telling me!
The "Lonely Woods/Shell Station/Campfire" area is from the first level of Redneck Rampage! I love it!
One thing about the movie set ending is its also a dream had in the journal, he states being trapped their for billions of years, and it ends with "happiness is fought for" which i think reflects the choice you make when the mirror vile spawns,,
Something I find rather curious is that the only thing in the entire mirror world that isn't reversed apart from the carving is the police tape. If you look close enough at it you can decern that it properly reads "keep out" and "don't touch" in the normal order.
The nasty bathrooms, the daycare, airport, brutalist architecture, demons constantly attacking. Just needs a school and a mall and it will be just like my nightmares.
Given the nature that the map “keeps changing by itself”, maybe what if one day the mod updates “itself” to add new locations?
26:19 the author has such a sadistic attention to detail to the point to were he even design the map to make it look like he was more experienced in older engines and discovered new editing stuff as well and there is also the monster that appears in a window in the brutalists house
I'm reminded of what the creator of "OFF" said about how he came up with the idea. Basically he wanted to make an RPG Maker game with only handmade resources, so he started with a super simple level design to get things going, added some drawings for characters, and just kept going... and if you know the game it's very surprising to hear it wasn't all thematically planned out from the start. It's possible that the maker(s) of myhouse started with the simple initial house, then made another with new features, and another with more difficult features, cut them together, and started playing with the different options. That would explain why the transition to the basement is so rough (it's very old) and why some older techniques are used throughout (if it works once, easiest to use the same code again).
I love these kind of wads where the background story is as important to the experience as the map itself. The doom community is truly amazing
With every video I see analysing myhouse, I discover something new that I missed. What a treat this game is.
My favorite part of this map is the ancillary material subtly pointing players to the correct path for the the best ending. It's vague enough that it doesn't hold the player's hand but specific enough that it becomes a puzzle in and of itself.
I dont know what's more impressive, the WAD itself or the entire concept of the WAD. This would be far easier to make in other engines I am sure, but the fact it's Doom just adds to the creep and wow factor in so many ways.
The seamless transition with the two floors in the modern living room still baffles me lol
Incredible analysis! MyHouse is an amazing work of art and I'm sure it sets a new standard for experimental WADs to come. In a way it seems like a spiritual successor to LSD Dream Emulator and Yume Nikki.
P.S. count me in for RAMP '23 😉
I can't stop learning more about this map in the last week. Initially I had thought it really was an old 90s wad, having heard a tiny bit of the story, but then the hypesplosion had me like "why is every gaming CZcamsr playing this obscure thing" and now I've seen at least 6 hours of content related to it. And I haven't hit play on this one yet. The flowchart is what pulled me in.
I've said before it's like the twin peaks of wads, and it even out build engines the build engine in places.
It's worth noting that Steven's obituary mentions his 'partner', and also places him in the same exact town as Thomas. Both passed on the same day.
Presumably, in the same house fire.
I had initially theorized that the Burning House was childhood trauma--that someone had messed with a breaker when the parents weren't looking, and the resulting fire had been seared into their memories. But the pickup message on the baby bottle suggests that they never had kids. (The swapped bathrooms, and the violent encounter in the bathroom, suggests that someone had transitioned at one point--so a further theory is that they tried for kids, and there was a stillbirth, and then at some point after that one of them transitioned FtM.)
And the monsters in the Burning House also seem meaningful. Some of them are used again--one is reused in the airport bathroom fight, and the fireball-throwing imps in the Bathhouse are the same kind in the Burning House.
Perhaps Steven and Thomas knew these monsters. Between the d20 ("Roll for intercourse?") and the wedding ring ("I do.") both being found at the Bathing House, we can guess that they met at a swim meet. The same monsters at the bathhouse, and in the claustrophobic, terrifying fight at the airport bathroom, were present in the Burning House.
They knew about Steven and Thomas. 'Partner' and 'Friend' were the polite way of talking about Steven and Thomas.
They made sure Steven and Thomas died in that fire.
Addendum: They both ran track according to their obituaries, so maybe the Bathing House has a swimming pool because it's just extrapolating from a changing room.
I find it fitting that transitioning is a bloody and self destructive process
@@elpsykoongro5379 The bathroom stops being bloody once you pick up the refill, and the thing that makes it dangerous is a bunch of monstrous bastards who decided that personal space is more of a suggestion than a rule.
So do you think "A" from the heart on the tree is Thomas's deadname? Or their murderer?
@@lztx Probably his deadname.
I'm having a panic attack even thinking about keeping track of all these scripts! What a marvel of a map. Kudos for these videos, seems like documenting this map must be a massive project too.
It definitely took about four weeks longer than I had intended :)
for some reason i get the impression that the entire documentation for this maps scripting is scrawled in either stacks of spiral notebooks or in an exceedingly large unformatted txt file
@@jco_sfm Honestly, to create something like this, you've got to be... different. My guess is that it's all in the creator's head.
Super surreal seeing someone analyze code I wrote and do it with such solid understanding.
Aha, thank you! Which bits were yours? :)
@@DavidXNewton
I did the AI for the cerberus and the fish, hence why the cerberus is KevCerberus. I wasn't let on fully what the project was at the time, so I gave it that name so Veddge could identify which was which, did not think he'd leave it that way, haha. He wanted help making the cerberus leap at the player, and needed the fish to not leave the 3D sector of the pool, since Doom doesn't really have "swimming" behavior. Fish would keep flying out of the pool, and solving that was quite the head scratcher. Once I got those done fairly swiftly, I was let on to the full thing.
I also handled the hospital secret and the ACS script that gives the adrenaline token. It's one of the only named ACS functions because Veddge literally did not know you can name them at the time, and had already made 90% of the wad by the time I was on board. The hospital secret was almost not in the final release. When I was fully let on, he'd sometimes bounce his ideas and concepts to me for feedback, and would sometimes rattle ones off that he wasn't sure was possible. He knew how to revive the player after they die through level exit, but didn't want to go with that route since it'd be an obvious seam. Figuring out how to avoid that seam was the hard part, as even I at the time didn't know there was a dedicated function for reviving the player.
There were a bunch of other smaller things that aren't as exciting to talk about that I helped with, and concepts that didn't make it since neither of us knew how to execute them. Lot of stuff I could do now since my ZScript skills has dramatically sharpened, stuff I'd like to explore in my own project.
@@DavidXNewtonI think youtube's spam filter ate my reply
I was really excited to see part 3! Part 1 introduced me to your channel. This wad is equal parts brilliant and mysterious. I'd be very surprised if it didn't top the Cacowards this year.
Yes :) I think we saw the birth of a classic that will be remembered for a very long time, 30 years into Doom’s life!
i like how he was able to explain the whole death script while dying in-game
I have come to the conclusion that the maker of this map has not just lost his marbles, he has erased them from existence.
You've outdone yourself with this analysis. An incredibly detailed breakdown of everything that was interesting every step of the way. Thanks for taking what I imagine to be an awful lot of time to put this series together 🙏
Thanks, I’m glad that you appreciate it :D
There are shadow people in the brutalist area O_O
as an ARG project it's masterful, as a doom wad it's incomparable, and it deserves to be remembered well into the future for its fine craftsmanship in every aspect. thank you for diving into the code!
This is the greatest Doom mod to ever be made, and it's likely going to stay that way for a very long time, maybe even forever. The level of detail is absolutely staggering, and the stuff it does is completely unprecedented. I really wish it'd sparked a revolution in the mapping community and encouraged them to start making myhouse-likes, but this map was clearly such a monumental undertaking (hell, it may have actually taken the author 17 years) that it's likely that most mappers won't even touch the idea of making this with a 39-and-a-half-foot pole, and the ones that are insane enough to try likely are nowhere near done with their maps.
Plus, myhouse really was lightning in a bottle. I don't know how effective any imitations could ever be. That being said, I still hope it encourages the community to start pushing the bounds of what you can do in a Doom map.
A stunning video series on a stunning WAD. Some may disagree with me, but the last time I was this enthralled with a spooky wad utilizing alot of GZDoom's capabilities was Happy Time Circus 2. Some people complain that the map is too huge and the balancing of enemies is hit or miss at points but it is still to this day one of my favorite wads to jump back into once every year. Would love to see an analysis on that one!
How long have I been on the internet to know that Happy Time Circus sounds absolutely terrifying :) Thanks for the note!
Glad to help! Just be sure to look at the sequel and not the 1st release. Or do lol the sequel is just much more impressive in its scripting and atmosphere.
Part 1&2 Recap 0:00
Road in the Woods - 0:22
Fake Beach Ending - 6:21
Beach Ending - 7:21
Other Areas - 11:11
Endless Sky Staircase - 11:26
TV Room - 12:55
Hospital - 14:10
Soulsphere - 18:15
Unaccessible areas - 19:35
Backrooms - 20:06
Gravestone - 23:53
Conclusion - 25:27
Outro - 27:10
Thank you! You’re a very trustworthy bagel
@@DavidXNewton what a comment
@@DavidXNewton also wonderful video, worthy of many subscribers
MyHouse is literal art.
"I checked every possible avenue I could think of before daring to record this"
That's hilarious but honestly I would do the same, great video series!
Part of me really appreciates the fact the author of this has stayed pretty much anonymously (aside from that one part on TikTok before it was taken down) even in this era of social media presences, but another part of me really wants to hear their thoughts on how they developed and got inspired to go THIS hard for how detailed and intricate even things like mere paintings on a wall moving around or the enormous amounts of line teleporting.
I'm so curious as well! I know if I'd made this big an impact I wouldn't be able to resist breaking anonymity, and I've got so many questions to ask them...
7:06 " A day passes in the void. A month. A year. Two. Five. Ten. Is this an eternity? Twenty years. A hundred years. A thousand years. I’ve sat in this room for a million years now entertaining the same thoughts, pondered the same questions, and ruminated on every mistake in my life… anguishing over them for centuries. A billion years now. Double that. Now double it again. I am still nowhere close to the end of eternity. I pray for death but it never comes…"
glenmont metro mfs
what is this referencing?
@@5uperM the journal that comes with the mod
@@dapapeyu1 ah
Seeing a video like this doesn't reduce my enjoyment of this map. Seeing behind the curtain just lets me marvel at the ingenuity of how these different code and design elements were implemented.
Thanks :) I was concerned about it spoiling the magic for some people, hence the warning at the start, but I’m glad you and others are just as fascinated as I was :)
Watching through your myhouse videos and I wanna say that you've done an amazing job laying this all out, anyone else would've made this feel ten times as confusing, good work!
Phenomenal job analyzing this! I've seen many game analyses and I think this has been the most thorough. Loved every second!
Coding really can be a form of art if you have enough creativity
The only thing I could come up with about the style of doing things in the old way was to make it look like it's a continuation of what "Tom" and "Steve" did when they made Doom maps back as kids. Additionally, it'd probably be intentionally done to hide who they are. I have no doubt they released it under Veddge intentionally and they Googled and verified that the name didn't lead anywhere, too, and that it was a Google void. The fact that the name was apparently abandoned for over a decade makes it harder to track, too.
As the entire story hinges around unfiction (a fictitious story presented as if it's nonfiction) and the game itself is part of an ARG (alternate reality game) based on the book House of Leaves. It follows the House of Leaves narrative, too. A friend finds his friend obsessed with something else. Some spoilers for the book, it's about a person whose friend dies and his friend was obsessed with a house. If you look at it from the House of Leaves perspective, it's likely two or more people roleplaying Steve Nelson and Tom Allord. In House of Leaves this is Truant and Zampanò. The map is representative of the House in The Navidson Record.
I imagine now they're looking at all the buzz given to it and I do wonder if the real creator will ever step forward considering how popular this map is.
If you look at accounts like downstairs, who responded to the original post and claimed to "beat it in 2 minutes" with no other posts, I can't help but wonder if the author(s) of the map used sock puppet accounts to stir the initial interest.
Additionally, kevansevans mentions "Glad to see this finally released, thanks for having me on board. I'm still in love with all the details.
Though, problem, (and sorry for posting this here, you don't seem to be online on Discord), I could have sworn this door was asking for a blue keycard, but I think you accidentally left this on blue skull. It's a mistake I've seen a few times when new mappers convert to UDMF, so I don't blame you."
And esselfortium "Congrats on getting this thing out the door! Thanks for letting me take some small part in its creation."
I imagine eventually the veil will be lifted.
Incredible deep dive into this intricately-designed madness. I've never seen anything quite like it in Doom before. I think it may have inspired me to start mapping again!
The possible gender theme you brought up made me go "huh. I guess I can see it but it's not supported by that much" for about 0.5 seconds until I kept going down a mental rabbithole.
The only gendered bathroom in the game is in the airport, the location where you find Pills (both empty and full) and the woman's bathroom is a bloody hell room until you escape at which point it abruptly becomes the men's bathroom.
The S+A heart that shows up at the climax/finale of the "normal" end paths, plus the wedding ring, implying a romantic connection, but the only characters we're even aware of are Steven nelson and thomas Allord. And yet, there's a baby bottle with "it wasn't meant to be"
Changing rooms and Bathrooms in general are places of discomfort, danger and disorientation, you have no reflection, the mirror world in general has it's own rules.
"I want Pop" and "The Kid needs a Milkshake" messages, which happen right after the other, distinctly sound like a child making a decision, and being overwritten by an adult. This is the weakest connection I've thought of but I mean, it's still somethin.
But it was definitely not an interpretation I'd even CONSIDERED before watching your series and now it's really sticking out.
As a trans person, the bloody women's bathroom changing into a normal men's bathroom once you take pills feels honestly like a pretty obvious, if not hamfisted, way of telling us one of the two men in the story is a trans man. Someone else in the comments pointed out that the women's bathroom being "filled with unpleasant amounts of blood" would also fit this narrative.
The way this would explain some of the pickups also makesa lot of sense, but I'm not sure how it would relate to the rest of the story, if is a factor beyond those things at all.
The monsters could also be a reference to this itself. If you are in the closet as a transgendered person and live in an area that is openly hostile to transgendered people, it could feel like the world is out to get you. The final rights could be representative of a fear that if you come out of the closet, the world will just get more difficult.
actually there is another gendered bathroom, its in the hospital
Highly doubt its anything about gender, people made the "homo" connection but the name Anna can be made out of the Airport list, as mentioned by a comment above.
@@methanoI You can't deny there's more things pointing to it being related to gender that things pointing at this "Anna".
Some extra thoughts on the unused(?) areas: The mirrored nonexistent house is interesting. I wonder if it was possible to pass through a mirror in the empty or overgrown burnt house at some point? I'd also be inclined to think of the airport mirrors as a reasonable connection... if there was a mirrored airport.
My hunch on the scrolling face Floor 5 exit is that it could have been swapped in for the normal FIREBLU Floor 5 if the player has entered the burnt house. Kind of surprised it isn't, seeing as that route lays the nightmare fuel on pretty thick otherwise.
depending on how the wad is coded it could just be a placeholder to make offset math work. It's actually pretty common, especially in older games to have a lookup table of game states to prevent excessive code branching. One example that comes to mind is LoZ:OoT where every cutscene has a child day, child night, adult day, and adult night variant depending on the current state even if it would be impossible to have that state legitimately just so the cutscene code could be generalized to only require a base id and a state offset.
and when I thought I've seen it all, the was surpises me with the gravestone. absolutely brilliant.
thas was... mindblowing! absolutely amazing map, and really great narration! i'd never found all the secrets and endings... kudos!
Thanks :) It was a bigger adventure than I expected!
The effort put into this wad is crazy. So is your dedication in finding as many secrets as possible.
Found your channel through the MyHouse playthrough and couldn't help but subscribe after noticing the analysis series. Excellent content 😊
Fantastic, thank you!
Never seen a map like this, I'm really in awe and blown away
I don't have the patience or time to place through the """MAP""" at this level of depth and so I really appreciate this dissection a lot. What a wad.
When I first discovered Modded CoD Zombies, I immediately wanted to make my house as a map, because I've spent YEARS of my life planning elaborate traps and choke points and training spots around the house in case of a zombie outbreak.
I've never done so, because I couldn't code my way out of a wet napkin, but seeing mods like this one sends a little thrill down my spine. The fact that it becomes a horror story part way through just adds onto the enjoyment for me
That hidden scrolling face texture skybox is more terrifying than any of the normally accessible things in this map, IMO..
Yes, especially if you’re not familiar with that Doom texture! It’s hard to remember how frightening it was the first time we all saw it
@@DavidXNewton I legit couldn't play past its first appearance in E2M4 for a while cause it creeped me out that much... And I was an *adult* when I first started playing DOOM!
I personally theorize, due to what we've read in the journal and found with The Last Secret, there's _two_ Stevens: Steven and Mirror-Steven. One of them died together with Tom, the other made My *House* . I also hypothesize that the entity that drove Steven/Mirror-Steven to make the level and upgraded itself… Might be the other Steven, the one that is dead, but that's just my wild speculation at this point.
There's also an aspect of lost lover, but we can't be sure who exactly this is: if read into TransMasc hypothesis, it may be about Tom, with Steven being trans and Tom in a different world died in a fire without Steven, but if reading into that Journal entry more and taking S+A tree inscription differently - Steven might have lost someone prior to all of this, not associated with Tom in any way.
Answering the question of _who is Steven_ is probably THE main mystery of My *House* , and we may never know if The Most Mysterious Song has any symbolism to it.
As someone who would go crazy over the mysteries of media and who once was a part of NeverBeGameOver, before breaking down and writing own Manifesto about the Meaning, I pity those who will continue delving into My *House* , as they will experience the same nightmare that Johnny, Zampano and Navidsons gone through, My House will be their *house* . I will personally just follow the notes of others and throw in wild ideas when i get them, but no more theorizing, i'm not that young anymore.
Anyway, What a ride.
Bless you chief for making this 3-Parter, it was important and you did a GREAT job. Thank you.
Thanks for the feedback and for the great theory! The warning in the readme definitely came true for me, as I've been obsessing over this wad for the last month and I'm still not entirely free of thinking about it even after closing the video :) The two Stevens idea definitely has something to it, if we're seeing two possibilities, one of them dying and one living.
A couple weeks late but my take was Mirror-Steven is a gay man who ignored his sexuality and tried to push through and live a "traditional" life. The Mirror-Reality has the Christmas bauble, the crib, the baby bottle. The baby bottle says "It wasn't meant to be" and the ultimate ending sequence of the Mirror Reality is running from all the monsters back into the normal reality, running from all the internal guilt he feels from not acting on his true self, perhaps?
Normal reality is Steven who pursued his gay feelings. The objects in the normal reality are a blend of Steven & Thomas' stuff, and while he had a hard childhood and had to deal with his sexuality in a sea of emotions that feel like drowning, and his father dying, he preservers and takes a leap of faith and thinks of marrying Thomas, and decides to fight for what he cares about.
Then unfortunately in the canon of the map they both presumably died in the house fire in "reality", but I think the beach scene at the end after you fight everything off shows that even if they died in a horrific way, Normal Steven reached tranquility in the end, and even if he died he at least died happy, whereas Mirror-Steven was never truly happy.
@@dnrorschach That’s a great theory as well, especially the arrival of the monsters representing running away from guilt!
NeverBeGameOver? Damn, it's been a hot minute since I last heard about that.
Incredible finds, but I really wished you pulled a page from Boundary Break and showed us the house switching into an empty lot, kinda annoying how many players just many players have their backs turned against the house as it happen, likewise, wonder what might happen if you tried to noclip in either beach or gravestone bit, or if you tried killing the dog at the end
noclipping at the beaches and gravestone resets the position to the first entry point of those respective areas. as far as I can tell the dog at the end is non-interactable in any way. may be set to a static texture instead of a monster like in the brutalist house.
I actually found that secret by getting to the empty lot with the 8 artifacts naturally, basically because I didn't understand that the burned house locked me out of the ending.
That’s an incredible thing to discover on your own :)
I really appreciate the vagueness of the endings, and hope there will never be a all-encompassing conclusion/explanation. Mystery/horror rarely benefits from explanations. It's the vibes, man. And the vibes here are top tier.
hearing you talk over footage of the backrooms feels really stanley parable. lol
This video series is 100% what I was looking for after watching Jacksepticeye play this map, but no CZcams search would reveal it to me. Weeks later, I decide to keep reading through all the messages on the Doonworld thread, and I'm so happy I did, as it lead me here. Thank you so much for this! It's incredible to me how accurately your style of content fits exactly what I've always been looking for whenever I hear about such portal-trickery games, and just brilliant clever games in general.
It adds to the mystery of just wondering, but not figuring out the mystery. Although sadly i already spoiled myself, but its none the less awesome.
This was a cool ride. I thought the car and gas station was a reference to _that_ animation which I cant remember the name, of a bunny i think, which is looking for revenge ends in a forest without gas, and goes into the forest to find a gas station. Was expecting for it to have the same ending LOL.
That would have been unfortunate for me D:
@@DavidXNewton Hey, I watched that not too long ago - it's called "FUELLED"; and it's set at a gas station in the middle of the woods, in the middle of the night - sound familiar?
(I would have put a link, but CZcams seems to have considered me including a link as spam, so here's the video ID: uVzT6D-yhZg )
I will never be able to listen to someone talk about a house after this
The level of metafiction and intertextuality that is now possible: taking screen captures from a video autopsy of code snippets from a web-posted mod of a different game that is interleaved with a classically ergodic text. While we’re looking at the screen, the screen is looking back at us.
On another note, as much as this map is clearly inspired by House of Leaves, to me it feels just as much like a Doom adaptation of Yume Nikki. The apparent theme of imperfect memories, subtle indications of things youtube don't like people talking about, doors transporting you to other sinister realities and having to follow convoluted paths across said realities to find mostly function-less artifacts of which you need all to get the secret ending. Scratch that, to me this is Yume Nikki in 3D doing a House of Leaves cosplay.
The only thematic difference I can think of would be how this map's secret ending is quite hopeful and uplifting even while Yume Nikki's is so famously depressing.
man this new minecraft update is wild
CZcams keeps insisting I’m playing Minecraft! It got better at recognizing Doom 2 for a while but then it went back
25:56 it feels as if it is there to sell the idea that this truly was initially made decades ago
I think so too :) They're doing an incredibly good job of it
Thank you so much for doing this! Hopefully this wad will lead to more innovative storytelling. 30 more years of Doom!
Yes :) I hope so!
Really good breakdown of this map. I enjoyed all three parts, and I feel like I mostly understood what was happening in spite of not having touched Doom mapping in literally decades.
fantastic series, thank you so much picking this beautiful magnificent thing apart. even as someone not at all familiar with doom or its modding scene you still made this analysis series fun and fascinating and now, i am somehow even more in love with this wad which i didn't even think was possible
I found my new favorite….Something channel? I love me a stumbling through as much as a doom episode. Still this series is awesome. Nice!
truly amazing. both the map and this video series, thank you
Absolutely loved this analysis of this incredible level. And I adore your bunny character!
My_House.wad is one of the most enthralling gaming experiences ive had in years.
I dunno what inspired it, maybe it was an old idea the guy had that wasnt possible until now, but i sure as hell know ill be watching to see if the author makes something even half as engaging and interesting.
And I know it isnt necessarily just this map, ive also seen this seemless effect in other doom maps, source maps, and even minecraft mods, but it's still insane to me how we've come so far in first person teleportation that we can just. Have doors to other realms. No load times. No lag. No arbitrary screen darkening. No sudden shifts. Just... Boom. You walk through a door, and end up somewhere else. And you'll never notice unless you look for it.
I can barely believe its even possible, let alone that its so easy now.
It really is incredible when compared to the huge stack of ingenious workarounds that the original Doom had to have in it to trick the computer into drawing a 3D environment :) I love that more and more people are able to try making games now
Making seamless portals is a fun challenge to try for any game programming student trying to familiarize themselves with the game engine they're using, and I definitely encourage everyone interested in the topic try it sometime. I know GZDoom and Source engine games already have the intricacies of these things figured out, but it can still be rather eye-opening to try implementing the feature on your own.
These videos were so good dude, partially because of the effort that went into the map, but just as much the effort you've put in here, i'm dying for thorough content about content just like it but nothing like this exists outside this, doom is otherwise simple, this map turns it on its head and its gonna be a long while before we see something this creative again with the state of everything else in the world. i hope the creator reveals all some day.
Tiktok has the answers for those who want (more or less) the entire thing told, for eg, the A in the heart has revealed themselves. ask yourself if you want to uncover the last shroud of mystery before you look tho, but honestly, the most mysterious song on the internet will keep you covered even if you do discover all the truth about this map and story.
Thank you very much for this series! It was a great examination for what is honestly one of the best games I've seen in years.
I found out your channel due to part one and really love it! Brilliant videos, really cool stuff
Thanks so much :) I’m glad that more people are getting into Doom!
12:30 When you are at the vanished house, use noclip to enter the backroom, and you can go back to the staircase that way
Something about the S+A hearts makes me feel off, like somewhere in this place there's a story of a budding romance, but it may never be told. So many questions can be asked about such a small part of the WAD, and it feels weird to think about.
Maybe it was a high school sweethearts sort of deal, they visited the beach, wrote their initials in the sand, and did whatever a couple might do on an empty, sunset-lit beach.
Maybe it ended in a breakup, and one of them wrote the initials in the sand in the hopes that the other may find their way back to them.
Maybe one of them passed or they were otherwise irrevocably split, and they were written in the pain of longing.
Whatever it may be, it always leaves the mind to wonder.
I hope S and A are happily together and doing well.
Thanks for this series of videos. I'm not very familiar with Doom modding but you've explained it in a way I can easily understand, and I can only imagine the kind of reaction this was causing within the community.
Thanks for this trio of videos. They were a great look at the inner workings.
Funfact about the author: when people tried to figure out their identity, they eventually communicated a message saying "you guys found everything, and it's incredible, and I'm so proud. Please don't doxx me."