i have always been fascinated by the idea of virtual spaces, 3d ones in particular
games like doom create 3d spaces that exist only as 1s and 0s, but our credulous brains grant them the benefit of the doubt, interacting with these spaces as if they were real
a single hard drive can contain countless square miles of these virtual places. untold expanses
as time goes by fewer and fewer people visit, until places that may have been bustling once are akin to forgotten ghost towns
we create more and more of these spaces every year. there are so many to explore. so many sights to see
i remember the ones that strike me, as if it was a place i'd really been
@jk it's be interesting to compare notes sometime
i have very concrete "conceptions" of places in my brain that are formed on first visit. kind of a way i look at things re: physical orientation of the place vs. its surroundings. i will think, "this is north" (it may or may not be) and that affects how i see everything surrounding.
or like, going UP this hill feels THIS way. going DOWN this hill feels THAT way. some day i may prefer going one way or the other just due to that feeling.
it's really hard to put into words, or even understand it myself
@alyx yes, i'm totally like this! also, i often have a strong sense of being in a 'place i know' even when it's somewhere i've never been, and i have to really think about why i feel that way, until i realise there's some characteristic of the layout or topology or arrangement of things (furniture, doors, roads, buildings) that's the same as a familiar place
it could be argued that in the greater scheme of things the majority of these spaces are not important. places to play at being space marines, or to go on a pretend quest
goddess knows i fret over wasting even more of my finite lifespan on videogames
even so, my fascination remains
i'm going to start a new streaming project in which i explore the ~2000 wad files of Maximum Doom, a compilation of levels from when id itself decided to jump on the doom wad shovelware bandwagon
https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Maximum_Doom
many of these maps suck. few are remembered. but that's part of why it's so interesting to look at these old virtual spaces some 20 years on
@alyx Descent is my favorite virtual space
@Zeether i am perhaps not as fond but i returned to it a few months ago via the dxx-rebirth source port. tried to get a good control setup using the steam controller's gyro. to be continued
i was kind of shocked how much harder i found smooth, skilled multi-axis movement compared to how good i remembered being, and with the keyboard at that
i never played d2 or d3 and want to poke around
@alyx D2 is good, 3 is a mixed bag but it's fun
@Zeether true story: there's some descent 3 fansite that offers a fully tricked-out descent 3 download with all these modern niceties and fixes but you have to register and ask them nicely for it
they rejected me because the email i used to register had "junk" in it (indeed, it is my catch-all email address) and they found this disrespectful
@Zeether is there something you can pinpoint that makes it your favorite?
it definitely has a unique feel
btw, i forget the context but this
https://web.archive.org/web/20130824115918/http://www.pooterman.com/pooterman.com/ftp/descent/ALL-LEVELSMarch2001.zip
is a huge collection of vintage descent maps i have bookmarked
you can also get the official "Levels of the World" collection, which is sort of descent's (much smaller) version of maximum doom:
@alyx I like the fact that there's more 3D space because of the way the game plays
Also yeah I need to get the level packs because the GOG release didn't have them included
@alyx oh, yeah, like some of those Doom II levels kinda sucked as places to have fun in a game but I'll never forget what they LOOKED like, these weird hellish cities
was telling the wife the other night that I almost want to create a filesystem interface in Minecraft
that would basically be the worst and best thing ever simultaneously
and if I also glued in the idea of Doom-as-process-admin-tool I saw at least half a lifetime ago
well
yeah ^_^ it'd be total hell
but it'd be FUN burnin' down!
@alyx @sydneyfalk also that reminds me of a game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation:_Inner_Space
@sydneyfalk @alyx that sounds funnn
it was!
it was like a less polished Descent but with your images pasted on the walls and your filenames all over stuff
it was very, ah, eye-opening to fly into a porn folder that one time in there XD but they had things that let you prevent specific folders from being used in the game render, so I did that to prevent it being overseen if my parents came in while I was playing the game
@alyx I get this. The same mental capacity that enables us to recall layouts in the physical world then also processes virtual world memories, beds them down in terms of spatial affect. You get to a 1s and 0s place and think: here I am. And it comes with place feeling.
I even get this in Minecraft, simplistic as it is.
@alyx compose this with procgen, you get infinitudes of landscapes that WILL NEVER be seen, even when everyone is looing around
@alyx Have you visited Second Life? It is old enough that many places get no visitors. While traffic builds more traffic, and people gather at the most popular locations, I can amuse myself looking at the abandoned places, some of them beautifully crafted.
@alyx i relate to this hugely and, as a very 'place-focused' person, it's the no.1 emotional connection i have with video games