I've been working on lots of Doom stuff! I started a new project called Sleep Deprived based on a green and fuchsia color palette I made while messing around. It's meant to be a smaller project so hopefully it won't take forever to finish (clueless)
I also made three maps for Synami Speedmapping Sessions 01! A speedmapping community project with a 3h hour limit and a night-time theme.
I'm not used to speedmapping so it was quite a challenge, but a very fun one! I'm actually pretty happy with how the maps turned out, they're kinda rough visually but really enjoyable in the gameplay department (for the most part lol)
Devolved, the second map I made, I think suffered the most from the time limit. There's one fight that is simply way harder than anything else in the level and because I put so much time into visuals and the voodoo setup of one of the key fights I had leave the final area completely undetailed, but I'm still decently proud of it.
The last map I made was the only one I actually finished within the time limit, and it's probably the best of them despite being the shortest and easiest. I'm really happy with the result -v-
I also made speedmidis with a self-imposed 1:30hrs time limit to accompany the maps and even a couple for my friend DeetOpianSky's maps! If you make something for the project, feel free to send me a DM and I'll write you a midi c:
While this was going on I decided I wanted to get better at the game, and what better way than to start recording demos?
One of the main sources of maps to play has been the DOOMED Index! A more lighthearted competition where the goal is to simply max levels without having to shoot for good times, so if you're thinking on trying to single-segment stuff and would like a more tangible goal to aim for, I highly recommend checking it out.
To archive these runs in a more readily available way, I also made a second Youtube channel with a Doom focus where I'm gonna be putting videos of all of these challenges as a way to document my attempts at improving.
The runs tend to not be great because I suffer a lot from REC Light Syndrome which makes you lose at least 75% of your skill as soon as you know you're recording, but it does mean a lot of funny shenanigans happen when playing, so check it out if you'd like lol
And of course, you can catch me live on Twitch if you wanna see me mapping or playing wads and stuff.
Anyways, thanks a lot for reading all of this stuff! Have a good one and see ya next time -v-
09_[NOVA] (07/08/2025)
On May 12 I was walking my sister back from school when I noticed something strange moving on the sidewalk. On closer inspection it turned out to be a butterfly walking on the concrete.
I don't know what had happened to it, but it's wings were crumpled and folded inwards. My first instinct was to grab it and leave it on some nearby grass patch, but the truth is without the ability to fly it would not survive for long either way.
After deliberating for a bit I decided to take it home and left it on some bushes with flowers outside while I thought of how I could possibly help it further.
I ended up grabbing an old plastic box I had somewhere, covering the surfaces with kitchan paper it could walk on, and adding a mixture of branches and flowers to make a makeshift butterfly house.
I was playing NOVA: The Birth at the time so I named her Nova 'cause it's a badass name.
It took a bit of getting used to feeding her, I tried with honey and orange solutions but what ended up sticking was cutting up orange slices and placing her on top so she would taste it and eat, though sometimes I had to extend her proboscis manually with a toothpick since she had trouble balancing herself because of her wings' state.
And so, I learned to take care of an injured butterfly! I originally didn't think she would live for long even in a controlled environment, after all that was no life for a butterfly, but she kept surprising me every day with how active she was despite everything.
Sometimes it was very nerve wracking. Not being able to properly balance made it so that sometimes she would get flipped upside down and it was always anxiety inducing trying to get her back on her feet.
I also tried to take her outside to bask in the Sun often, but it eventually became complicated because she appeared very close to the start of winter, so later on it was too cold outside for a butterfly and on top of that it was cloudy a lot so not much Sun anyways.
On the 10th of July, almost 9 weeks after I took her in, Nova passed away.
I saw it coming because the last couple of days she was noticeably inactive, on the last day she literally couldn't even move her legs so I just had to place her manually on the orange for her to feed and was incapable of fluttering around at all.
I remember leaving her feeding and then going to eat dinner in the living room, then coming back and finding her completely still.
Like I said, it's no life for a butterfly not to be able to fly, but I hope I was able to at least provide a good home and a comfortable life.
I'll miss you, Nova.
08_[IT'S BEEN A WHILE!] (07/08/2025)
Hi c:
Did you miss me? ...Well, glad to see ya -v-
Lots of things have been going on in the time I completely forgot to update this place. I decided instead of doing one incredibly long post talking about everything, I'll break it down into a couple of them to facilitate reading.
In terms of the site, I think the home page is kind of a waste of space so I'll try to reorganize it to be a bit more efficient, make the updates into a scrollable box on the side, add more stamps, and adding a sidebar for quick access to important projects or something along those lines.
It's kind of a shame it's been so long since I last worked on this 'cause I almost feel like I have to relearn everything I knew about HTML and CSS now :'v
I also intend to add a new section to host my midis, which will be free to use for Doom wads or whatever else you want, though I haven't decided how I'll format the page yet nor if it goes into the [MUSIC] section or the [DOOM] section. Maybe both? lol
On a completely different topic, I'm back to streaming on Twitch! I don't have a schedule or anything, but there are chances you'll find me streaming Doom-related stuff, either mapping or playing, at stupid hours of the night ...and I think I'll stick with it this time!
I used to stream variety gaming but honestly I didn't enjoy it much for whatever reason, I'd get burned out and then end up not playing anything for weeks and that's why I've been streaming like twice a year for the past couple of years. Focusing on one game has somehow revitalized my enjoyment of streaming and I'm having lots of fun so I'll keep doing it for the forseeable future -v-
I'm also still working with the band on the recording of our first album. It's sadly going way slower than I'd like but progress is being made.
AND we're also playing our first live show in years! It's a 45 min set, which is a problem because a bunch of our tunes are in the 5-7 minute range, and that means we won't be able to play everything we'd like, but it'll be fun anyways!
Anyways, thanks for reading this far! I'll get to writing the other posts that will be published together anyways, so see ya in like 3 seconds lol
07_[NIC & THE VSTS RELEASE] (14/03/2025)
THE ALBUM IS FINALLY OOOOUUUTT
So that's actually one of those resolutions which I didn't expect to do at all, well, done!
I did notice that Bandcamp embeds show the cover art for the featured track, and since WTM had it's own single artwork that means the main cover isn't displayed on embed.
WTM is my fav track from the album but I don't really like the main art not being shown so I may have to change the featured thingy to a different song...
On a different topic, this means free time is now gonna go towards Método Socrático and Insanopathy progress, but mostly band stuff 'cause I'm starting to feel a rush on that front again.
At the same time I kinda wanna do a revamp of this site's home page; now that I have more things to put in it having one big scrolling thing feels like a waste of space so I may move some things to the sides of the main box.
Anyways, I'm really proud of this album and the output of stuff I've had recently in general and I hope y'all enjoy it as much as I do. Thanks for reading and see you next time!
06_[NIC & THE VSTS ACTUAL ANNOUNCEMENT] (07/03/2025)
After much deliveration (15 minutes staring at the wall), I decided to release a single from the album c:
So yeah, nic & the VSTs is real and coming out on March 14th!
With it comes a big change: pricing. I'm pricing this thing at 6$.
I was originally pretty dead set on releasing all my solo music pay-what-you want style with no minimum price, but at this point I'm very much still figuring out self-releasing music, so I might as well experiment and see how the album fares with an actual value attached to it.
This also allows me to release it as a pre-order, so I don't have to release WMT as a standalone single on BC and can instead keep it inside the album.
When you see this post I'll probably be making the album page on the [MUSIC] side of things, so excuse me if the site is a bit of a mess at the moment.
As always, thanks for reading and hope you enhoy the song and the album when the time comes! See ya!
05_[NIC & THE VSTS NOT QUITE ANNOUNCEMENT] (04/03/2025)
Hey hey. So nic & the VSTs (that's my new album) is now 100% done. Mixing, mastering, cover art, it's done; but now I'm struggling with the post-making-the-album side of things.
Should I release a single? I'm only putting this stuff on bandcamp, youtube and I guess maybe soundcloud so I dont know if it's worth it. Plus the fact that if I do release single/s they should be spaced out delaying the release even further.
And they should probably have videos too but I don't have the budget and equipment to make anything actually cool; on top of not really knowing if I'm comfortable with recording myself and showing my face on camera.
A part of me kinda wants to call it a day and release it now. Like sometime this week, but I know that that would just kill the album before even having a chance to be discovered.
To be fair I made this for myself, I really needed to make this thing and I think it's good and succeeds where it matters for me, but it would almost feel like purposefully burying it, which I don't really want.
We'll see I guess.
Also, yet another completely unrelated overglorified Peri doodle of Kalina, one of my fav characters. (This is a lower quality 8-bit version so it loads faster tho lol)
04_[ALBUM PROGRESS, LD AND PERI] (23/02/2025)
Hai! You can probably tell that "weekly updates" are most likely not gonna happen because I lack consistency for this sorta thing, I have good news though.
In the first place: the new nic15 album is content complete! Meaning every song is fully recorded. The next steps are to finish mixing and then actually making the artwork for the project.
Hopefully the album should be out next month if nothing goes wrong. I may put out a single before the release if I can muster some kind of visualizer for it.
In other news, there's a game I've been lightly helping my friend HonkyHood with. Mostly playtesting, mechanical feedback and helping with some sfx.
At the last second, I was asked to make music for one of the stages in the now released demo, so now I am officially a composer for it alongside another friend of the house: Pelalito.
The game is called Lunar Drifter and I'd appreciate it if you check it out! It's an arena horde shooter based on RE Mercenaries.
And the final thing I wanna talk about is Peripeteia.
I've been following this game for the last two years, since I found the Arcology demo on Steam. After finishing I replayed it over, and over, and over again, and I eventually went back and played all the older available demos.
It's an immersive sim with immense maps, cyberpunk atmosphere, great writing, lots of jank and little to no handholding.
The other day, the game finally came out on early access with 5 maps and I heavily recommend you take a look at it. It's bound to be a polarizing game, so I also recommend you play the demo first to see if you vibe with it.
I've been observing the devs and collaborators' progress since I played it myself and they've done such a great job with everything. Legitimately one of my favorites games of all time already and it ain't even finished.
I leave you with another little doodle I made of the game's protagonist a while ago. Have a good one and thanks for reading!
03_[MORE DRAWING AND NEW ALBUM PRODUCTION] (13/01/2025)
Hello everybody! (Who?)
I've been thinking on maybe doing weekly updates here, to keep a more constant stream of something when I don't feel like writing about anything in particular and just talk about the general status of my projects, so this may be the first edition if I actually go through with it lol.
Anyways, I worked on a bunch of different things this week.
First of all, I drew on another Magma with friends. This time I doodled Marie from Peripeteia (I am so excited for Peri, coming out Feb 21st btw), but then I felt like turning it into a bigger drawing with a background and another character (Nietzschka).
At some point in the process I remembered I have no clue what I'm doing and don't know how to draw backgrounds so I started simplifying anything not-the-main-focus.
I finished working on it at like 6am, went to sleep, and woke up at 9 from a dream where I had forgotten some small detail in the drawing, something about a blue light. I checked the drawing and nothing looked wrong, but after I posted it someone told me the cig was not lit and felt like exploding :'v
I've also continued working on editing the drums and bass from Micro Universe, but editing is more of a practical thing, not really a creative process, and it can end up becoming tedious; so I took a little break and ended up writing, reacording, mixing and basically finishing a completely new song in a day.
This was the catalyst for a new music project (ANOTHER THING THAT WON'T BE RELEASED FOR 56 YEARS YIPPIIEE), featuring rerecorded/remixed versions of those old "The Scuff" songs + a bunch of new ones to actually make it album-lenght.
I have outlines for all the new stuff and a plan for the updated old songs, so unless I end up slacking I may actually be able to finish this relatively quickly.
And yeah, that's about all the important stuff I've done this week artistically. Not really a very interesting post but I really wanted to talk about these things a bit more.
I may add little snippets for music stuff I'm working on, but I haven't figured out the best way to do so yet.
But that's about it for now, thanks for reading and see ya next time!
02_[MAGMA] (03/01/2025. Edit: 06/01/2025)
I'm not really a drawing person. I'm not good at it and I don't really have the tools or patience to get better; but the last couple of days I've been drawing with friends in a Magma canvas.
Since I don't like streaming with that stolen Okuu vtube, I've been thinking about trying to design an OC to replace it and just use the typical pngtuber setup, but I obviously can't do that if I don't feel confident at all in my drawing skills, so this is a really nice way to let loose a bit and mess around.
I don't think I care enough about my drawings to make a new section on the site, so I think I'll just drop a couple doodles from the Magma in here 'cause I'm actually quite happy with how they came out, specially the Nobunaga.
Edit: I added the two other decent drawings I made on that same canvas. I really like the Abby.
Feel free to right click to see them full size (they're really small anyways lmao)
01_[HI] (03/01/2025)
Hi! I have no idea how to set up a real, easier to maintain and keep organized-blog so I decided I'm gonna brute force through it and just keep adding stuff here manually.
I don't think the posts are gonna be very topical so for now it'll be fine to just wing it without any kind of tagging system and having it be one long scroll of thoughts.
On a different thought: happy new years! I hope everyone reading has a good start of the year.
I don't really ever write resolutions or take that type of thing seriously but I guess I do have a couple of goals for this year as a minimum:
-Finish recording, mixing and release my band's debut album.
We've been working on this thing for like the past 5 years, which sounds ridiculous, but when you're self-funded and have 0 budget it's quite hard to get to the level where you can get decent drum recordings lol
But we're inching closer to the finish line. Bassist man finished tracking a week ago, so now the only things left to record are some guitars, additional percussions, piano on one song and vocals.
-Finish at least 2 episodes of my Doom wad.
Honestly, I think 2 episodes might be undershooting, but I'd rather be able to say "I did more than I expected!" than overscoping and burning out with nothing to show.
I do have a solid plan for the first two episodes, spanning maps 01 to 11, so I think the best course is to just get that done before deciding what the rest is gonna be.
-Make the companion-piece to last year's Without A Name.
I've had making a sequel/small part 2 of this album in my mind since it's very inception, I even have the cover art ready and some demos that I made simultaneously with the main album, but things came up and it never went anywhere.
I've had some inspiration recently though and now I have a rough tracklist and themes to work with. It's not gonna be as experimental but more exploring through the same styles already featured in the main project.
-Finding a home for The Scuff.
The Scuff is an old project circa 2020 where I just wrote a bunch of songs with basically 0 production during the start of the pandemic. The songs are there and they're pretty good but I think a touchup would be really nice to them, so I'd like to just grab 'em and polish 'em, maybe even re-record a couple and release them as they're own new thing.
That's it for the big goals, but I do have some smaller things to do as well.
I definitely wanna work out something different for the backgrounds of this site; I like the scanlines and everything but I've had a bunch of friends tell me they hurt their eyes so I think an alternative is inbound.
No idea what for now but it's necessary.
That was a whole lot of ranting about not much in particular, so I think I'll wrap this entry around here.
I'll probably write new stuff in this section periodically or whenever anything interesting happens/occurs to me and I feel like mumbling about it.
