The visual style of SIGIL vs the visual style of Inferno

[mattjoes]

SIGIL and Inferno use many of the same textures, yet on the whole I find they look fairly different from each other. How would you describe their visual differences? I think part of it has to do with the fact SIGIL seems to privilege certain Hellish textures over others, and has many more darkly lit rooms.

[P41R47]

Inferno has a distinctive look, with flesh, ashgrey, wood, and hell stone/redstone, with a little marble here and there. And its pretty bright for hell, maybe the lava irradiate enough light, but well...

 

SIGIL on the other side, has a ton of midtexture usage like cellbars, marble and hellstone/redstone and some wood here and there that give a little different feel to them. The visual cue on SIGIL are the cracks and fissures, same first use by Romero on E1M8b: Tech Gone Bad.

The cracks are kinda his trademark by now, along with the bright pentagrams on the distance.

 

Aside from that, there is not much to say.

 

Thy Flesh Consume has the best hellish aesthetic for me.

Doom 2 hell is weird from every angle...

[Omniarch]

In addition to what @P41R47 said, another key difference between the two is geometry. Inferno is generally extremely blocky and orthogonal, like most of Sandy Petersen's Doom maps, with little height variation. Sigil, by contrast, combines jagged, semi-naturalistic caves with more conventional orthogonal structures. It is also very vertical in its presentation, with the ceiling regularly out of sight and the play areas often surrounded by seas of lava.

 

Sigil is also the more visually consistent of the two, primarily using the 'gothic' textures that define Thy Flesh Consumed rather than the eclectic assortment of tech, flesh, redstone and marble textures that Inferno uses.

 

In essence, Sigil is a more refined and 'traditional' take on the hell aesthetic, but it lacks the bizarre originality of Petersen's work. I personally prefer Sigil aesthetically but I would love to see a more modern take on Inferno's visual themes.

[spineapple tea]

Biggest change for me is the lighting. Some maps in episode 3 look like they're full bright, while Sigil just looks dark as shit. Because it's so dark, the parts that are bright pop out. The lighting of episode 3 just kinda looked bland and flat. Also the geometry in Sigil is much more complex than episode 3's. 

[bfredric]

1 hour ago, Omniarch said:

In addition to what @P41R47 said, another key difference between the two is geometry. Inferno is generally extremely blocky and orthogonal, like most of Sandy Petersen's Doom maps, with little height variation. Sigil, by contrast, combines jagged, semi-naturalistic caves with more conventional orthogonal structures. It is also very vertical in its presentation, with the ceiling regularly out of sight and the play areas often surrounded by seas of lava.

 

Sigil is also the more visually consistent of the two, primarily using the 'gothic' textures that define Thy Flesh Consumed rather than the eclectic assortment of tech, flesh, redstone and marble textures that Inferno uses.

 

In essence, Sigil is a more refined and 'traditional' take on the hell aesthetic, but it lacks the bizarre originality of Petersen's work. I personally prefer Sigil aesthetically but I would love to see a more modern take on Inferno's visual themes.

 

After they finish "The shores of Zdoom" they need to get on "Inferzdoom"

[Gez]

30 minutes ago, bfredric said:

"The shores of Zdoom"

Pretty sure this project died a decade ago.

[Silhouette 03]

Inferno takes obvious inspiration from the Divine Comedy, E3M8,Dis being the Capital city of hell an example. Inferno is definitely how Dante Alliegierie(probably spelt this wrong, though I honestly don’t care) envisioned Hell, fire and brimstone, the suffering of tortured souls and “sinner

Sigil further draws on this influence by referring to names of biblical nature,such as abaddon a fallen angel, and sheol, the place where the dead go in the hebrew bible.

Though I have my problems with how Sigil plays( some areas are just cheap and made artificially difficult) I prefer Sigils version of hell. A limbo- like place filled with darkness and danger.

[Nevander]

24 minutes ago, Gez said:

Pretty sure this project died a decade ago.

Citation needed.

 

Idea: If it has died, all we have to do is start it back up again and the original authors will come out of the woodwork to re-claim it.

[P41R47]

38 minutes ago, Silhou3tte said:

Inferno takes obvious inspiration from the Divine Comedy, E3M8,Dis being the Capital city of hell an example. Inferno is definitely how Dante Alliegierie(probably spelt this wrong, though I honestly don’t care) envisioned Hell, fire and brimstone, the suffering of tortured souls and “sinner

Sigil further draws on this influence by referring to names of biblical nature,such as abaddon a fallen angel, and sheol, the place where the dead go in the hebrew bible.

Though I have my problems with how Sigil plays( some areas are just cheap and made artificially difficult) I prefer Sigils version of hell. A limbo- like place filled with darkness and danger.

Pretty much inspired on it by name only, i will say.

Because there is no similarity at all with what the great poet described in his epic :/

 

For me Romero hit the pinacle of hell depiction on E4M2: Perfect Hatred.

But sigil comes near it.

I like those fiery pentagrams on the distance and all the darkness.

[Silhouette 03]

38 minutes ago, P41R47 said:

Pretty much inspired on it by name only, i will say.

Because there is no similarity at all with what the great poet described in his epic :/

 

For me Romero hit the pinacle of hell depiction on E4M2: Perfect Hatred.

But sigil comes near it.

I like those fiery pentagrams on the distance and all the darkness.

Really? I always thought Sandy peterson read inferno and based those levels on Dante’s descriptions. I’ve never actually read the the epic so I assumed so.
E4M2 is the pinnacle of hellish difficulty curve after E4M1’s traumatic difficulty( curse you, American Mcgee! Curse you!)

[Doomkid]

Inferno, for the most part, feels very open while Sigil often feels boxed in. I get this feeling like I’d hardly be able to breathe in the world of Sigil, whereas it would be no trouble in Inferno. This doesn’t have much to do with the actual texture usage, but it gives Sigil a much more oppressive feeling. Inferno feels like the wide open fields of Hell, where demons frolic carefree.

[TenenteZashu]

To me SIGIL feels like what John Romero wanted to do with Inferno but because of the limitations of the time couldn't bring to fruition

[Yandere_Doomer]

I prefer the visual style of SIGIL, its darker, scarier, and just feels more like hell to me.

paired with the music and lighting effects [especially in abaddons void, the only doom level so far that that actually kind of disturbed me at first]

Edited December 14, 2020 by Deathclaw886

[P41R47]

19 hours ago, TenenteZashu said:

To me SIGIL feels like what John Romero wanted to do with Inferno but because of the limitations of the time couldn't bring to fruition

yeah, we may have a romero style take on the shores of hell in the future to complete his vision of Ultimate Doom :)