SIGIL v1.21 - New Romero megawad [released!]

If there were no circles it would be fine. 

- added UMAPINFO lump for general future support (props to Shadow Hog)

Well it's not nearly as impressive a credit as Jimmy's, but this is still surreal to see.

There is still a bug already present in the original version: in M5, the first secret is openable as a normal door by monsters. In fact, the new DEMO2 lump does exhibit this bug: a demon will open the first secret. Perhaps, the second secret is affected as well, I haven’t checked it.

see it as a feature

8 hours ago, Rathori said:

Breaking speedrun routes sounds like a dick move tbh. Was it really necessary?

Consider it an arms race or ... a challenge!

Not a speedrunner, but also not a huge fan of the changes to the ending of M4, honestly.  Thought the map was broken when the exit didn't open up like it used to.  With how the route goes now, I feel like the current path through the lava just kinda artificially extends the level, and not in a good way.

Just my two cents.

It seems like a fresh hotfix...

Changelog, as always: https://pastebin.com/YJqSWATa

Although there is nothing really exciting, just minor tweaks in the DEHACKED lumps.

When I bought it, I received a SendOwl link with 5 downloads allowed.

They don't reset the download limit when they release new versions.

If this keeps up, I'm eventually going to need to email someone (I assume using the contact form at romerogames.ie) to have my download limit reset, before I can download further updates.

The only updates are to the level WADs that are available for free. The music WADs are (so far) untouched.

That being said, the download limit is extremely silly.

4 hours ago, dugan said:

When I bought it, I received a SendOwl link with 5 downloads allowed.

 

They don't reset the download limit when they release new versions.

 

If this keeps up, I'm eventually going to need to email someone (I assume using the contact form at romerogames.ie) to have my download limit reset, before I can download further updates.

Does a download from the https://www.romerogames.ie website affect your SendOwl count?

Like @chungy said, the music WADs are (so far) untouched.

Hallo,

duh ... that was fast :/ 1.2 -> 1.21. Hope this version is playable like ver 1.1 was.

All 1.21 does is revert the Dehacked change to make it like 1.1 again. Everything else is the same as 1.2.

Did it already happen in 1.1 that the Cyberdemon makes his first appearance on HMP only in E5M5 instead of E5M4, and even then only as stationary threat?

Anyway, a good change. Much easier to deal with him now (can even ignore him if you don't want to go for the secret).

1 hour ago, NightFright said:

Did it already happen in 1.1 that the Cyberdemon makes his first appearance on HMP only in E5M5 instead of E5M4

Wait, there is a cyberdemon in E5M5 on HMP now? In 1.0 or 1.1, there was no cyberdemon on E5M5 (if memory serves me right).

7 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

Wait, there is a cyberdemon in E5M5 on HMP now? In 1.0 or 1.1, there was no cyberdemon on E5M5 (if memory serves me right).

There wasn't, just re-checked how E5M5 looked like to avoid confusing the maps and there was no Cyber on HMP in the initial release version.

The new CD is stuck on a small island close to the blue access door in E5M5. You have to pass him if you want to get the Soulsphere secret (unless you want to take the long way around the building, which is a bad idea without a radsuit). Killing it isn't necessary, though, and avoiding the rockets is mostly easy until you need to enter the blue access building for the yellow key.

The fight is still more tolerable than the close-quarter encounter in E5M4 before. It's kinda "spicing up" the map a bit, which isn't a bad thing.

Nothing changed about the Cybie in the E5M9 fortress, btw. It remains a hairy encounter, just like before.

Just in case anyone is interested, there is a fork of the unofficial MBF 2.04 which adds native support for nerve.wad, sigil.wad (yes, sigil.wad, not sigil_compat.wad) and masterlevels.wad.

https://github.com/Sakitoshi/mbf_sigil

10 hours ago, Linguica said:

All 1.21 does is revert the Dehacked change to make it like 1.1 again. Everything else is the same as 1.2.

Ah thanks for the info. I don't plan on playing the newer versions of SIGIL for quite a while but i was wondering why there was a new one so quickly. I guess i could of just checked the changelog ;)

I downloaded 1.2 and then the next day there was an updated version already (1.21) haha! You guys work fast!

Two more differences I noticed in the last two levels (HMP):

- E5M7: In the final area before the yellow access door leading to the exit, there's no monsters shooting you in the back when you enter the place. Also no dickish Baron encounter right after the yellow skull door.

- E5M8: There's a crusher to take care of some caged Cacos, a Baron and Lost Souls, so you don't have to waste ammo on them. Replacing the Invulnerability Sphere with an eye... meh. I actually thought it was original to end the episode the way it did before. You think this is preparing you for a big fight, but then it just doesn't happen. As if Hell is trolling you.

Instead of removing the eye, they also could have added a huge spawn wave of monsters after collecting the sphere, so you have to make your remaining ammo count or you are screwed. Would have been a way more memorable ending. Oh well.

General verdict of v1.2:

The whole thing got more playable, especially on HMP. Delaying the Cyberdemon until E4M5 and then making it stationary was definitely the right call. You get more ammo in general and finding better weapons early is a bit easier, especially for those pistol starters out there. The last two levels are also a BIT more bearable, but some critical passages remain:

- E5M4 crusher maze is still bad, but at least now you see where the "crushers crush", so you know where you shouldn't stay very long. The broken teleporter that stops the crushers has been removed, which sounds bad, but since you were never able to make everything stop at the right moment to pass through flawlessly, it's probably better like this.

- E5M7 remains a pain maze and drains your health a lot, but I guess that's the point.

- If you don't waste cells too much, Spider Mastermind and Cyberdemon at the end of E5M8 shouldn't pose any real threat.

I guess we are getting there. Wouldn't change too much more. How about a better episode ending text, though? The few lines that you get are really totally generic and suck. I could come up with a far better ending story than that, and I bet many of you as well.

Wait what? The teleport pads on E5M4 were removed? That stinks.

It was actually possible to stop what you had to and pass through the section with their help, perhaps the section now gives more clear hints about where to go, but I have mixed feelings about their removal.

Yeah, there's no way to stop the crushers any more now. I was also disappointed. At least there could have been a hidden mechanism to completely retract the crushers into the ceiling or something, but like this you just need to rely on proper timing. Like I wrote, you can now see where the crushers come down, so it's easier to realize where it's safe to stand and where it isn't, but the whole section has lost little of its annoyance.

I'll have to re-check it again when I go back to Sigil, but based on what I've seen in the changelog, there's been some major changes in that area anyway, so perhaps there's some kind of trade-off going on - no way to stop them anymore, but it's also easier to avoid getting crushed. Perhaps as a means to balance things out because indeed, those pads rendered the crushers obsolete. Once timed properly, the whole area lost its danger.

I do agree with the idea of adding a hidden secret with a switch somewhere, but since the area went through an overhaul, it'd need to be a super secret/very well hidden.

From what I remember, all the crushers were deadly because the Doom engine doesn't let you start/stop strong and weak crushers simultaneously or change one type to the other. Are they still all deadly crushers even though that rationale has been removed?

I didn't try them all, but where I got caught by the crusher it didn't stop before I was as flat as a pancake.

On lundi 23 septembre 2019 at 6:22 PM, Revenant100 said:

Man, all these changes in the changelog, but still no fix for the incorrect aspect ratio on the TITLEPIC, WIMAP2, CREDIT, HELP1, PFUB1, and PFUB2 graphics? Everything's 20% taller than intended!

 

Oh well, at least this 1.2 patch didn't introduce any new incorrectly aspect ratio'd graphics.

 

Wait a minute, what's this new graphics lump?

 

 

ROMEROOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

Be the change you want to be and stuff.

1. Get 750x750 image from Chris Lovell's site.

2. Resize to 750x625.

3. Crop a 512x512 area centered on the sigil figure

4. Mess with colors to try to kinda match the patch. Alternatively just do whatever strikes your fancy, like just cranking up saturation everywhere.

5. Resize to 128x128 (or 256x256 for hi-res users -- no need to go through neural upscaling for this one)

6. Apply Doom palette.

By no mean are my examples meant to be perfect, they're just the result of two minutes of randomly messing with GIMP.

I noticed that most of the issues  I reported for v1.1 are still present in 1.21.

Repeated here ...

e3m2

1. Sector 123 probably should have had ceil5_2 for the floor.
2. I used an editor to find out that line 897 had to be crossed to exit the level.Maybe an exit sign at sector 126 or another clue to indicate that said line needs to be walked over.

e3m4 
ceiling of sector 180 should probably be dem1_5.

e3m5

Should the ceilings of sectors 123 and 124 be ceil4_1 , unless they were supposed to be a break in the ceiling, letting the 'sky" through ?

e3m6

bad x alignment at lines 570,571, 517

e3m7 .

Since the distance between vertex 3460 ( now 3507 and 3469 in v1.12  ) and 3498 is quite narrow, if the player falls into the lava to the west of these vertices, the player is trapped and dies. Might be your intention ? Maybe make sector 521 a lift sector like sector 520.

e3m9 

I think that sector 14 should have had the same ceiling height as sector 208 - adjoining sky sectors. Look up.

Mind. Blown.

That said, there's one thing I'll say about the composition of the uncorrected version of SIGILTEX: I like how it's better inscribed into the space. The bottom tip of the pentagram touches the border of the texture, the horns touch the upper corners.