SIGIL II - Episode 6

[Noiser]

36 minutes ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

What also doesn't help navigation is how dark the WAD is. Quite often I was wandering around aimlessly trying to see where the heck I was meant to go.

From the doom builder streams, it seems like this wad was not made with software render in mind - which is a shame because the lighting got totally ruined there

[Xymph]

Wiki coverage of the maps: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/SIGIL_II#Content
 

[JBerg]

does anyone know how to reach the secret exit yet?

 

edit: nvm i got it

[Rudolph]

Alright! After so many attempts, I finally managed to beat E6M1 on UV! HMP turned out to be a bit too easy for me, so I decided to bite the bullet. I guess the trick is really not to rush things out, even though you might be tempted to do so because of the Cyberdemon.

 

Speaking of which, it is really the worst aspect about the map: even the secret crusher that you can activate to kill it sticks out like a sore thumb by just descending from the literal sky. Come on, John: at least put it in an area with a ceiling... :S

Edited December 10, 2023 by Rudolph

[tewgytaylor]

So I have yet to beat this yet but first impressions for me are strong. Keep in mind that this is coming from someone who loves Sigil 1 and has beaten it on UV multiple times through though. Like the first I would recommend playing on HMP before jumping into UV cause it's even more brutal this time around. Also keep an eye out for secrets when you can, John always rewards those with a watchful eye. I suspect that this wad will be a bit divisive (much like the first Sigil) but personally I really enjoy it so far

 

More detailed thoughts:

Spoiler

I really don't like the inclusion of secrets that become inaccessible after 30 seconds, it feels cheap to cheat out a player from finding a secret. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the inclusion of "FIREBLU secrets" are wonderful. They add a light bit of humor to each level they're in alongside giving you some goodies. They kind of remind me of the Wolfenstein SS secrets from 10x10 in that regard.

 

Romero's love of Cyberdemons goes critical in this wad, there's at least one in each stage from what I played and he is not merciful in their placement in the slightest, though there was a weird slightly useless one in e6m5 that was surrounded by blocking linedefs which was such an oddball choice that I don't really understand where the idea even came from.

 

The music is good, though not as instantly memorable as the first's soundtrack. I'm sure they'll grow on me over time though.

 

[Faceman2000]

I’m not sure why you’re saying E6M1 is so frustrating; unless you’re trying to UV-Max it, the exit is pretty straightforward to get to. On the other hand, if you are trying to blind UV-Max a mapset that’s specifically designed to be challenging, then like, yeah, it’s going to be rough - what did you expect?

[Captain Keen]

Just downloaded from my order link. A new link was sent out with an update, FYI for anyone who bought the box edition.

 

From what I saw he was testing it in software rendering, not hardware? I haven't played yet but wondering about the darkness.

 

I have no problem with UV being very difficult. I will play HMP for my first playthrough. UV is supposed to be punishing and to me the best maps require you to already know them a bit before you try UV. My two cents.

[Lizardcommando]

Oh wow, so many high quality wads being released right now lol. First Eviternity 2, now Sigil 2! Definitely gonna be checking both those wads out right now.

[Trov]

5 hours ago, Catpho said:

playing on the lastest dsda doom. Some problem with the sky texture?

 

I made a fix.

 

For some reason Sigil 2 uses a real strange width for the sky texture (362px).

Doom's sky texture is usually 1024px wide (or 256px tiled 4 times) and 362px does not divide evenly into that, so several doom engines don't know what to do with it.

 

Until ports decide whether to address this officially here is a patch WAD I whipped up to get around it.

It tiles the sky into a 1024px wide texture, which all Doom ports should understand.

There's still a bit of an obvious seam where the sky texture mirrors but oh well. I'm here to fix the technical issue, not the artistic one.

 

Load the WAD in here after SIGIL II and it should look fine again.

 

SIGIL_II_SKYFIX.zip

 

This also makes it look correct in Woof.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Trov

[BeachThunder]

2 hours ago, Captain Keen said:

Just downloaded from my order link. A new link was sent out with an update, FYI for anyone who bought the box edition.

 

From what I saw he was testing it in software rendering, not hardware? I haven't played yet but wondering about the darkness.

 

I have no problem with UV being very difficult. I will play HMP for my first playthrough. UV is supposed to be punishing and to me the best maps require you to already know them a bit before you try UV. My two cents.

Yep, UV seems to be no joke...

Spoiler

just a straight-up Cyberdemon right there, a minute into the first map...

 

[Captain Keen]

Okay, I played the first 6 levels [UPDATE: I've now played everything]. Only one dud in the bunch in my opinion, which is the second level. Overall I think this is some of Romero's best Doom work. I liked SIGIL 1 but I think this is a significant step up. In many ways this feels like a true sequel to Knee-Deep in the Dead, because so much of it is corrupted tech bases and there's some really nice open ended design here.

 

I'm playing on HMP and it's definitely challenging. I can imagine UV is very, very difficult for a first playthrough. It is dark but I think purposely designed that way. It works for me since it's not alllll just shadows and he does lots of interesting stuff with backlighting of dark figures against bright red. Overall I have no complaints playing in software rendering in GZDoom. I think these are very visually appealing maps and I like all the new textures (except for the sky which needs some finessing).

 

My first impressions:

 

E6M1: A-, great opening, though quite difficult on the first try

 

E6M2: C, small, dull and tedious map, the only one I don't really like

 

E6M3: B+, kinda feels like his take on Mt. Erebus, love the dark room with the barons

 

E6M4: A-, great corrupted tech base level

 

E6M5: A-, fantastic map, like descending into Hell, that hallway with all the red cracks is one of my favorite areas of the entire wad

 

E6M6: A, one of the best maps Romero has ever made, just fantastic... and that imp teleported in right in front of me at the start and was a great jump scare. I did notice some weirdness with that Cybie walkway at the end though, some visual jank with the torches and an invisible wall that I don't think really needs to be there. It was cool though that the Cybie can end up in the exit room.

 

E6M7: A, fantastic level, probably the most ambitious of the bunch, the Hell city here reminded me a little bit of some of the later levels in Hellbound, might be my favorite of this episode

 

E6M8: B+, really fun finish, though I kinda wish the very end arena had a little more of a surprise in it. Maybe a new monster since this is Episode 6 the final final final last stop before going back to Earth. Could have been really cool to have a surprise appearance by an Arch-Vile or something.

 

E6M9: A, like E6M4 a great corrupted tech base, watched him map this one and it was so much fun to play, also one of my favorites here along with 6 and 7

 

Overall: A-, I probably would give the first SIGIL a solid B or B+

 

There's some visual jank, like with the sky (which already has a fix above, hopefully Romero adds that into the next bug fixed version), but overall the look and feel of these levels is fantastic. They are sometimes cramped but that's kind of his style, and there's lots of open areas too. Very, very atmospheric and theatrical. It always impresses me what old school Doom can still achieve compared to modern games (I'm sure Eviternity 2 is going to be a whole different type of impressive).

Edited December 11, 2023 by Captain Keen : Finished playing all levels

[,,,]

It's a very exciting time for Doom fans!!!!!!!

[slowfade]

Congrats for the release, Romero! Hoping to finally play both Sigils soon (within this year). It'll be a treat. Also looking forward to see some UV-maxes and other runs soon!

[plums]

2 hours ago, Trov said:

I made a fix.

 

For some reason Sigil 2 uses a real strange width for the sky texture (362px).

Doom's sky texture is usually 1024px wide (or 256px tiled 4 times) and 362px does not divide evenly into that, so several doom engines don't know what to do with it.

 

Until ports decide whether to address this officially here is a patch WAD I whipped up to get around it.

It tiles the sky into a 1024px wide texture, which all Doom ports should understand.

There's still a bit of an obvious seam where the sky texture mirrors but oh well. I'm here to fix the technical issue, not the artistic one.

 

Load the WAD in here after SIGIL II and it should look fine again.

 

SIGIL_II_SKYFIX.zip

 

This also makes it look correct in Woof.

Interestingly there's also a resized version of that sky called SKY6_ZD with regular 256x128 dimensions. From the name I guess it's meant for non-GL ZDoom, but it doesn't seem to actually get used in any ports whatsoever. In any case, ports that decide to add dedicated Sigil II support should be able to just force that for a sky texture instead. A person can also force it by editing Sigil 2's UMAPINFO, but if you're going to load a hotfix file you might as well use @Trov's because it's probably closer to how things are meant to look.

[ludicrous_peridot]

13 minutes ago, plums said:

Interestingly there's also a resized version of that sky called SKY6_ZD with regular 256x128 dimensions. From the name I guess it's meant for non-GL ZDoom, but it doesn't seem to actually get used in any ports whatsoever. In any case, ports that decide to add dedicated Sigil II support should be able to just force that for a sky texture instead. A person can also force it by editing Sigil 2's UMAPINFO, but if you're going to load a hotfix file you might as well use @Trov's because it's probably closer to how things are meant to look.

 

I think it's for ZDaemon. Was the same in Sigil 1 and there it was actually referenced in one of the *MAPINFO-s. I am actually taking advantage of that and using it for playing Sigil with my DOS port. 

EDIT: Also, I think it's not resized as such - it seems to be the original texture from which a version that maps better to a GL-style sky-dome has been made.

[SiFi270]

Is anyone else not seeing a "buy now" button under the version with the Thorr soundtrack?

 

EDIT: It's easy enough to get from the store page, if nothing else.

Edited December 10, 2023 by SiFi270

[plums]

1 minute ago, ludicrous_peridot said:

 

I think it's for ZDaemon. Was the same in Sigil 1 and there it was actually referenced in one of the *MAPINFO-s. I am actually taking advantage of that and using it for playing Sigil with my DOS port.

Aha, it is set as the default for skies in the regular MAPINFO lump, and ZDaemon, and other ports which read MAPINFO but not another xMAPINFO lump, will load it.

[UberGewei]

3 hours ago, Trov said:

I made a fix.

 

For some reason Sigil 2 uses a real strange width for the sky texture (362px).

Doom's sky texture is usually 1024px wide (or 256px tiled 4 times) and 362px does not divide evenly into that, so several doom engines don't know what to do with it.

 

Until ports decide whether to address this officially here is a patch WAD I whipped up to get around it.

It tiles the sky into a 1024px wide texture, which all Doom ports should understand.

There's still a bit of an obvious seam where the sky texture mirrors but oh well. I'm here to fix the technical issue, not the artistic one.

 

Load the WAD in here after SIGIL II and it should look fine again.

 

SIGIL_II_SKYFIX.zip

 

This also makes it look correct in Woof.

Thank you, I'll get this to John.

I am not quite sure how we ended up missing this. 

I think the only REAL way how to fix this, is to crop the SKY6 image to 256x240 in the potential 1.1 version of SIGIL II (or, indeed.. hope ports address this issue). There's already a _ZD version in 1.0 that addresses this issue for ports based on older ZDoom releases. But since the concerning MAPINFO is shared between GZDoom & Boom-based ports, Boom ports load the non power-of-two version also (whereas for GZDoom this is not an issue).

[Beubeu]

Question for E6M2

 

Spoiler

You are really suppose to kill the cyberdemon with the chaingun ?  

 

[pcorf]

Took a quick look. It looks amazing, love the scrappy dark atmosphere with the signature hell cracks and evil eyes galore and Jimmy's MIDI tracks fit perfectly in each level. I'll play through it in the new year. E5M7 is just mind blowing to look at. Gives Incendio Crucio a good run for it's money! :D  Oops it is better I think than IC, I had my own unique design and Romero certainly has his own unique design, it is so strategic-based. Love how the starbase elements are mixed in with the hell. For sure this is going to be as hard as heck with at least one Cyberdemon per map on UV.

[pianolarva]

Does it work well with Crispy Doom?

[DoomPlayer00]

NMWS challenge with these maps is going to be interesting.

[D.Vile]

7 hours ago, tewgytaylor said:

Romero's love of Cyberdemons goes critical in this wad, there's at least one in each stage from what I played and he is not merciful in their placement in the slightest, though there was a weird slightly useless one in e6m5 that was surrounded by blocking linedefs which was such an oddball choice that I don't really understand where the idea even came from.

 

The whole point of that Cyberdemon is not to prevent the player's map progression, but rather simply guard a nearby optional Soulsphere. The monster block lines and placement of the walls are supposed to make it awkward to two-shot it with a BFG, so I think Romero did a pretty decent job in that regard.

[Ar_e_en]

Alright, I downloaded this wad a few hours ago and I'm going through it right now!

 

Got past the first 2 maps and I'm liking it already, however - I do have 2 minor complaints:

1. I'm not a big fan of the 30 second secret in the 2nd map.

2. As many people already pointed it out: the sky texture doesn't tile properly in some ports (I'm playing on Woof). I did create a small patch wad that changes the UMAPINFO sky parameters from the regular "SKY6" sky over to the "SKY6_ZD" sky (which does tile properly!).

[Ar_e_en]

2 hours ago, Beubeu said:

Question for E6M2

 

  Hide contents

You are really suppose to kill the cyberdemon with the chaingun ?  

 

Yes! However, I managed to do it with just a shotgun and my fists! It was surprisingly satisfying!

 

1 hour ago, pianolarva said:

Does it work well with Crispy Doom?

 I tried to briefly check it out in Crispy, but the inner UMAPINFO lump didn't activate on Crispy for some reason. The maps seem to still work, but the skies are replaced with the E1 sky and I'm pretty sure that the exits will not work. 

[Ar_e_en]

13 minutes ago, Ar_e_en said:

I tried to briefly check it out in Crispy, but the inner UMAPINFO lump didn't activate on Crispy for some reason. The maps seem to still work, but the skies are replaced with the E1 sky and I'm pretty sure that the exits will not work. 

Weird thing is that the non-compatible version of the first SIGIL wad does work in Crispy. I'm not sure if Crispy actually has UMAPINFO support, maybe the port has a special hardcoded compatibility for the first SIGIL, or maybe my version of Crispy is just outdated. 

[Faceman2000]

15 minutes ago, Ar_e_en said:

I tried to briefly check it out in Crispy, but the inner UMAPINFO lump didn't activate on Crispy for some reason.

Crispy doesn’t have UMAPINFO support unfortunately. I imagine a compatibility wad will be released at some point; if not, renaming the levels and midis from E6 to E1 and the sky to SKY1 should do it.

 

Crispy did have specific hardcoded support for Sigil added at some point.

[Ar_e_en]

1 minute ago, Faceman2000 said:

Crispy doesn’t have UMAPINFO support unfortunately. I imagine a compatibility wad will be released at some point; if not, renaming the levels and midis from E6 to E1 and the sky to SKY1 should do it.

That's unfortunate. I hope that the secret exits will still work without UMAPINFO in Crispy. I'm guessing that the Crispy devs will also hardcode in compatibility for SIGIL II, if they ever decide to update the port.

[Master O]

When's SIGIL III coming out?  [/joking]

 

Romero's gonna make a Doom 2 wad at some point as well, right?

[Endless]

5 minutes ago, Master O said:

When's SIGIL III coming out?  [/joking]

 

Romero's gonna make a Doom 2 wad at some point as well, right?

One Humanity was made for Doom 2 and he also mentioned working on a separate new megawad from SIGIL, so yes, could likely happen.