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MsKaye

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

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8 minutes ago, Jayextee said:

 

 

This has been addressed earlier in this thread; put simply, there's not a lot in it, but neither could've been done due to time/space capacity on a CD. And I believe it's only a couple of minutes over at that, without checking. It was probably an intentional, if not ideal, choice.

Thank you for the correction.  I'm glad someone worked out the math.  It's still a shame, as it negates any advantage to including an "audio CD" in the first place.  And, it still could have been FLAC on there.

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@Jimmy

 

It felt like I was watching a short TV documentary. You gotta make WAD reviews like this, maybe even game reviews.

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7 hours ago, noisebloom said:

 

I've primarily played the original Doom episodes + episode 4, and very rarely have played the average hardcore WAD or anything made by the community (but I have plans to!). I've only played Final Doom occasionally online, and only for a few minutes max. 

 

I found Sigil to be a natural progression of difficulty as an episode 5, for the most part, especially as Thy Flesh Consumed had three levels that were quite difficult. 

 

I almost feel like some of these reviewers have forgotten how hard Doom can be... 

Yeah I think if these guys had replayed TFC just before jumping on SIGIL they would have realized it isn't that out there. Though there are still people calling bullshit for E4M2 so I don't know haha.

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26 minutes ago, Dark Jaguar said:

Thank you for the correction.  I'm glad someone worked out the math.  It's still a shame, as it negates any advantage to including an "audio CD" in the first place.  And, it still could have been FLAC on there.

 

If it was a real audio CD then it would be slightly easier to patch support into the original DOS EXE to play it in the background!

(still not easy though because if I remember correctly, playing back CDs in DOS isn't as simple as just telling MSCDEX or something to play back a track, in Win95 via WinMM it can pretty much work like that though)

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4 hours ago, xttl said:

Here's the finished version of SIGIL.EXE for DOS. 

sigexe.zip

 That's cool, can you code in C? You could do a PR for RUDE then, it's a strong limit removing choco fork very close to vanilla in case you want to play with bugs and graphic glitches. :)

 I'd also like to add a menu entry for the unholy massacre skill, i'd need to add a rude.wad then.

Edit: someone asked so i'm adding the link.

 

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4 hours ago, Jimmy said:

 

Sigil is impossible to describe. What is Sigil? We just don't know.

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58 minutes ago, drfrag said:

 That's cool, can you code in C? You could do a PR for RUDE then, it's a strong limit removing choco fork very close to vanilla in case you want to play with bugs and graphic glitches. :)

 I'd also like to add a menu entry for the unholy massacre skill, i'd need to add a rude.wad then.

Edit: someone asked so i'm adding the link.

 

Check private msgs.

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5 hours ago, Quasar said:

hilarious picture

You know what's even worse? The version of README.txt included with Sigil 1.1 has an URL for the Doom wikia near the end... and an URL for the same page on the real Doom Wiki about halfway through under "GOING ONLINE".

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I just noticed that if you go to the outer edge in E5M5, the sectors which make up the cracks there don't damage the player at all (the one vanilla special sector type which has both blink and floor damage effects simultaneously had the wrong type of blinking for the ceiling cracks?).

 

Honestly I think the whole edge pit should be unreachable, either by making the distance larger and using the 20% damage type for area not in the immediate vicinity of the structures (so it's impossible to run there without taking so much damage you die) or using blocking linedefs... it's kinda ugly the way it is now, you can even see the textures on the pit walls which aren't lava.
 

But that's just my opinion and what I'd have done if this was my map.

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I've got some good news from the man himself.

 

Quote

Heya,

 

Glad to hear you like SIGIL. I’ll be doing par times for v1.2!

 

Cheers,

 

John

——————————————————————————----------------------------------------------------

John Romero

Romero Games Ltd.

 

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12 minutes ago, SamuelNMEvander said:

Any news of Beast Boxes shipping? Still haven't got my order from December.

 

I asked about mine last week and they said it will probably ship some time this week. The customer service rep also said they'll only send the email notification when the box is actually going to ship.

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Is there like a Bugzilla or something for SIGIL?

 

OK, nevermind. Bugreport:

  • Secret in E5M4 by first bunch of crushers isn't that much of secret for DOS releases (used SIGIL.WAD not COMPATIBLE WAD) 
  • And for for the love of God, DO STOP those crushers after player leaves "crusher area". It simply consumes all available channels on PC Speaker. No sound almost up to level exit, just crushers going.
  • Cracks are cool but drawing them makes game pretty unplayable on old rigs (386,486). Do you playtest these things under DOS or just new PC and GZDoom? 

E5M4.png

Edited by AnotherGrunt

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@AnotherGrunt I'm kind of amazed that you managed to run it on DosBox to be honest. It was meant for limit removing sourceports. That you didn't run the COMPAT version too.

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15 minutes ago, Kira said:

@AnotherGrunt I'm kind of amazed that you managed to run it on DosBox to be honest. It was meant for limit removing sourceports. That you didn't run the COMPAT version too.

 

He is using Xttl's Sigil.exe for DOS. See a few posts above on this very page.

 

And his first post about Sigil for Dos:

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/1994132

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11 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

 

He is using Xttl's Sigil.exe for DOS. See a few posts above on this very page.

Yup, but it works on pretty much everything. BOOM, MBF204, SIGIL.exe, old Eternity Engine (640x480, mouselook and jumping on DOS included!) with one exception: Legacy Doom. But it isn't propably WADs problem, Legacy was always crap to run.

Except it is really CPU heavy! Would by good GOG release, but engine need tweaks to run it.

MBF204_custom.png

EE.png

legacy.png

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39 minutes ago, Kira said:

@AnotherGrunt I'm kind of amazed that you managed to run it on DosBox to be honest. It was meant for limit removing sourceports. That you didn't run the COMPAT version too.

 

Any limit removing engine can load and play the maps because they use the vanilla map format and only vanilla specials. Budko made hacked versions of Doom/Doom2 v1.9 and Ultimate Doom v1.9 exes a long time ago (called Doom+ and Ultimate Doom+) which can run the COMPAT wad as-is, I just hacked the Ultimate Doom EXE a bit further to make it run the non-compat version similar to how it would work in advanced ports like GZDoom or Eternity, new episode menu and all.

 

However, some maps use textures in a way that doesn't work properly with the vanilla renderer. I don't know if that will be fixed in WAD v1.2 either because SIGIL isn't officially supposed to be vanilla compatible, the EXE I posted is just a completely unofficial and unsanctioned fun hack. I hope it will be!
 

52 minutes ago, AnotherGrunt said:

Is there like a Bugzilla or something for SIGIL?

 

OK, nevermind. Bugreport:

  • Secret in E5M4 by first bunch of crushers isn't that much of secret for DOS releases (used SIGIL.WAD not COMPATIBLE WAD) 
  • And for for the love of God, DO STOP those crushers after player leaves "crusher area". It simply consumes all available channels on PC Speaker. No sound almost up to level exit, just crushers going.
  • Cracks are pretty but drawing them makes game pretty unplayable on old rigs (386,486). Do you playtest these things under DOS or just new PC and GZDoom? 

E5M4.png

 

Romero uses GZDoom, yes. Still, the WAD has probably been extensively tested with other limit removing ports such as PrBoom+ but like I said, it isn't officially vanilla compatible and that was never promised, Romero and playtesters have nothing to do with the posted EXE file. I should probably add something about this in allcaps into the txt file included in the zip or even on every startup because people might not always read included text files...

 

What you have in your screenshot looks like a "medusa" error. Oh boy, I didn't know the WAD would have those too when played with the vanilla renderer, I only knew about the tutti-frutti errors... This happens if the mapper uses multi-patch textures as the middle texture on a two-sided line. This bug can cause really, really bad slowdown if you play on old hardware even when there is no extensive detailing otherwise.

 

Even only reasonably detailed maps can cause slowdown on a 486DX4 and especially on any 386 by the way, maps which don't even exceed unpatched vanilla limits. I think none of the SIGIL maps has a properly calculated reject lump though (they're all zero rejects), that will surely slow down things a lot further.

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20 minutes ago, xttl said:

Even only reasonably detailed maps can cause slowdown on a 486DX4 and especially on any 386 by the way, maps which don't even exceed unpatched vanilla limits. I think none of the SIGIL maps has a properly calculated reject lump though (they're all zero rejects), that will surely slow down things a lot further.

 

Honestly? Is not that bad. With hiccups playable on high-end i486DX2, I guess (no HIRES though). But some areas are real renderer killer (Cracks, Cages of the Damned, Abaddon's Void outside). Maybe some reasonable VISPLANE limit wasn't that bad idea after all.

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After doing my ironman I said what I think of Sigil, and one of my viewers were kind enough to clip that for me. Also, 1:11 UV-Speed first 'speedrun attempt' on E5M8, maybe I should record a demo and see what I can actually achieve on this heh.

 

 

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Is it just me or do the maps feel like Romero had fun making them :D?

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8 minutes ago, StainlessSteel said:

Here is an E5M8 speedrun I recorded, nothing super special, done on GZdoom, don't have the demo for it, done on HMP.

GZDoom speedruns generally aren't accepted for non-GZDoom mapsets. You'll want to look at using a gameplay compliant port like PRBoom+.

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9 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

GZDoom speedruns generally aren't accepted for non-GZDoom mapsets. You'll want to look at using a gameplay compliant port like PRBoom+.

 

That's good to know!  I'll be honest I did it for fun if anything, I don't expect that run to be accepted by any type of speedrunners in the community, I just play DOOM casually as this is my first attempt at any type of speed run in my 2 decades of playing doom

Edited by StainlessSteel

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I wanted to add my two cents on the more frustrating moments in the levels.

I enjoyed dodging the crushers, but did not enjoy being introduced to their presence via instant death.  Seeing them through a window in a winding tunnel leading to that room (like say, jerks are shooting at me and I fire back, hitting an eye which triggers a crusher to kill my oppressors) would be a nice alert that "crushers are ahead".  Use the same textures in the "preview room" as are used in that upcoming room, and that'll clue in the more observant players that they should be wary.

Ah those cyberdemons... I had no issues with them.  Those stomping hooves serve as an excellent foreshadowing.  I had been worried I was going to be stuck with far too little ammo to kill them and thus not realistically able to 100% a couple levels, but just like Perfect Hatred (E4M2) there's hidden teleporters to let me burst out of their stomachs like Hoss Delgado.  Having to dodge their fire until then certainly made that level a lot more interesting than if they hadn't been there.

Then there's the "trap pits".  Personally, I believe any time you introduce a pit like that in a level there should always either be a way out (such as a switch or even a secret filled tunnel) OR the floor should simply be instant death so you don't spent an eternity scrambling for an exit that isn't there while your health slowly ticks away.  One or the other, never both, and I have a preference for the former.  Considering Romero has been a fan of "inescapable pits" since Toxin Refinery (E1M3), it's not exactly uncharacteristic of his design, but it isn't what I prefer.

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I liked the use of the cyberdemons for the most part. They're missile turrets basically as others have said and they make the maps more exciting, if you don't want to deal with them that's what HMP is for.

 

The more I play the more I still detest the crushers though. They're destined to become an iconic and infamous part of Sigil that people will talk about years from now if the WAD is ever brought up I'm sure, but I still hate them.

 

I was just thinking it's kind of funny seeing people either jazzed or annoyed by the difficulty since back when Romero first started streaming it people were worried he wasn't good enough at the game anymore to make truly difficult levels and that what was hard for him would be a breeze for us.

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26 minutes ago, Gunstar Green said:

I liked the use of the cyberdemons for the most part. They're missile turrets basically as others have said and they make the maps more exciting, if you don't want to deal with them that's what HMP is for.

 

The more I play the more I still detest the crushers though. They're destined to become an iconic and infamous part of Sigil that people will talk about years from now if the WAD is ever brought up I'm sure, but I still hate them.

 

I was just thinking it's kind of funny seeing people either jazzed or annoyed by the difficulty since back when Romero first started streaming it people were worried he wasn't good enough at the game anymore to make truly difficult levels and that what was hard for him would be a breeze for us.

I liked the hidden room that could start and stop the crushers, that was a nice bone tossed our way.

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