Jon has been mailing people to try and prod us into progressing with Freedoom. Apparently I signed up to make the HELP2 graphic. This is good news to me, as I distinctly remember signing up to make a level some years back, so it is a relief to discover that I'm not being held to that.

I had to go away and look up what HELP2 was, as it must be 10 years since I have seen it. It is the final screen that you see after pressing past the end text of E1M8 ("Once you beat the big badasses and clean out the moon base you're supposed to win, aren't you?" etc) — but only in the shareware version (in the retail version, you get the credits). It is the screen with id's phone number, please-pay-us-money hype, and some grainy screenshots of episode 2 and 3. And I mean grainy — think 320x200 screenshots, scaled down and cropped to 70x90, then inset back into a 320x200 splash screen). Would you buy a game on the strength of this?

Now, I know screens were smaller then, but even allowing for that, it's a crummy screenshot. Good for them that Doom sold on the strength of the Knee-Deep, and not by their grainy advertising screenshots.

Next I took a look at Freedoom's existing HELP and HELP1, which are fairly lame, so I reckon I can match those. A few minutes later I realised why — I made Freedoom's HELP and HELP1. Oh well.