Romero reveals Sigil 2

[Jello]

1 minute ago, Mystic 256 said:

"It’ll be very much in the Sigil style too, except with Doom 2 instead."

 

I have been thinking about line, does this mean it all gonna all be 1 theme?

I'm hoping there is more variety in themes though considering this is gonna be a full megawad

 

also I wonder what kinda of special thing he will do for map 31 and map 32 slots

Sorry for the double post, but he better get in touch with Sandy for a remake/replacement of The Chasm, and make it piss off more people than ever.

 

And to be fair, I actually liked The Chasm, because it was a ridiculous level. It's hard now with modern sourceports, controlling your way through it back it Dos days was trial and error. But it was still fun; I think between the two they could make a really good "Chasm" type level.

 

But if this is legitimately going to be a 32 level replacement, that Romero himself is proud of; I don't see it coming out within the next decade. Megawads are hard enough to complete, and his level of "good" is so damn high, I don't know if he'll ever be happy with it. I hope so, but he might need some help if he's planning on making a Sigil quality 32 level replacement.

 

I hope he can do it and not get burnt out, and Godspeed Mr. Romero!

[mattjoes]

It would be nice to hear some Buckethead music for Sigil 2. It added a great deal to the original in my opinion.

 

Also, Romero planning to do some Quake maps after this is even more exciting!

[Nine Inch Heels]

Not sure how to feel about his goal of going for 32 maps... Seems rather ambitious to me, and when push comes to shove I'd prefer quality over quantity... Sigil wasn't bad, but IMO it was a mixed bag in several respects...

[Rudolph]

13 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Not sure how to feel about his goal of going for 32 maps... Seems rather ambitious to me, and when push comes to shove I'd prefer quality over quantity... Sigil wasn't bad, but IMO it was a mixed bag in several respects...

What did you not like about Sigil, if you do not mind me asking?

Edited August 16, 2021 by Rudolph

[D4NUK1]

A Full 32 Map set would be hard if Romero are doing this from Zero.

Sure, he may have some ideas for some maps, but if he had nothing build, I'm also for a more of 15 maps if he needs more than 9.

 

Could be cool if he talked with various Doomers that made .wads before that have the Romero Approval of Romero Design, and make a team along with them, but that could be also controversial. 

 

[Nine Inch Heels]

40 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

What did you not like about Sigil, if you do not mind me asking?

if we leave the obvious out of the way, which would be the anti-climactic boss fight, one of my main gripes were that secrets were often too impactful, and not finding them was being "punished" too harshly, often resulting in rather chewy gameplay... To me, there are goldilocks zones for what secrets can do to elevate a map, and sigil didn't really hit those... I am fine with mandatory secrets, and I'm also fine with secrets that have a decent impact as long as the content in question doesn't feel "unpleasant" if those secrets aren't found... sigil does neither particularly well in my book... I maintain that sigil would have suffered less from these problems if it wasn't limited to doomI constraints, but I can see why using doomII as the baseline was not up for debate... Still would've loved to have an SSG in many, many cases, but it is what it is...

 

Another issue is that almost everything was dependent on somewhat cramped environments, and as much as I appreciate being "strict" when it comes to usage of geometry, it did turn out rather same-ish to me in the grand scheme of things... Small corridors, small walkways, etc...

 

Yet another issue I've had with sigil is the difference between playing "blind" and knowing what's ahead, where just knowing what's ahead trivializes a lot of the content.. I suppose it's an issue in roughly the same ballpark as the secrets are in sigil, but it's still a separate point from my point of view, because it directly affects the "replayability" of these maps to a point where playing them once or twice is fine, but anything more than that starts to feel rather "dull" quickly... Think like jumpscares in a horror movie, where seeing them once or twice still provokes some manner of reaction, but anything past that loses its edge...

 

Not to take away from some of sigil's stronger points, like that one crusher section, or the "iconography" romero established with the "eye-switches" and the exits, or an overall slightly grim feel... It's not all bad, but it's not all good either, so that then raises the question if one single person can bang out 32 distinct maps in their spare time, and still retain some sense of diversity across all of them... And as much as those who deify romero may want to disagree with me, I'm not convinced he's going to deliver... When you consider how things like speed of doom or ancient aliens came to be, it is pretty self-evident how having multiple people behind a 32 map megawad is a clear advantage in many ways...

Edited August 17, 2021 by Nine Inch Heels

[Rudolph]

@Nine Inch Heels Fair points.

 

However, in Romero's defense, I think it is more or less impossible to make a climactic boss fight in Doom without introducing a new monster. SIGIL acts as a fifth episode and by that point in the game, both the Cyberdemon and the Spider Mastermind have been demoted to semi-regular encounters. Xaser's The Lost Episode had the good idea of introducing a slightly modified version of the Arch-Vile to help make the final map feel appropriately climactic, but still, I could see someone arguing that as kind of cheating, as Xaser and his team merely brought a Doom II monster to a game where it originally did not belong.

Edited August 17, 2021 by Rudolph

[Nine Inch Heels]

7 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

However, in Romero's defense, I think it is more or less impossible to make a climactic boss fight in Doom without introducing a new monster.

After having built a E3M8 replacement for UDINO that does not require any new monsters, runs entirely on vanilla linedef actions, and offers 2 ways to actually beat the map I find this a somewhat bad argument...

 

If we leave discussions about quality or personal preferences out of the equation, there were lots of ways to come up with something that was more interesting than what sigil presented us with...

Edited August 17, 2021 by Nine Inch Heels

[Rytrik]

9 hours ago, Rudolph said:

@Grimosaur Cool! Thanks.

 

I do hope he comes up with a better title than "Sigil 2", though.

2igil

[Chip]

I was really anticipating a DeHackEd Baphomet fight in Si6il. I get Romero wanted to keep it Vanilla, but come on! Usually the Cyberdemon takes out the SM and then it takes a couple of shots to down the Cyberdemon. At the very least he could have used 2+ Cybies or 2+ SM so there isn't any infighting. Hopefully the boss of Si6il 2 will be a bit more fun.

[Rudolph]

34 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

After having built a E3M8 replacement for UDINO that does not require any new monsters, runs entirely on vanilla linedef actions, and offers 2 ways to actually beat the map I find this a somewhat bad argument...

I do not think a replacement of E3M8, the map that normally introduces the Spider Mastermind, really is the same as the finale of what is supposed to act as Ultimate Doom's fifth episode. By that point, you have killed many Cyberdemons and another Spider Mastermind already, so I am not sure that you can make another climactic boss fight without introducing a new monster.

 

Or is your argument here about Sigil's ending being anticlimactic that the problem with E5M8 is not that it led to an encounter with a Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind, but rather that it was not set in a separate arena at the very end?

Edited August 17, 2021 by Rudolph

[OniriA]

Any one man megawad is going to feel dull at certain points and will certainly have filler content.

Even music albums (ranging from 9 to 12 tracks usually) almost always have a few duds, so let alone 32 maps by 

a single dude.

 

But then again, it's pretty cool to see that a Romero megawad is a real thing now.

Its shure to keep him busy, atleast.

I'm predicting there will be quite a few small bite-sized maps á la Sigil 1 in it.

 

Edited August 17, 2021 by OniriA

[leodoom85]

Well...a 32-map set is indeed ambitious and I wish him the best of luck to complete it. I'm sure that the set will leave many marks amongst the community.

I think it's fair to say that we need to wait until the product is complete or, at least, if we get a demo of sorts, to elaborate a concrete opinion. Yes, there are many outcomes that could be predictable in the end but, we wait.

[Doomkid]

I think this is awesome! Even “just” 20 maps with a couple guest maps by Tom Hall (if he were willing) would be epic, and some Sandy maps would be cool too, but he’s turned down the request several times now unfortunately. 

 

Tom Hall seemed hesitant-yet-willing, but was simply scared of making bland maps in 2021. Let’s be real though, Hall was an important figure during Doom development - I’d be okay with 90s-like maps, so long as they were decently fun to play! It would be awesome if he did the secret maps or something.

 

A whopping 32 maps does seem like a hard pill to swallow.. I always run out of steam 7-10 maps into my “epic one-man megawad” attempts and choose to stop rather than making filler, but Romero has that oldschool creativity - maybe he won’t fall into that trap!

 

...Oh, and if Romero reads this - if you need some help with a DeHackEd boss who replaces Keen or the WolfSS or whatever - hmu 😌👌

 

6 hours ago, princetontiger said:

blue's news still exists? Jesus

I had the same reaction. Glad to see it’s still truckin.

[Chip]

Lol. I swear before this announcement everybody was like I hope he does a 32 level megawad for DOOM 2 next and now that it has been announced, people are like I don't know if he should do this. Sigil wasn't that great. 

[Doomkid]

I thought Sigil was a really good episode, personally! The only substantive thing I hope he does differently for some maps in the sequel wold be: wider walkways, wider hallways and more room to move in general. Just for some maps, anyway.. the same thing over and over would get tedious! 9 maps was short enough for that to not become exhausting though, imo.

[Nine Inch Heels]

49 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

I do not think a replacement of E3M8, the map that normally introduces the Spider Mastermind, really is the same as the finale of what is supposed to act as Ultimate Doom's fifth episode.

This feels very arbitrary... Romero had lots of options, and he went for something that ended up being rather uninspired... Making the argument that Romero had nothing tangible to work with - even if limited to exclusively stock assets - is choosing an indefensible hill to die on, that's what this boils down to in the end...

 

Anything that was gonna be a little something more than a straight forward shoot out could have been interesting, but all we got was a straight forward shoot out with very little in the way of finesse or spectacle, or tactical nuance...

 

After the let down that was vanilla E3M8, and the slightly better but still not great E4M8, it would have been nice if he actually put down a little something more, but in the end we got something way less than E4M8, and that just doesn't augur well as far as I'm concerned...

 

I mean, your argument basically unravels itself when you say

1 hour ago, Rudolph said:

By that point, you have killed many Cyberdemons and another Spider Mastermind already, so I am not sure that you can make another climactic boss fight without introducing a new monster.

...This is precisely the reason why the last map was so "meh"... It almost looks like Romero had the same idea as you have, and thought to himself "I can't possibly think of something to make this anything more than the sum of its parts, so I'll just simplify", and my point is that there was no reason to approach the last map like that, because he had tons of motherfucking options as it were...

 

These notions that nothing interesting can be done because players killed all these monsters dozens of times are pointless, but you're quintessentially saying "why make anything new without all new resources"... Meanwhile, my point is Romero didn't need new resources, he just didn't have ideas for that map...

[OniriA]

I think with the expanded Doom 2 beastiary and the availability of the SSG, Romero might really come to his own again. 

 

I wonder if he will attempt maps in the vein of The Living End from Doom 2.

There's so much more room for creativity here compared to Doom 1 anyway. 

 

As for the inevitable filler, it gives it a very human touch to it all instead of pretending that we're cybernetic supercomputers pumping out a Sunder style map for every single map. That's a very unhealthy and unhuman mindset. 

Edited August 17, 2021 by OniriA

[Nine Inch Heels]

11 minutes ago, OniriA said:

As for the inevitable filler, it gives it a very human touch to it instead of pretending that we're all cybernetic supercomputers pumping out a Sunder style map for every single map. That's a very unhealthy and unhuman mindset. 

And this is where you get to point the readers to where anybody said that Romero should build a 32 map megawad comprised of only magnum opus style maps... The problem you'll have: Nobody expects that, and keeping maps distinct is actually easier if you keep them somewhat short...

 

I understand that there might be a compulsion to step up and argue in Romero's favour, even if done that haphazardly, but let me just tell you that it's not looking particularly pretty if it's such a poorly constructed straw man...

[Biodegradable]

I'm very curious to see how Romero tackles this. Will it be a direct sequel to Sigil and build upon the thematic and gameplay style of the first? Will he keep it more strictly Vanilla and only use Doom 2's stock tools or will he experiment with custom assets and tech the community has built? Will he go it alone or perhaps invite some community mappers to contribute? Will he bring back Jimmy and Buckethead to lend their musical talents once again? There's a lot of potential here.

 

Romero's always been an ambitious sod, so I wouldn't put it past him to at least consider breaking the confines and start tinkering with all the terrific new gadgets available to unleash his imagination upon.

Edited August 17, 2021 by Biodegradable

[OniriA]

41 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

Will he keep it more strictly Vanilla and only use Doom 2's stock tools or will he experiment with custom assets and tech the community has built?

 

I'd expect mostly vanilla assets tbh. 

 

43 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

Romero's always been an ambitious sod, so I wouldn't put it past him to at least consider breaking the confines and start tinkering with all the terrific new gadgets available to unleash his imagination upon.

 

In the past most certainly, and with good reason.  Anyone would be on a DMT-like high post-Doom/II's succesful releases (especially at that age? Phew!) But I wouldn't think too deeply on weird custom stuff when it comes to Sigil 2. 

 

He's just doing happy accidents in his spare time for fun, and after an accumulation of enough of those accidents, there might be a megawad. The fact he signalled a megawad just means he's started to really enjoy mapping for Doom again, and that's all that matters. 

 

Internet experts will write essays about it and others will bitch about it, he"ll just chuckle at it all and move on. 

[DSC]

People have done one-man megawads before, and many times they actually come out excellent, even better than most community projects. And if there's anyone up to the task, its our man Romero.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Looking forward to the sequel, as I thought SIGIL was a fairly decent experience, but I agree that it was fairly uninspired. If it wasn't Romero behind it, it would have just been seen as a decent wad and not much else. I hope there is some more inspiration, variety, and experimentation going on this time. Stretching everything out over a full megawad before fifinding his magic again would be disappointing, but it's certainly not anything worth arguing about. I remain optimistic about DOOM stuff until I have a reason to think otherwise.

 

Good luck to Mr. Romero!

Edited August 17, 2021 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[Dusty_Rhodes]

18 hours ago, N1ck said:

Maybe Sandy could be the one to make a new Doom 2 campaign, or at the very least mapset.

I really wish Sandy or American would make some stuff too. Sigil is great, and I love John, but I would love to see the other guys go crazy. Maybe they could give Shawn Green and guest map!

[Dusty_Rhodes]

17 hours ago, LadyMistDragon said:

hmm, what about Tom Hall? If enough people asked him, he might.

How is Tom's opinion on Doom? Is he burned out or upset still when a lot of his ideas didn't make it in? Or is he okay?

 

I personally would love to see a Tom Hall wad.

[Rudolph]

9 minutes ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

How is Tom's opinion on Doom? Is he burned out or upset still when a lot of his ideas didn't make it in? Or is he okay?

 

I personally would love to see a Tom Hall wad.

I read somewhere that he is reluctant to make new maps because he is worried that they might get overshadowed by Romero's.

Edited August 17, 2021 by Rudolph

[Dusty_Rhodes]

1 minute ago, Rudolph said:

I read somewhere that he is reluctant to make new maps because he is worried that they might get overshadowed by Romero's.

I think that's rather sad. Tom Hall is a very talented individual, and I'd love to see what he'd cook up for Doom 1 and 2. He's made a lot of interesting work over the years. 

[OniriA]

The million dollar question would be if he's gonna use this in his map 30 or not. 

 

 

Killing Romero in Romero's megawad, Romero-ception?

Edited August 17, 2021 by OniriA

[Rudolph]

20 minutes ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

I think that's rather sad. Tom Hall is a very talented individual, and I'd love to see what he'd cook up for Doom 1 and 2. He's made a lot of interesting work over the years. 

He might also no longer be at the top of his game, so to speak. I hear he suffered a stroke some years ago.

[Mike Stu]

Sign me in, SIGIL was fun as hell and looked fantastic. The atmosphere Romero crafted with "only" vanilla Doom textures and smart lighting is quite impressive. Personally I'd be fine with 20 levels though - 32 tends to lead to some filler I feel.

 

14 hours ago, mattjoes said:

It would be nice to hear some Buckethead music for Sigil 2. It added a great deal to the original in my opinion.

 

I'd buy it again in a heartbeat. Still, I'd rather if it was kept as an alternative to Jimmy's MIDIs, which were godtier. Hope he can collaborate with Romero again.

 

On a side-note, I've always found the way music was credited in SIGIL to be funny:

 

 

I mean, "music" and "MIDIs", John? Kinda sounds like a random jab at MIDIs man but ok. lmao