The Machinations of myhouse.wad (How it works) - Part 4 

Yeah, with my video on MyHouse, I take responsibility for a lot of the Room-Over-Room confusion people have had. My original intention was to say how surprised I was to see the feature in what was stated to be a simple recreation of the author's house that was meant to be beaten in 10 minutes. As if all I was expecting was a bunch of walls and a door like Sandy's house in Doom 2. However I then wanted to explain what I was on about to people who wouldn't know. Then I wanted to go further and mention the methods it can be done without going too into technical details so early in the video. So I insinuated the use of portals in the video by stating there were tricks people could use, and hinted further by showing Lunatic Fringe from Duke Nukem 3D which simulates a 720° room. However 1) My insinuations were so quiet as to be unnoticed and thus several articles were written that said MyHouse was unique for doing this, which is incorrect, and my own fault. 2) My own understanding of how MyHouse did this was incomplete, what with the simple portals used at first, before moving onto more advanced techniques after, which more savvy people noticed (like yourself earlier in this series). 3) The Duke example wasn't even a good one as it doesn't use portals but Build's wonky understanding of 3D space instead. So yeah, that was a big fumble by me. I really wish my biggest mistake was not noticing ambient occlusion was on for some reason. Still, as you say, hope more people get into Doom mapping after all this.

the fact that this was uploaded less than an hour after I finished watching the previous 3 parts feels like a machination of the house itself

31:15 "It started with a can of Irn Bru and then spiraled from there..." I'm sure yours is probably one of the mildest stories a Scotsman has ever told that started with those words...

Look ma, I'm on TV!! I'm SO sorry I inadvertently roasted you, but the way you described it as "the most savage benefit of the doubt I've ever been given" made me lose it hahahah. Excellent stuff as always.

29:50 honestly it'd be fucking hilarious if the mirrorvile just got thrown into the backrooms as well, only to meet the player once again if they tried to later escape themselves

i wonder if nightmare being the easiest difficulty is a reference to lucid dreaming, as in, once you know you're dreaming you can learn to control it or given that nightmares are just in our head, they can't physically hurt you

I know it'd kill a lot of the mystery, but i'd love to hear a developer commentary on the creation of this map. I'd love to hear the reasoning for why he did this map and how he came up with these clever tricks.

>skinstealer wanders at random, even when idle jesus that is actually horrifying. i never even noticed that different let's players would encounter it in different spots

I'm so glad to learn about these tricks being more complex than they appear - it's really insightful. When I played MyHouse myself, I didn't think too much about the swinging doors and swimming because I assumed it was commonplace in gzdoom. Given games like Duke3D has had these kinds of things in a 2D mapping engine forever, it seemed fairly normal. So, that made me assume things like windows above windows were either normal in gzdoom too, or just an optical illusion where you're looking into a single fake room that's twice as tall where enemy death flags are mirrored with the 'real' version - and it's refreshing to see that it's not, and there's some real creativity being applied!

The interesting this with that stacked sector thing is that, as you mentioned, it's depreciated, you can totally have a portal that looks through two floors by using polyobjects... or you could just offset them by a map unit. The fact that the portals are visual only would prevent any actual jank. Fun stuff though, very clever.

If you look very carefully into the windows of the Initial House (not having entered yet), you can see fully-working mirrors in the bathroom. These go away the first time the house is entered. Also, if you noclip into the Initial House, doors don't work, rooms are missing, and there is an XBOX there rather than a PlayStation.

Whoever is really behind this wad is truly a mapping auteur. It's layers of meta-trickery, where if you are familiar enough with Doom mapping, you'll understand what it's doing- But it still goes the extra mile to subvert your expectation again. I'm not a huge fan of the gameplay style of this map, but I have huge respect for it as a work of art. It really has that vibe of "I was learning how to make Doom maps, and every time I learned a new trick I found an excuse to throw it in", except the author absolutely knew exactly what they were doing.

That portal trick with the windows just feels like something an old DOOM mapper would do. It has a similar energy to the thin movable walls used to make sprites appear/disappear (especially with the slightly-sloped walls), just applied to a more niche situation.

I should mention how incredible the music is for this wad. It’s SO immersive. I would love a download link.

10:38 i think a more clear idea of how it could have been a copy/paste mistake is that the house (most-likely the brutalist house due to the similar textures) was copy/pasted in order to help plan out the layout of the airport to make it similar to the layout of the house normally.

if you noclip behind the new wooden door in the brutalist house, you can interact with it from behind, this causes a sound effect indicating something happened, however the door doesn't open.

I bought House of Leaves (the book this thing is based on) because of this series. Incredible book, 10/10

This stacked sector system feels very much like the room over room trick in Shadow Warrior, where a special sprite "drags together" separate sectors when the level is rendered.

I'd love to see a series of videos breaking down how other Doom mods accomplish things! You have a really good sense of humor and explain things very succinctly.

This mod reignited my passion for making cool stuff in a game i hadn't played for 20 years. Thanks for breaking all this down!

I nearly fell out of my chair when I heard my name mentioned! :) Thanks to RAMP, I've not only seen a host of new and wonderful approaches to using the Doom engine (who knew you could create an episode of a Mexican soap opera in it??) but I've had chance to try making my own maps and experiment with new features. I think the large number of new people introduced to Doom mapping is the true legacy of MyHouse.

still boggles my mind. I'm 53 and played Doom and Doom II when they first hit the shelves so to speak. My friends and I did make our own maps, but unf those are long lost. I still play the OG Doom game levels, but I have come to really appreciate all the new maps and mods that are available today. It's truly a game that never really gets old despite being released almost 30 years ago. I have even seen Romero making new maps (Sigil) Doom really can transport you to new worlds with new monsters and weapons in TC maps. My house was a fantastic showcase of so many tricks with silent portals and scripting. Thank you David for putting this together and for all the hard work that went into RAMP 2023. Keep up the good work!!!

The tea may not have been yet another layer of MyHouse madness... But it certainly was ordinary, but charming, Scottish madness!

I felt like I was going blind without losing my sight when the stacked portals was explained. Myhouse.wad is literal insanity.

"Father Jack Hackett" really caught me off guard, out of all the interesting insight of myhouse this series provided, that right there was better than all of it, it got me wheezing

To me, the door opening when the shadow creature moves out of the way might just be a detail to convey the idea that the creature is moving to another unseen part of the house. Or at the very least, another part of the weird brutalist dimension that particular part of the house inhabits.

You've mentioned it before and again in this video... the author is an older mapper and that's as much we know now: several (implied) techniques like the sink linedefs or the painting covers are not necessary in UDMF and mean that the author made this by shear knowledge. I'd go as far as saying that I wouldn't be surprised if the original mappers had a say in this map for a DOOM 30 year anniversary project. Add in the mystery and well... near perfection. In any case, if people are interested in more psychological DOOM horror experiences similar to this, check out RAMP's map 34, Four Comas, or the wholesome map 247, El Chavo del Doom.

Love the Sectorportals in BSP engines. They work perfectly and are completely for free. To do the same in a modern engine you'd have to place a monitor, connect a camera, let that follow the players movement and view, and project it on the monitor. That's now like running the game 2 times like in splitscreen. If you want a third portal you'd have to run it 3 times. Becomes old very fast.

Very fitting for a three part video series about a strange, larger than it should be house to have a fourth part.

you changing the sprites to the scottish themed sprites, is really humorous

A 34 minute video of David describing stuff. This is my crack.

I never took the time to comment on your last videos. Which is a failing on my part, considering how much effort you put into the series. Your videos on MyHouse held my interest the whole way through. The way you describe the tricks of the wad, even down to the most technical detail is brilliant. Highly interesting, even to a layman. Anyway, I'm just using a lot of big words at this point. Long story short, you've done a great job on the series. So long and thanks for all the nightmares.

That invisible switch texture is adorable!

Wow! This House giveth so much we're now on part 4 of 3! nice video.

I bought doom 2 to play my house. Its worth it. I havent played doom before actually. My parents used to play it when they were younger tho

// everytime i see how the nuts and bolts go together under the hood of a WAD... I create a new map to torture Clippy and The Lamp .. keep the knowledge coming mate!

Mate some of the questions asked are as insane as the map itself. Tremendous video as always!

Didnt expect there to be a fourth part. Will watch immediately. (Already watched the others at least five times each)

"we'll get a very angry message from graf zahl, probably" sent me, i love your narration style so much

I always thought there was something kind of odd about the lounge room the soda can is found in. Lacks a lot of the common bits of geometry- and design-related continuity that tends to tie many of the other parts of the house together. (This is also a bit of a thing with the Bauhaus room, which is something of a one-two punch with the lounge - iirc it doesn't vanish though?) As an aside, the Plano, Illinois connection always amused me a little. Like a town or two over from where I went to high school. (And Aurora, of Wayne's World fame)

A nightmare of a nightmare is a dream

The house isn't done with us yet?

I greatly enjoyed this series! I knew of Doom's existence and that there was a modding community, but didn't know much about either until the video essays about MyHouse.wad started popping up. Your series was easily comprehensible to an outsider: great job!

This series was amazing. I watched the video one of your UK temporaries put up in March or April maybe and I was watching these this whole week. Thank you so much for explaining this absolutely fascinating DOOM hack.

I'm definitely one of those people you mention near the end, who didn't grow up with Doom or followed it over the years, but still was fascinated by this mod. So thank you for the thorough and entertaining videos on it. The funny thing about myhouse is that I can't shake the feeling that it would've been one big leap in video game storytelling if it were released as a stand-alone game, however I do know and can't deny that due to its nature: it couldn't have been released as anything other than a mod. Maybe it would have worked as a Half-Life mod too. Now I have to wonder what interesting twists they would've put in their that the original goldsrc couldn't do, and I wonder if I would have noticed.

Thanks for the incredibly comprehensive look into how this mod does its magic, mister bunnyman. This map must have taken so long to make and subsequently debug. I wonder if anyone else was involved in testing it and they're just keeping quiet about it.

This dude should definitely check out what kind of stuff the SRB2 side of UDMF has been doing. Genuinely impressive stuff over there

Jesus, I know the video is 7 months old now but I had a blast watching through all 4 episodes you put together. They were so entertaining, thank you sir for your incredible effort!

I've been watching for three years and only now have I found out about the reasoning behind the key changes. I always just assumed it was a copyright type issue, or something along those lines.

"..desperately rescuing a can of Tennent Super Strength Lager from the darkness of the toxin refinery.." Not all heroes wear capes!

I love that channel analytics joke from the dog murdering

Whoever transcribed the video to TV Tropes, please do it again but as a normal blog and not a trope listicle

NGL I didn't understand a lot of what you were talking about but I still enjoyed watching this four-parter.

This map is a perfect example of a creation by a real person that feels otherworldly. Just doesn’t stop being wild

32:41 the rabbit sprite is adorable!

"Hold on, I'll Check" XD

The devious and goofy machinations of this place are pretty astounding.

Four?? I didn't know there will be four, I'm very happy though, can't get enough of this mod

I might not be part of the doom community but learning how the entire mod works makes me hope that we get to see new and interesting stuff from the community.

The amount of work put in this wad is nothing short of amazing. The visual trickery, insane amount of scripting and overall workings of this wad must have taken years to make it work as intended. It has given me ideas to use in mapping. @David: perhaps you could dissect some ideas of these and turn them into tutorials? Just a thought ;)

I randomly rewatched this series a few days ago and then bam, here’s another one Brilliant

How did I miss all the furry artwork on your channel until literally just now. Was I just completely blind to it, or did you use a sector portal to show us a different version of your channel with all the furry avatars removed until I passed a secret linedef?

the whole thing with the almost vertical ramps to create stacked windows is the kind of obscure technical knowledge of an engine that reminds me of doki doki literature club, itself a horror game with a thin disguise as a visual novel, looking at tech rules' dissection of the game shows that the creator of DDLC also used a bunch of obscure and hardly (if at all) documented features of RenPy to achieve the effects DDLC uses to scare or unnerve you

About the hp and painchance change to mirror viles - I once saw a streamer just chainsaw one to death while playing the initial version. When I read about the change in the forum thread later, I immediately knew why that change happened.

Thank you David for all you DooM content!!!

I don't have words to express how much I love this series of breakdowns. it has to be up there with some of the stuff by pannenkoek and bismuth

I'm guessing it wasn't significant enough to warrant mentioning, but one of the more subtle ways of the map disorienting the player is that the first person camera is moved upwards by a few map units, making the player now at eye level with low-level enemies like the Former Humans and Imps; it's not an effect you initially notice, since the entire level is built around it, but is immediately felt once you enter Underhalls/sllahrednU, as all the ceilings feel a lot lower than they should. In fact, if you play the normal MyHouse.WAD file from the Google Drive folder and not the .pk3 (which doesn't have any of the crazy goings on and instead plays exactly how you would have expected it to from the beginning), the player is at their normal height, making the level feel a little taller as a result.

Just realized that if you use noclip to get the soulsphere you can see from the first floor, then again from the basement, you can get two soulspheres. If you do this, you are on the version of the outside of the house that's present when you're downstairs. The front door is boarded up and the top floor is walled off.

I don’t play doom. I don’t know how to mod doom. I love these videos.

No way I was just rewatching the first 3!!!

I don’t care if it breaks the definition. Reskinning keys to look like beverages from home to get around color inaccessibility is the most Doom Cute thing I’ve ever heard.

I watched the first 3 parts 9 hours ago. That's freaky.

Thank you for this video! I feel like I could listen to you explain stuff like this for hours. Or well, I already have, but even still!

When I saw your unique keys in the previous videos I just assumed that was a normal thing in myhouse! 😂😅

I had been playing a good bit of Quake shortly before I played myhouse.wad for the first time, and because of that I completely missed how unnatural the stacked floors or swimming were for Doom, it was just so deceptively intuitive. I did notice the doors changing but the rest of the madness took precedence in my mind and I quickly forgot about it. Brilliant breakdown of this incredible experience.

Just finding this channel. You're cool dude. Thanks! That ramp compilation looks sick, downloading now.

Can't wait for The Machinations of myhousewad Part 5!

The author really took the word nightmare in a literal sense

It would be funny if when you get to the "end" in the brutalist house, you would go to a brutalist version of Underhalls.

yooo, i just rewatched the series yesterday, i love to learn more

Much appreciate the explanations as well as the shoutouts to other creative games made with GZDoom. Personally, my favorite full conversion is the Zdzisław Beksiński-inspired metroidvania Vomitoreum. I think a lot of fans of Myhouse.wad would enjoy it.

Hey thanks for featuring my questions, gotta say, watching this series was like watching a stage magician on a tv explaining how another magician's trick work, in some ways, being able to comprehend the effort that went into myhouse.wad makes it even more impressive.

Just in time to enjoy on my day off. Lovely vid!

I like the way you explain things, very clear and to the point. I also like your cute rabbit avatar. I'd probably enjoy hearing more videos of you explaining stuff (wether doom related or not), if you ever felt like making them

I'm scottish and seeing the different foods as keys is so hilarious. 30:50

Unrelated to the video, but your character is adorable!

My personal guess as to why the door appears when you trigger a line at the monster in the window, you could go through the door at the monsters site and possibly another smaller passage, and when you leave, you exit out of the door that spawns. Then, the door would disappear behind your back. This was probably just discarded though.

Wow. I'm always amazed when someone takes simple techniques and creates something surprising. Thank you for explaining this mod in so much detail! You definitely know what you're talking about. I think the author of the mod deliberately created an aura of mystery around even the story of how this first appeared. It would be very interesting to get the story behind the story, but it might break the magic, so I doubt that we would...

went back to watch the previous 3 parts and now im here

Pure genius. Doom never ceases to amaze me

A couple months ago, I cracked open the myhouse file to get some of the textures. Mind you, I’ve never touched a doom mod in my life before. However, during my time blindly poking around in the files, I came across the quarter. I spent a good while trying to figure out how I could get the quarter in game (again, with next to no knowledge about how the engine works), before realizing that it was probably unused content. It’s cool to see more info about it. I also thought it might have had something to do with the gas station phones. It’s cool that even with the ability to poke inside the map and look at the scripts itself, there’s still so much mystery to this mod.

Thank you, for making these videos. Revealing the machinations of the house to be very, very clever tricks, is giving me the closure to know that this isn't a cursed (or... well... not that much cursed) piece of media. It does take away the magic... but it replaces it with awe, to the creativity of the author of this wad. I'll give you a like, and I hope you'll get millions of views on your videos about this.

HOLY SHIT. I JUST REWATCHED THIS THING

i may have missed it in your video, but from the mirror house you can exit via the blue skull key and it takes you to a backwards version of the underhalls, and completing that restarts you in the mirrored version

IDCLEV to map 30, beat the Icon of Sin and watch the monster showcase. Everything is normal apart from one notable exception.

On the thing about nightmare difficulty: You're in a nightmare no matter what you do now, and the sooner you choose to accept that, the easier the process of moving on will be for you. Acceptance is the final stage of grief, after all, so you're already most of the way there. Either that or it's just an silly subversion of expectations and there's nothing poetic or meaningful about it.

it's funny that one line in a comment turns into a well-polished and detailed explanation. you're amazing

Good stuff!

All I can say after binging all 4 of these, INCREDIBLY interesting, doom mapping is nutty and finally, thank goodness you can't kill the pupper at the beach, he deserves a break from living in that concrete hell.

I maybe a bit too young to remember Doom 1 and a bit too old, to know Memes, but this four Videos were better than most horrofilms I saw recently. Non-Euclid game engines are certainly the future of indie-game hits, since it makes the coder to the auteur again, instead of using sweatshops full of artist to make linear plot-based Unreal engine games like most AAA games nowadays. It is a pity, nobody has branched something like that from the original Descent Engine, as it already combines verticality with portal-rendering. Taking the Ideas from Descent (portals-only like Build and full-3D like Quake), add free Sgment-Geometry by computing BSP-trees for Segments you could do cool things.