The Thing Is That Rose Was Secretive. Sure, She Tried, But She Completely Ignored Other Problems. Maybe

The thing is that Rose was secretive. Sure, she tried, but she completely ignored other problems. Maybe she thought there was a reason for not taking spinel back or a reason why bismuth was not worth reasoning with. But the thing is… hiding all of this information from her loved ones did nothing but make everything worse.

I was thinking about why Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond is so hated.

The obvious answer is because of the horrible things she did.

But the other diamonds did horrible things too…worse things even.

Pink abandoned Spinel, which is wrong, but Spinel was planning to kill every living thing on Earth to spite the son of a person who was no longer even alive. Yet, no one talks about what a monster Spinel is.

So many Steven Universe characters have hurt people, but we forgive them and are happy to see them redeemed.

So why not Rose?

Then, it hit me: because Rose’s redemption arc is told to us in reverse.

The first time we see Rose is toward the end of her life when she is pregnant with Steven. We see her appreciation for life and how full of love she is for Greg and her future child. She’s willingly sacrificing herself to bring a new life into the world.

But then, we start learning who Rose used to be, all her mistakes, all the people she hurt.

The loving mother in Steven’s video becomes a distant memory.

For those of you who hate Rose, imagine her backstory unfolded a little differently for us.

We’re introduced to Pink Diamond: she’s spoiled, bratty, immature, irresponsible, and inconsiderate.

She throws temper tantrums when she doesn’t get her way.

Not exactly an endearing character, right?

But one day, her tantrum injure Pink Pearl, her best friend. From that day on, she keeps everything to herself. Now we see her dealing with a consequence of her bad behavior.

Then we see how she’s abused by the other diamonds. We start to sympathize with her.

We see her try to save Earth. We see her trying to do the right thing for once.

But it backfires horribly.

She spends the rest of her life trying to fix it, but she can’t.

She meets Greg. Here is where Rose has the most emotional growth as a character. She learns what is truly means to be a “real person.”

Finally, she grows such an appreciation for human life, that she decides to sacrifice her form to bring her son into the world.

The reason Rose is so much more controversial than other characters who have done problematic things is because her story is told in reverse, her redemption comes across as a fall from grace.

But there are plenty of characters who have a fall from grace who are still not as controversial as Rose. The reason why many people are less sympathetic to Rose is because we never see how Rose reacts to her mistakes. We never get much insight into how Rose feels about herself and the things she’s done. We get small hints:

For everyone who hates Rose, I get why. But I think we need to remember who she became instead of who she was.

I’m full of worms that wriggle around.

They writhe.

Hey you! Yes, you! Learn how to use GZDoom!

Also if you see this post, please reblog it if you think it's good, like I don't think Tumblr's algorithm (that kinda exists) will like it.

Hi, I'm Lynn "WJB" Beck, and I'm here to tell you about an exciting new old game engine that is extremely easy to use for not just making original games, but also mods and animations and stuff!

And this engine... is GZDoom.

GZDoom is an enhanced sourceport of the 1993 first-person shooter, demon-punching simulator and stress-test for pretty much any technology that contains a computer. As opposed to more low-key and/or "vanilla" sourceports like Chocolate Doom or Boom, GZDoom allows for a lot more options, including Build Engine-style voxels, several types of dynamic lighting, and even stuff that was originally exclusive to specific Doom Engine games, like Strife's light RPG mechanics, This means that it can be used to make extremely impressive "total conversion" mods, and even fully original games with entirely custom stuff!

This guide covers how to get started, and a basic overview of how certain things work (get ready to learn about lumps!).

Getting Started

Ok so before you can start Doing The Thing, you need to... install some software! Don't worry, it's only like 4 and they're fairly lightweight.

Go to this website here and download the most recent version of GZDoom. You will need this to actually run your game.

Go here and get Slade. You will need this to import custom graphics and audio, as well as to use text-lumps (which are basically necessary, even if you're making a basic custom level set, and I will explain why further down).

This ZDoom Forum topic is where you can get Ultimate Doom Builder. While there are other Doom mapping tools, UDB is what I personally use, and it's extremely beginner-friendly while also being fairly versatile. It even has a built-in script editor, so you can modify a script and then immediately jump into testing to see if what you've done has worked!

Finally, you need a copy of specifically Doom 2. You could use Doom 1, but in my opinion Doom 2 is better because it has a lot more stuff than the first game, and - let's be real - you'll probably be doing a lot of vanilla mapping to get to grips with the editor before you can start making your big ambitious game (which is what I'm doing over on my modding sideblog, check it out). I'll leave this one up to you. EDIT: I forgot that Freedoom exists. That's also good.

Mounting stuff into Ultimate Doom Builder

Next, you'll need to get UDB set up. This is fairly easy. First open UDB and, as soon as it starts up, go to the top-menu and click "Tools", then go to Game Configuration. Select "GZDoom: Doom 2 (UDMF)" and click "add resource"; using the attached file-explorer, locate the Doom 2 folder on your computer's file system and add DOOM2.WAD to the list of resources, then do the same with gzdoom.pk3 in the GZDoom folder (making sure to switch the "Add Resource" tab from "From WAD" to "From PK3". Click Ok, and you're done!

If you want to put your custom graphics into the game, you simply create a WAD file in Slade, put your graphics in (more on that later) and save it; then when creating a map in UDB, this box will appear:

If you click "Add resource" here, you can then select your custom wad and use any assets, code etc. in your map!

How Slade works

This bit is a bit more complex because it deals with multiple file formats and methods of importing stuff, but I'll start simply by explaining textures, flats, sprites and patches.

Before I do that though, I need to talk about Markers. To define images as a sprite, patch or flat, you need to put them between a pair of Markers with specific names, which you can create by clicking the "New Entry" button:

"Empty (Marker)" is selected by default, so all you need to do is name it. The naming format is [LETTER]_START to start a section and [LETTER]_END to end one; S_Start/S_End are for sprites, P_Start/P_End are for patches, and F_Start and F_End are for flats. You can, additionally, further subdivide this by making another pair of Markers inside a Start/End pair with a number after the letter, but I'm not sure if this does anything (my only experience with it is that the Doom 2 wad file does this).

Now to explain how these things actually work! First, sprites. A sprite is an image that represents an object or creature in the game, and a cool thing that GZDoom does is let you use generic PNGs instead of Doom's proprietary GFX format. Sprites use the following naming scheme: a four-letter identifier, a single character denoting what frame of the animation the image represents (the Arch-Vile, which has the most sprites out of any monster in Doom 2, has frames that go from A all the way to Z, and then [, \ and ]), and finally a number from 0-8 that indicates the angle the Thing (that's the technical term for a Doom Engine entity, by the way) is at. Using the Imp as an example:

The "0" angle just means that the sprite should look the same regardless of the player's angle; this is used for items, decorations, the death animations of all monsters (including players), and the two sprites used for Doom II's final boss.

A cool thing about sprite angles is that you can actually make a sprite work for multiple angles; by adding an extra frame-letter and angle-number after the first set, you can do things like have a monster whose left and right walking frames are the same but mirrored by formatting the sprite's name as something like NAMEA2A8 (in fact, the Imp uses this technique for all its sprites apart from its death animation).

Next up, flats! Flats are square textures that are designed to go on floors or ceilings (though you can use them anywhere, including as sky textures!) but lack the flexibility of patch-based textures. You literally just. Import your texture and put it between F_Start and F_End. That's it. That's how a flat works.

And finally, patches. Patches are complicated, but very easy to use when you know what you're doing. First, put your image between P_Start and P_End, then right click it, put your mouse over the "Graphics" dropdown, and select "Add to Patch Table". You will then be prompted to create a TEXTURES lump; click "Ok" with the default settings. This creates a Texture1 lump, and the "Patch Table" (which is just a list of patches, which I will explain soon), alongside P_Start and P_End if they aren't already present (and a dummy texture). Double-click Texture1 to open it, and then select "New Texture" (you can adjust the scale, too):

Once this is done, go to the top-right corner and click "Add patch":

By default, you only have access to any patches you have assigned, but a cool trick I use in my own mapsets whenever I want to modify an official texture is to copy its Texture1 entry from the Doom 2 WAD, then paste it into my WAD's Texture1 and rename it. This does create copies of the constituent patches in your own wad's P_Start/P_End section, but you can delete those and it will still work fine.

Both patches and Flats are limited to 8-letter names, so be warned.

The actual final thing to talk about is converting PNGs to GFX; this is a simple process, but it can cause issues with colour. Basically, Doom has a very specific palette:

While this can look pretty good, on images it wasn't designed for or that use colours it doesn't feature, it can look pretty bad. For example, if I put this random image I made through the conversion process:

Then it comes out looking like this:

All the more cyan-adjacent hues become more blue, it nuked the antialiasing, and some of the gaps in my colouring are now much more obvious (especially on the fifth character's head and legs).

My point is, only do this if you want your mod to be compatible with more vanilla sourceports, or if you want to reduce the filesize. Otherwise, you're better off just using a strict palette when making the sprites and keeping them as PNGs.

Custom palettes are possible, but like. Literally all you do is click "New Entry", select "palette", name it, click the "Import from" button (purple page with a diagonal arrow on the top-middle of the palette-view window), set the filetype on the file explorer to "PNG", and import your custom palette image (which should be square (non-square images get squished and lose some colours) and 16x16 at the smallest, though the images I normally use are 128x128 because for some reason they're scaled up by a factor of 8, even though they display the same when imported regardless of size). You can even test them out or add them to the in-built palette list, which is nice. If you want it to override the default palette when your WAD is loaded, name the lump "PLAYPAL", which is what Doom's palette is called.

Now we get to talk about text lumps! I don't have much to say. Do the "New Entry" thing, select "Text", and name the file. The ZDoom wiki - which I will be linking to at the end - has information on each type, so check those out.

Map making

This is the final main section of this, and I'll try keeping it fairly brief and simple. Doom maps use four main elements; Vertices, Lines, Sectors, and Things. A Vertex is, well a vertex; it's a point in 2D space that acts as a starting or connecting point on a Line. Lines can be either walls or walkover triggers, depending on how you use them. Sectors can be rooms or shapes on the floor, and have properties such as damaging floors, being "underwater" (the player can swim and sound is muffled), or even having different gravity. Finally, a Thing is any entity that isn't one of those, ranging from monsters to player-starts to decorations, plus some complex technical ones I can't even begin to explain.

Useful resources

I am not good with words, but these places are!

ZDoom wiki - covers both regular ZDoom and GZDoom, plus other sourceports like the multiplayer-focused Skulltag and Zandronum. It has guides about ACS and ZScript, two of GZDoom's most useful tools for scripting maps and Things, respectively, as well as the obsolete "DECORATE" language which ZScript incorporates many elements of.

Dragonfly's Doomworks - mapping tutorial resource. I use their portal tutorial a lot whenever I want to put portals in a map.

Doomwiki - good for looking up monster and weapon stats for if you're making custom Things.

Rod of the Mischievous Wizard, Rod, Uncommon (requires attunement by a spellcaster)

Like many others these past few days, I’ve also fallen in love with the “Tiny Green Mall Wizard” videos by @crawly_goat, so I HAD to do something based on it. The Rod of the Mischievous Wizard is a magical rod designed to resemble a pink butterfly net that shimmers with a soft glow with each swing. —————

Thank you very much for checking out this new creation! If you want to see more of my content, feel free to visit my Instagram, where I ask for advice, post teasers, and you can vote for my future posts.

Petition Update: 2.5k until 335k!

Not much new compared to yesterday, but keep the number climbing! Keep the pressure on Valve!

https://save.tf/

Hey you! Yes, you! Learn how to use GZDoom!

Also if you see this post, please reblog it if you think it's good, like I don't think Tumblr's algorithm (that kinda exists) will like it.

Hi, I'm Lynn "WJB" Beck, and I'm here to tell you about an exciting new old game engine that is extremely easy to use for not just making original games, but also mods and animations and stuff!

And this engine... is GZDoom.

GZDoom is an enhanced sourceport of the 1993 first-person shooter, demon-punching simulator and stress-test for pretty much any technology that contains a computer. As opposed to more low-key and/or "vanilla" sourceports like Chocolate Doom or Boom, GZDoom allows for a lot more options, including Build Engine-style voxels, several types of dynamic lighting, and even stuff that was originally exclusive to specific Doom Engine games, like Strife's light RPG mechanics, This means that it can be used to make extremely impressive "total conversion" mods, and even fully original games with entirely custom stuff!

This guide covers how to get started, and a basic overview of how certain things work (get ready to learn about lumps!).

Getting Started

Ok so before you can start Doing The Thing, you need to... install some software! Don't worry, it's only like 4 and they're fairly lightweight.

Go to this website here and download the most recent version of GZDoom. You will need this to actually run your game.

Go here and get Slade. You will need this to import custom graphics and audio, as well as to use text-lumps (which are basically necessary, even if you're making a basic custom level set, and I will explain why further down).

This ZDoom Forum topic is where you can get Ultimate Doom Builder. While there are other Doom mapping tools, UDB is what I personally use, and it's extremely beginner-friendly while also being fairly versatile. It even has a built-in script editor, so you can modify a script and then immediately jump into testing to see if what you've done has worked!

Finally, you need a copy of specifically Doom 2. You could use Doom 1, but in my opinion Doom 2 is better because it has a lot more stuff than the first game, and - let's be real - you'll probably be doing a lot of vanilla mapping to get to grips with the editor before you can start making your big ambitious game (which is what I'm doing over on my modding sideblog, check it out). I'll leave this one up to you. EDIT: I forgot that Freedoom exists. That's also good.

Mounting stuff into Ultimate Doom Builder

Next, you'll need to get UDB set up. This is fairly easy. First open UDB and, as soon as it starts up, go to the top-menu and click "Tools", then go to Game Configuration. Select "GZDoom: Doom 2 (UDMF)" and click "add resource"; using the attached file-explorer, locate the Doom 2 folder on your computer's file system and add DOOM2.WAD to the list of resources, then do the same with gzdoom.pk3 in the GZDoom folder (making sure to switch the "Add Resource" tab from "From WAD" to "From PK3". Click Ok, and you're done!

If you want to put your custom graphics into the game, you simply create a WAD file in Slade, put your graphics in (more on that later) and save it; then when creating a map in UDB, this box will appear:

If you click "Add resource" here, you can then select your custom wad and use any assets, code etc. in your map!

How Slade works

This bit is a bit more complex because it deals with multiple file formats and methods of importing stuff, but I'll start simply by explaining textures, flats, sprites and patches.

Before I do that though, I need to talk about Markers. To define images as a sprite, patch or flat, you need to put them between a pair of Markers with specific names, which you can create by clicking the "New Entry" button:

"Empty (Marker)" is selected by default, so all you need to do is name it. The naming format is [LETTER]_START to start a section and [LETTER]_END to end one; S_Start/S_End are for sprites, P_Start/P_End are for patches, and F_Start and F_End are for flats. You can, additionally, further subdivide this by making another pair of Markers inside a Start/End pair with a number after the letter, but I'm not sure if this does anything (my only experience with it is that the Doom 2 wad file does this).

Now to explain how these things actually work! First, sprites. A sprite is an image that represents an object or creature in the game, and a cool thing that GZDoom does is let you use generic PNGs instead of Doom's proprietary GFX format. Sprites use the following naming scheme: a four-letter identifier, a single character denoting what frame of the animation the image represents (the Arch-Vile, which has the most sprites out of any monster in Doom 2, has frames that go from A all the way to Z, and then [, \ and ]), and finally a number from 0-8 that indicates the angle the Thing (that's the technical term for a Doom Engine entity, by the way) is at. Using the Imp as an example:

The "0" angle just means that the sprite should look the same regardless of the player's angle; this is used for items, decorations, the death animations of all monsters (including players), and the two sprites used for Doom II's final boss.

A cool thing about sprite angles is that you can actually make a sprite work for multiple angles; by adding an extra frame-letter and angle-number after the first set, you can do things like have a monster whose left and right walking frames are the same but mirrored by formatting the sprite's name as something like NAMEA2A8 (in fact, the Imp uses this technique for all its sprites apart from its death animation).

Next up, flats! Flats are square textures that are designed to go on floors or ceilings (though you can use them anywhere, including as sky textures!) but lack the flexibility of patch-based textures. You literally just. Import your texture and put it between F_Start and F_End. That's it. That's how a flat works.

And finally, patches. Patches are complicated, but very easy to use when you know what you're doing. First, put your image between P_Start and P_End, then right click it, put your mouse over the "Graphics" dropdown, and select "Add to Patch Table". You will then be prompted to create a TEXTURES lump; click "Ok" with the default settings. This creates a Texture1 lump, and the "Patch Table" (which is just a list of patches, which I will explain soon), alongside P_Start and P_End if they aren't already present (and a dummy texture). Double-click Texture1 to open it, and then select "New Texture" (you can adjust the scale, too):

Once this is done, go to the top-right corner and click "Add patch":

By default, you only have access to any patches you have assigned, but a cool trick I use in my own mapsets whenever I want to modify an official texture is to copy its Texture1 entry from the Doom 2 WAD, then paste it into my WAD's Texture1 and rename it. This does create copies of the constituent patches in your own wad's P_Start/P_End section, but you can delete those and it will still work fine.

Both patches and Flats are limited to 8-letter names, so be warned.

The actual final thing to talk about is converting PNGs to GFX; this is a simple process, but it can cause issues with colour. Basically, Doom has a very specific palette:

While this can look pretty good, on images it wasn't designed for or that use colours it doesn't feature, it can look pretty bad. For example, if I put this random image I made through the conversion process:

Then it comes out looking like this:

All the more cyan-adjacent hues become more blue, it nuked the antialiasing, and some of the gaps in my colouring are now much more obvious (especially on the fifth character's head and legs).

My point is, only do this if you want your mod to be compatible with more vanilla sourceports, or if you want to reduce the filesize. Otherwise, you're better off just using a strict palette when making the sprites and keeping them as PNGs.

Custom palettes are possible, but like. Literally all you do is click "New Entry", select "palette", name it, click the "Import from" button (purple page with a diagonal arrow on the top-middle of the palette-view window), set the filetype on the file explorer to "PNG", and import your custom palette image (which should be square (non-square images get squished and lose some colours) and 16x16 at the smallest, though the images I normally use are 128x128 because for some reason they're scaled up by a factor of 8, even though they display the same when imported regardless of size). You can even test them out or add them to the in-built palette list, which is nice. If you want it to override the default palette when your WAD is loaded, name the lump "PLAYPAL", which is what Doom's palette is called.

Now we get to talk about text lumps! I don't have much to say. Do the "New Entry" thing, select "Text", and name the file. The ZDoom wiki - which I will be linking to at the end - has information on each type, so check those out.

Map making

This is the final main section of this, and I'll try keeping it fairly brief and simple. Doom maps use four main elements; Vertices, Lines, Sectors, and Things. A Vertex is, well a vertex; it's a point in 2D space that acts as a starting or connecting point on a Line. Lines can be either walls or walkover triggers, depending on how you use them. Sectors can be rooms or shapes on the floor, and have properties such as damaging floors, being "underwater" (the player can swim and sound is muffled), or even having different gravity. Finally, a Thing is any entity that isn't one of those, ranging from monsters to player-starts to decorations, plus some complex technical ones I can't even begin to explain.

Useful resources

I am not good with words, but these places are!

ZDoom wiki - covers both regular ZDoom and GZDoom, plus other sourceports like the multiplayer-focused Skulltag and Zandronum. It has guides about ACS and ZScript, two of GZDoom's most useful tools for scripting maps and Things, respectively, as well as the obsolete "DECORATE" language which ZScript incorporates many elements of.

Dragonfly's Doomworks - mapping tutorial resource. I use their portal tutorial a lot whenever I want to put portals in a map.

Doomwiki - good for looking up monster and weapon stats for if you're making custom Things.