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John Romero announces SIGIL. DOOM free (mega)wad, February 2019. Limited Run physical edition also
- Thread starter disgraciau
- Start date
It was delayed due to issues in manufacturing the physical version. But it looks like those boxes started shipping today, so the free version should be available a week from now, assuming they're sticking to the original plan.
As far as I know, the new soundtrack is only available in-game in the physical version.
Correct. The free version is just MIDI but you can buy the Buckethead stuff here: https://music.bucketheadpikes.com/album/sigil-soundtrack
Note, it's mostly a "best of" the bucket.
I just downloaded it. It comes with the normal version and one labeled COMPAT which is mentioned in the README as being for Chocolate Doom. If you use this WAD SIGIL will overwrite episode 3. Seems like you're all set.
I played it for a bit in Chocolate Doom but it crashed a few times. I'm not sure if that's my fault or not. But yeah, as mentioned above, it ships with an extra WAD specifically for the more strict engines.
I am curious because I only used Chocolate Doom for many years (and before that I wasn't using a sourceport at all) - why do you still use CD?
Man, I've never listened to Buckethead before. This music is fucking awesome. Are they selling the music anywhere? How indicative of his usual work is this stuff?
I agree with him on how dark some sections are and the lack of health packs. But, I'm liking it so far after having finished the first three levels. I'd pay for another pack from him, especially if he moved on to Doom 2.
I agree with him on how dark some sections are and the lack of health packs. But, I'm liking it so far after having finished the first three levels. I'd pay for another pack from him, especially if he moved on to Doom 2.
I wonder if I can get this running in gzdoom. I've had a lot of bad luck with it though so I won't get my hopes up.
He slobbered all over it despite the fact that it shipped with piles and piles of bugs, issues and inconsistencies that anyone familiar with Blood would spot a mile away.
kinda new to the wad thing but... i thought gzdoom was the go-to standard? never had any issues with it personally
What Sinatar said plus it seemed really weird when for example Civvie11 put out a quick video warning people about how the release is broken and needs to be patched, he even showed examples of some of the broken things and they were indeed things anyone that played Blood before would notice really fast. So then you had one video saying how brilliant the release is and another video saying it's broken with examples. I haven't followed both for very long but since then, Gman is on my watch list of people to not trust too much with what they are saying.
For Sigil, so far he seems to be the only one not liking it, at least from what I saw.
It's pretty clear that Romero designed the maps with doom's software lighting/fake contrast in mind, not gzdoom's fucky overly dark sector lighting. It also sounds like the design ethos for these maps is as an evolution of e4m2 and e4m6, which are my favorite vanilla maps so everything gman whines about actually sounds fantastic to me. Making challenging maps based around restrictive geometry and ammo starvation may not be to the tastes of modern slaughtermap enthusiasts or the way community maps have generally been for the last decade, but it's still a perfectly valid way to design the game and is very much in-line with his previous work. "I can't run past enemies" is one of the most bizarre complaints I've seen about a map.
Regardless I stopped watching gman a while ago, once i got tired of him screaming 'artificial difficulty!' in every other video. Civvie is one of the few fps-focused video makers that still manage to entertain and give meaningful critique.
Regardless I stopped watching gman a while ago, once i got tired of him screaming 'artificial difficulty!' in every other video. Civvie is one of the few fps-focused video makers that still manage to entertain and give meaningful critique.
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As an aside, there are numerous references to E4 throughout. The second level is practically a parody of E4M2 (cyberdemon, the map start, etc.).
I'm having a hard time adding stuff to it beyond the standard stuff included (Ultimate Doom, Doom 2, TNT, Plutonia). Had to find a special patch someone made that recompiles the Master Levels from steam into a special WAD but even that took some luck.
When I look for guides online it's all very confusing as there's what seems like hundreds of variations of zdoom out there and a lot of the guides are complicated and out of date.
If I put the sigil WAD in my gzdoom folder will it just automatically show up in my list of choices when I run gzdoom?
i'd argue that prboom-plus is still the gold standard for doom ports with near perfect vanilla and boom compatibility. g/zdoom doesn't care as much about boom compatibility (and doesn't care at all about vanilla), it just kind of does it's own thing. i keep it around to play mods designed for it, but i always use prboom for any standard limit-removing or boom format map.
You can just drag sigil.wad (+ sigil_shreds.wad if you have that) to gzdoom.exe and that's all you need to do.
what i do is have the wads as desktop shortcut and drag n drop to gzdoom. works fine though sometimes i have to do trial and error as to which game to open (most run off doom 2 but some are Heretic, maybe an odd wad ran off Ultimate Doom now and again)
but sigil is a big deal, they're even charging for it (if you so choose to pay). i would think it's very "out of the box" playable
Interesting. There are various options for sector lighting in GZDoom (Options -> Display Options -> OpenGL Renderer -> Sector Light Mode: Standard,Bright,Doom,Dark,Legacy,Software). For some reason the GZDoom default is "Dark" which seems to be the problem here. If you are right, we just have to set it to "Doom" or "Software" and the maps should look closer to what Romero intended.
Edit: An interesting discussion about what those modes actually do can be found here:
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I was just playing around with GZDoom and found that I like True Color SW Renderer far more than the default video mode. I also tried Doom SW Renderer but it seems to have trouble with Sigil. The textures in the very first room look really weird in Doom SW Renderer!
I think Sigil rules. I get that it might be disappointing for a lot of people deep in the DOOM community, but it's really fun
As someone who adores the incredible "current-gen" community works like BTSX, AA, and Eviternity, it's not bad at all. If you like Romero's style of map from thy flesh consumed (which you should - i still posit that e4m2 is the best vanilla map ever made), that's exactly what you're getting here.
It's unfortunate that gman didn't like it and that's probably going to color the opinions of a lot of folks, but his review comes across to me as someone who has a very narrow view of what Doom is.
How is it hard to understand that people have high hopes for a new set of levels made by the person responsible for the best parts of the original Doom?
"The original creator is doing a new thing with their old thing" is usually a big deal, no matter the price tag.
Having played a bit (the first 4 levels or so) I think it's alright. I'm not a huge fan of the use of lava and damaging floors which are unavoidable as far as I could tell, which is a pain if you take too much damage earlier. I'm no Doom prodigy, but losing a minimum of 10/15 health 3/4s through a map before opening a door to a zombieman, shotgunguy, a pinky and an Imp on a narrow ledge seems a little more mean than challenging (plus a cacodemon or two if you didn't kill them earlier). Layout-wise the levels are not as straightforward as I was expecting, and the exit to the second level took me so long to find I was sure I was missing something.
I've also been playing TNT and that's a hell (heh) of a lot more spiteful in spawns, so Sigil is comparatively fine in that regard. It's not easy but it isn't all that cheap. I'll try finish later and see if I change my mind. I'll try that lighting change in GzDoom above too. That's probably a good idea.
I suppose I wish it was a Doom 2 wad instead of Doom 1, but that's mostly for the supershotgun. The enemy variety in Doom is a bit lacking but its fine for an 8/9 level wad.
Edit: I played mission 2 again and I realized that I'd missed a switch repeatedly that allowed me to skip the lava. That's on me.
I've also been playing TNT and that's a hell (heh) of a lot more spiteful in spawns, so Sigil is comparatively fine in that regard. It's not easy but it isn't all that cheap. I'll try finish later and see if I change my mind. I'll try that lighting change in GzDoom above too. That's probably a good idea.
I suppose I wish it was a Doom 2 wad instead of Doom 1, but that's mostly for the supershotgun. The enemy variety in Doom is a bit lacking but its fine for an 8/9 level wad.
Edit: I played mission 2 again and I realized that I'd missed a switch repeatedly that allowed me to skip the lava. That's on me.
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