TPH- MISC DEV NOTES:

GENERAL:
-This project began as a speedmap project in 2013 after arguing with Alfonzo about BTSX E1M18's name, specifically the '(Remember Your Birthday)' portion of it to which I told him I could make something that had even dumber map names.

-Episodes 1-2 and the first map of Episode 3 were completed as speedmaps in 2013 before going through revisions when the direction of the project changed. A compilation of the 2013 material still exists although it only has Zdoom support, I may release it.

-Episode & map names are taken from translated ZUN song titles in the vein of BTSX's map names. Some names come from ZUN side project releases.

-Map names were chosen by how much I liked the name for a map not based on how much I like the song.

-I have never played Touhou and know basically nothing about the series beyond the most popular memes and the series soundtracks. 

-This project was originally Boom compatible but moved to EE/ZD when the current Dehacked was unable to support specific ideas like custom puffs.

-The weapon set changed multiple times. The very first weapon set included an automatic shotgun. The 2nd weapon set included a wand and fusion cannon.

-The chainsaw, which does not appear in any maps, was originally going to steal health but that was too powerful. A second version that drained your health but was extremely powerful was experimented with but a bit too janky. A replacement for the chainsaw that was a sword that fired the Hexen Mage lighting attack was also attempted but eventually discarded.

-I really dislike it when Chaingunners and Shotgunners drop ammo instead of weapons which is why they drop unusable weapons in this. They were originally called 'broken shotgun/chaingun' but that wasn't dumb enough so it became what it is now.

-Originally enemies fired many more projectiles, most notably the Revenants shooting 3 rockets instead of one, but gameplay became far too cluttered and I didn't enjoy it so it was removed. Doom's first person perspective does not support the same sort of gameplay as a top down SHMUP does.

-For the briefest moment I considered implementing a sliding Spider Mastermind just because of how ridiculous it was. A video of this concept still exists here. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/47050734

-I wanted to do something outside the traditional secret exit structure of Doom/Doom2 but while also keeping it something people could figure out on their own, so I simply shifted the secret exits to the place they would be in the next episode in Ultimate Doom (E1M2, E2M3, E3M5, E4M6)

-Several of the original speedmap layouts for TPH actually are released outside of TPH. The most unaltered of this exists in Bootleg BTSX E3 as a mostly STARTAN2 untextured layout. (This was supposed to be E3M2), another was only partially textured and placed in Matt’s birthday maps (This was supposed to be a random E3 map), and a partial version of the original E2M3 layout exists as Alfonzo’s Jungle Excursion in CGI, a varied version of this area remains in TPH in E2M7.

EPISODE 1:

E1M1: Apparitions Stalk the Night
Originally a speedmap from early-2013. Layout remains mostly unchanged from the original version. Idea was to make a map mostly based around natural terrain focused heavily on direction lighting, inspired by the directional lighting in the outdoor moon areas of Lunatic. When revising the original speed map I didn't like how constrained it was visually as a series of rocky canyons and began experimenting with making a massive inaccessible area around the map, which became prevalent throughout the rest of the set. The prevalence of the Spectres in the map as well as throughout the rest of E1 is due to the map title. I tried to make the nonsensical map titles tie back to the map in some form whenever I could. The dead marines at the start of the mission are your squad mentioned in the story, the object lying among them is the Nintendo Omnibus. Original midi was 'Flatulence Protocol' by Jimmy before Jazz Mickle created the original composition that replaced it.

E1M2: Evening Primrose
Another of the 2013 speed maps. There wasn't much of a specific goal behind this one, mostly to make some open areas where the player had to deal with crossfire from all sides. The first half of this level remains mostly unchanged from 2013, the area after the YK was rebuilt in early 2015 after the decision to make TPH into a non-speedmap project. Jimmy had to inform me he had made an updated version of the map’s midi many years before the release of TPH. It was still using the version he had given me on IRC and had not been updated into after the release. The rocket launcher secret had to be tweaked significantly because of the maximum hitscan range, which rendered it unusable in EE.

E1M3: Nostalgic Blood of the East
Also 2013 speedmap that remains pretty much unchanged excluding a visual update. The RK used to simply be in front of the teleporter that takes you to it but once the massive perimeter detail was added in, the new vista was created for it. Main idea was to make a map that was non-linear while also being pretty compact. The titular "nostalgic" blood around the map was originally damaging but given the circular layout it hampered blind play too much and was removed. Before the secret exits were moved out of the Ultimate Doom placement, the secret exit was located at the teleporter that you can walk along the cliffs to from the RK (opposite of the soulsphere secret). I enjoy how many people walk right past the YK. Hide & seek MVP.

E1M4: The Bridge People No Longer Cross
First map that's not 90% the original speedmap. Rebuilt from scratch based on the concept of the original speedmap. The titular bridge did not exist in the original map. In the original map the castle walls you spend most of the map on were the "bridge". The final fight with the imps and chaingun was still in the map but instead placed behind the player start where the exit still remains. The original chaingun fight was also the first introduction of the Megazerk, until it was moved into the later parts of E2 This map contains the first of many secrets added from watching players get themselves to places they were not supposed to be.

E1M5: The Dark Road of the Apotropaic God
First map in Episode 1 that completely replaces the original speedmap, which is true for all the remaining E1 maps. Unlike E1M4 which was still based on the original speedmap. I wanted to make a map where you released most of the combat encounters all at once and then had to deal with wandering around the map into mostly awakened monsters unlike the traditional set up of waking up monsters one room/area at a time. Something I remember really enjoying from a Return to Hadron map.  Original map was named “The Witches’ Ball”. Old version of this map used "Dark Angel" by Jimmy before being replaced with an original composition by AD_79.

E1M6: Retribution for the Eternal Night
A small breather map between the two longer maps surrounding it. Not really much to say about it beyond that. Had originally intended for more of the map to be based around mucking about in the lava but that didn’t end up materializing, probably for the best as the later episodes have more than enough damaging floor playtime and the map didn't need to be longer than it is.

E1M7: Let's Live In A Lovely Cemetery
The first working layout leaned a lot heavier into the cemetery concept but I didn’t like moving around with all the tombstones and it was too generally boxy and hallway-but-outdoors for my liking so it shifted to a more abstract location with a few tombstones to tie back to the name.

E1M8: Reach For The Moon, Immortal Smoke
Influenced heavily by my love for levels with time sensitive critical fail scenarios such as Toxic Tower from Donkey Kong Country 2, except instead of a nukage floor it’s a critical mass of Archviles. The “Be Quick or be dead” message was added after the first release due to the number of players not realizing the gimmick of the level.

E1M9: Voile, the Magic Library
My attempt at making a non-euclidian space without the use of actual portals. One of the easier titles to turn into a map that matches it. A very From Software influenced map from the big indoor areas to the structure being surrounded by perilous cliffs on the exterior. 

E2M1: Shrine at the Foot of the Mountain
A map that’s basically just a hallway but disguised by the outdoor setting. I probably went a little too overboard with the cliffside lanterns. Was made before I settled in on the red wood aesthetic of the rest of the episode. I played with some texture ideas that did not return in the rest of the episode like using the egyptian pillar texture as a substitute for bamboo.

E2M2: Plain Asia
Another one of the original 2013 speedmaps to remain mostly intact. The only layout addition being the YK area/dojo. (The YK remains in its original location on lower difficulties). This map spawned from arguing with Esselfortium that all the blood in Dead Sea in D2TWID should be damaging. Map went through many revisions of how much damage the nukage did and how readily radsuits were available before I settled on making it 5% and giving the player a bunch of health to just tank it as necessary.

E2M3: Retrospective Kyoto
Cliffside “city map”. The progression of this map and usage of the various areas went through many revisions. The BK was mandatory at one point, the underground section used to house the YK, etc. Ultimately I wish I had added more optional side areas to the map beyond just the underground section but I was happy enough with the layout to not want to alter it anymore. 

E2M4: Led On by a Cow to Visit Zenkou Temple
I’ve always loved the various skips that existed in Doom 2 where you could just drop in the damaging floor and run to a teleporter that would take you further into the level. It’s a little less viable in this map due to the floor being 20% but with blue armor the player can easily skip the majority of the map as the key progression exists only to get a radsuit. The second yellow door was added in as a safety back up in case players wasted the single radsuit for traversing to the exit. The ending is a reference to the Truman Show that Alfonzo had suggested being the way you exited the biodome and went to the lunar base areas proper. 

E2M5: Welcome to the Moon Tour
Basically unchanged from the original speedmap outside of some texturing changes. Old E2 featured a lot of BTSX textures. I wanted to make a spinny light map, so I made a spinny light map. Then I made another one five maps later.

E2M6: Lunatic Princess
As direct of a Lunatic homage as it gets, with a title like Lunatic Princess I kind of had to. I’ve often talked about how most of my problem with Dead Simple clones is that they’re always stuck in Map 7 (understandable given the special) and like with Icon of Sins I’d like to see more of them outside of Map 7. So here’s a semi-Dead Simple (mostly because of the monster composition) not in the Map 7 slot. Yes, the fact that it’s a Mancubus standing in front of the American flag was intentional. 

E2M7: The Far Side of the Moon
I wanted to play with the idea of going in and out of the biodome environment with this map. It was fun to play with the idea of being on the opposite side of the moon, without having the easy easterly directional lighting the Lunatic sky provides and the terrain resembling far more jagged and beaten rocks than the smoother near side of the moon. The starting areas of the original E2M1 and E2M3 speedmaps appear in this map (they're the Asian areas you teleport to). 

E2M8: The Sea Where One's Home Planet Reflects
A map heavily influenced by a project I don’t remember the name of that Alfonzo and I played in 2013 (the idea of having E4 set on the sun also came from that session) where the final boss was a very deadly version of the Spider Mastermind that I always recall being named something like "Grugunuzel". The downside of making the Spider Mastermind less of a pushover is that it’s attack is very devastating so it becomes very difficult to engage the boss without the aid of infighting. The setting for the map is intended to be an incomplete biodome setting from the first half of the episode which I had intended to be more prevalent in the central area but the 3d limitations of Boom maps did not allow for me to do what I wanted to do.

E2M9: Tomorrow Will Be Special; Yesterday Was Not
I had placed a bunch of Egyptian textures in the resource to use as cleverly disguised Asian textures such as the aforementioned “bamboo” texture but did not end up using most of them. Since I already had them in the resource and needed a secret map, that’s why this map is randomly Egyptian themed. The idea of this map was to make a Stronghold style horde wave encounter but with less door camping and the other things that generally bogged down that experience.

E3M1: Bhavaagra As Seen Through a Child's Mind
This map was originally the secret map for the episode but I decided to put it as E3M1 instead. Originally the Digicubes were exclusive to this map but after Alfonzo had placed some in E3M5 (see more in that blurb) I ended up not feeling the need to keep them tied to just this map which added to me moving it from the secret slot. Probably one of the more enjoyable ideas to come up with for something that more or less tied into the word salad title.

E3M2: Love-colored Master Spark
The original E3M1. The starting trap, particularly the part where you reflexively blow yourself up was intended as a way to get players to understand how the HE Shotgun functioned (it was originally first introduced here before being added as a super secret for E1M9 and E2M9). Since it was at the very start of the episode the quick death and restart wouldn't be that impactful. Moving to the 2nd slot in the episode removed this but I liked the trap and how the opening played so I didn't change it. 

E3M3: A Popular Location
Map contains some "popular locations" to fit with the title. Be it real life popular locations (a gas station and a movie theater) or Doom popular locations (a computer maze). I had played with the idea of using the track "An Unpopular Location" for the following map.

E3M4: The Centennial Festival for Magical Girls
This map was originally two seperate maps that were combined into one (hence the disconnected teleporting between two areas). The starting area of the map was built around the idea of making a mostly symmetrical design that you move and play through asymmetrically. The second area was originally designed to be the map using the previous map's title and was going to be a semi-slaughter map using the open space to play on the "A Popular Location" title. This map also contains the secret (the plasma rifle) that I legitimately forget exists almost every time I play it. The Revenant band on stage is named The Bonestreet Boys.

E3M5: Dr. Latency's Freak Report
I typically try to make the map name tie into the map in some way, even for the more aggressive word salad titles or titles that very clearly refer to the Touhou Character they’re the theme for (such as the next map’s title), be it by abstracting that title as much as possible. This map does not get that treatment. I don’t remember what it was originally called, but the map name was chosen well after the map was done, purely based on it being a dumb map name. The first of two gigantic sprawl maps that populate E3, one of my favorite map layouts I’ve ever done. This map sat completed with no monsters placed for over four years because it was part of a map trade deal I had made with Alfonzo to finish his Mayhem 2016 maps and TNT2 map where he would thing place this map and a few other TPH maps. He did eventually partially place this map, the plethora of spectres are his doing as is the usage of the Digicubes in the blue area (which had previously been restricted to the secret level).

E3M6: The Doll Maker of Bucuresti
Originally the idea for the map was to make it based around a gigantic long crusher that ran the length of the map and the player had to occasionally traverse across to different areas of the map. (Which would have been the titular Doll Maker - as everyone knows dolls are made in crushers.) A smaller lineral version of this idea eventually ended up being the area right before the exit. Probably the most haphazard of all the E3 maps. This map is a collage of various scrapped rooms and ideas from failed E3 maps, which makes it my least favorite map in the set as a result. I am happy I was able to at least make something out of the many scrapped ideas that went into this map. The berserk at the start was put in because I was never happy with how the opening fights felt. 

E3M7: Strange Strange Instruments
My love letter to all the things I found myself enjoying about 1994/1995 mapping during my playthrough of Maximum Doom. I wanted to make an expansive map in a natural setting without relying on the use of sky. Probably the most non-linear map in the set. The BK and YK are both technically optional as secrets allow you to get to the red key room without going through either path. The arch-vile door room was an attempt at making something that played on the use of moving cover while also forcing you to fight the viles behind said cover, the timing ended up being a little too jank to make it completely consistent so I made it optional and stuck in a secret invuln for players who really don't want to deal with it. The central tower area of this map was originally in Doom 2 in Spain Only map 15 but vanilla limits pushed it here.

E3M8: This Dull World's Unchanging Pessimism
Hexagon map. Made around the same time as my other maps that love hexagons (D2ISO Map 7 and Map 11). Not much to say, it’s an arena map where you avoid fast cyberdemon rockets and then turn down the volume of the sun.

E3M9: Dimension of Reverie
An homage to my favorite Reverie map. I've always liked how that map was a city sandbox that wasn't like most city sandboxes. Another map along with E3M7 that definitely felt the influence of my Maximum Doom playthrough with the archvile cut outs in the hedge maze.

E4M1: Lullaby for a Deserted Hell
This map didn’t have a very strong inciting idea. Was one of the first maps made after the project got revived roughly after I finished reworking E1M1 so there wasn’t as strong of a design identity and structure in my mind at  the time. Mostly fiddling around with various texture combos to figure out what I wanted to do for the first half of E4’s theme beyond “asteroid”.

E4M2: Necrofantasia
One of the many maps in E4 where the initial idea for the map ended up being pared down to a smaller section of the map. The teleporter tunnel section at the end of the map was originally going to be the whole map but I didn’t want to base a whole map in just that setting and having a series of convoluted teleporter puzzles didn’t feel good so it became just one section and the outdoor asteroid areas were added back in. 

E4M3: Interdimensional Voyage of a Ghostly Passenger Ship
The color coordinated key areas were added in much later after the map had initially been completed because I felt it was very minimal and also the overwhelming brown of the first half of E4 felt a little too monochromatic and I wanted to break it up. The idea of having the sun closer to the player than the previous map was also going to be paired with increasing damage each map for standing in sunlight but that idea was abandoned both because of the difficulty of implementing it, the conveyance issue that the sun and not the floor was damaging you (even though it would be the floor) and also it added way too many hazards to the map.

E4M4: Border of Life
The original version of this map exists in a very truncated form as the second half of the map you teleport to. I originally wanted the player to have to avoid standing in direct sunlight or it would hurt but the complexity of making sure all the damaging floor areas were clearly telegraphed quickly became too irritating, given that there were many instances where the top of the player could still see the sun but the bottom needed to be in shadow for the lighting to work. So I ended up making the first half of the map as an homage to Hectic from Doom 64 with a Sunlust coat of paint and sticking in sunscreen as a powerup for the second half.

E4M5: Septette for the Dead Princess:
The first sun map. Much like E4M1, a map that was developed as it was mapped rather than starting from a clear idea mostly because of how the texture set for the solar levels was not fully realized when I had started making the map and was then slowly developed as the map went along, drawing heavily from other projects I was working on at the time such as TNT2 (despite being released in 2022 I did most of my work on it in 2015-2016) and my guest map in Ancient Aliens (the white textures in Kassman’s map being a base for a lot of the end of E4’s aesthetics).

E4M6: Scarlet Beyond a Crimson Dream,
Yet another map that contains a portion of an originally-intended-to-be-the-map bigger idea. The RK area was originally a much larger tower and the entire map would be based around it as a transforming hub. Then the map was converted to the city that takes up a majority of the layout and the idea was going to be for the city map to be flooded with constantly teleporting in monsters like in E2M9 but it felt too flat and I wanted more vertical elements to it. Then once the lava and more vertical elements were added in the player movement no longer worked with the enemies pouring in so that was removed. Eventually some scraps from the original E4M6 layout I had made got added in as peripheral areas to the city area and it became the final map.

E4M7: Crimson Beyond a Fleeting Eternity,
This map was constructed from a series of rooms that I had made at various points and didn’t really have a place for (it’s pretty obvious as they’re isolated behind teleporters). I had wanted to use them but many of them I didn’t like in the context of a larger map since they could quickly kill the player so they ended up here.

E4M8: For all the Debts You Have Accumulated ~ Now Until the Moment You Die!
The big finale. The starting lift and arena is based on the final area of 2019’s Code Vein (aka Waifu Souls). Earth, Mars, and Saturn are excluded from the final planet hopping section both because I was unhappy with the areas I made for them and also to keep the final monster count at 420. I’ve never been a big fan of Doom boss fights, particularly custom monster ones where you have to whittle down 5k+ health so that’s why Gorchev just fires every single Doom attack at you and then dies.

E4M9: U.N. Owen was Her?
I originally wanted to make a custom enemy for this map that was the archvile but dressed as Ronald McDonald because of the memes around this song and Japanese McDonald’s commercials. In retrospect I should have put in the effort to do it. Also the only map that actually uses the track it’s named after (although it’s a remix by Jimmy to incorporate D_Bunny elements.)