SIGIL II - Episode 6

[Death Bear]

21 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?

Spoiler

In the end credits, it mentions "Hellion". This is apparently going to be a full 32 for Doom 2.

 

[Rudolph]

Given SIGIL II's difficulty, I am expecting Hellion to be John Romero's take on Plutonia...

[tewgytaylor]

6 minutes ago, Death Bear said:

In the end credits, it mentions "Hellion". This is apparently going to be a full 32 for Doom 2.

Yeah he confirmed it on stream a few times

[Julia Nechaevskaya]

I made a small experiment trying to make a "compat" version which is working in Crispy Doom. Basically everything E6 is replaced with E3*. It took just about ~15 minutes to get everything working:

• Level names, graphics and PAR times.
• Killing Spider Mastermind isn't finishing E3M8.
• Demos in demo reel (little HEX edit magic).
• Vanilla-friendly sky.
• "Bunny screen" (well, just a copy of existing assets, dark and normal).
• Intermission screen. Needs some extra work, that's easy part.

But. I highly respect time and efforts mr. Romero and other members spend on this project, and simply can't let myself just upload it without asking permission! I was just curious, is it really not compatible with source port that I know technically very well, and it seems to be working absolutely fine, though some more testing is needed. Just hope that there are no Boom-specifics were used, they will lead to soft-lock since Crispy doesn't support them.

 

So... What should I do? Ask John Romero by e-mail, or am I worry too much about such thing? Or is it deserves a new thread, on same manner it was done with vanilla-compatible Sigil I? Perhaps, there will be next version and 1.0 is not the last one, I really don't know, so maybe it is too early to even speak about "compat"? Lots of dilemmas. 

[plums]

@Julia Nechaevskaya I think for now your best bet is just to wait. It's likely that either Crispy will support Sigil 2, or there will be a compatibility wad released, or both.

 

I guess your compat version doesn't have (returning from) the secret map working properly?

[Faceman2000]

If you want the secret map to work in ports that don’t support MAPINFO, you need to set everything to E1, not E2 or E3, as I said previously.

 

I haven’t played E6M8 so I’m not sure what Boss Action(s) are required.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Faceman2000

[Julia Nechaevskaya]

Just now, plums said:

I guess your compat version doesn't have (returning from) the secret map working properly?

 

Yes. :( Getting to secret level is possible, but it returns to E3M7, just like in original Doom. I'm afraid this is the only part that can not be solved without source code editing.

 

As about support for main version in Crispy, we better should ask @fabian. It's not that trivial unfortunately, since it will require either proper support for UMAPINFO (a bit complicated, require many changes), or couple of small hacks to handle E6 properly (really a no-go).

[Rudolph]

Well, what do you know, E6M2 is way more manageable than its predecessor - ironic, given how it is called "Violent Hatred" - and I cannot help but wish this was the starting level instead. So far, SIGIL II feels like Thy Flesh Consumed had it started with "Perfect Hatred" (only with the lights turned off and a Cyberdemon roaming in the lava area) and its subsequent map was "And Hell Followed".

 

Edited December 10, 2023 by Rudolph

[Ar_e_en]

Played through E6M3, E6M9 and E6M4. The secret map is probably my favorite map so far. One thing that this wad has done for me is that it has made me appreciate the chainsaw as a weapon. It is a perfect tool for taking out Cacos!

 

A thing I noticed about the secrets: every map has one 30 second secret. I thought that the first map didn't have one, but it does! It might be the only 30 second secret that you can reopen after it closes (there's a door opening linedef near the crusher switch). I was a bit unhappy about the 30 second secrets, however, now that I know that that concept is mostly consistent, it's not actually that bad now. All I have to do is pop a save at every level start and map out a route to these secrets.

[Flambeau]

52 minutes ago, Julia Nechaevskaya said:

I made a small experiment trying to make a "compat" version which is working in Crispy Doom. Basically everything E6 is replaced with E3*. It took just about ~15 minutes to get everything working:

• Level names, graphics and PAR times.
• Killing Spider Mastermind isn't finishing E3M8.
• Demos in demo reel (little HEX edit magic).
• Vanilla-friendly sky.
• "Bunny screen" (well, just a copy of existing assets, dark and normal).
• Intermission screen. Needs some extra work, that's easy part.

But. I highly respect time and efforts mr. Romero and other members spend on this project, and simply can't let myself just upload it without asking permission! I was just curious, is it really not compatible with source port that I know technically very well, and it seems to be working absolutely fine, though some more testing is needed. Just hope that there are no Boom-specifics were used, they will lead to soft-lock since Crispy doesn't support them.

 

So... What should I do? Ask John Romero by e-mail, or am I worry too much about such thing? Or is it deserves a new thread, on same manner it was done with vanilla-compatible Sigil I? Perhaps, there will be next version and 1.0 is not the last one, I really don't know, so maybe it is too early to even speak about "compat"? Lots of dilemmas. 

Just wait for the port devs to implement Episode 6, no need for a compat version please.

We did not make a compat version this time since most ports started to support episode 5 after Sigil 1 released.

So hoping they will just extend to episode 6 now that this wad is out.

 

[DreadWanderer]

10 minutes ago, Ar_e_en said:

Played through E6M3, E6M9 and E6M4. The secret map is probably my favorite map so far. One thing that this wad has done for me is that it has made me appreciate the chainsaw as a weapon. It is a perfect tool for taking out Cacos!

 

A thing I noticed about the secrets: every map has one 30 second secret. I thought that the first map didn't have one, but it does! It might be the only 30 second secret that you can reopen after it closes (there's a door opening linedef near the crusher switch). I was a bit unhappy about the 30 second secrets, however, now that I know that that concept is mostly consistent, it's not actually that bad now. All I have to do is pop a save at every level start and map out a route to these secrets.

Would it be accurate to say that UV-maxing these levels single seg amounts to masochism? I'm trying to enjoy them but I'll be damned if Romero isn't cruel in this set. Guess I'll simply have to get used to ammo and health starvation, 20% damaging floors everywhere, and surprise cyber rockets to the face.

[Julia Nechaevskaya]

Clear, thanks for explanation @Flambeau! Let's hope for best then. 🙂

[Flambeau]

@Julia Nechaevskaya as far as I know there was already a pull request for crispy some time ago to support Episode 6.

Time will bring the joy prob, so keep hopes up high.

In the mean time, enjoy Sigil II on any other port that atm supports it. The challenge still remains the same :D

[Midway64]

HOLY CRAP IT'S HAPPENING.

Well... happy birthday to Doom!... I guess... (Is there like a thread for this?)

[OliveTree]

i feel like an insane person trying to get out of the crusher room in E6M4

[bioshockfan90]

HNTR feels way too easy, but I'm not complaining, that's on me for not wanting to deal with Romero's Cyberdemon fetish. Liked the secret exit, this feels like a sequel to its predecessor through and through. It may not be the best thing I've played, but it's Romero, there's a certain charm to it. I'd say it stands on its own as a neat PWAD as is even if it was released by a stranger. He sure has a thing for narrow platforming-hugging nowadays, huh?

 

Will probably update this post when I finish the WAD. I've been busy with Pina Colada.

[Rudolph]

2 hours ago, DreadWanderer said:

Would it be accurate to say that UV-maxing these levels single seg amounts to masochism? I'm trying to enjoy them but I'll be damned if Romero isn't cruel in this set. Guess I'll simply have to get used to ammo and health starvation, 20% damaging floors everywhere, and surprise cyber rockets to the face.

In E6M2, if you can enter the timed secret room and open the door from the inside (or prevent it from closing), then you will have more than enough bullets for the rest of the level.

[DreadWanderer]

5 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

In E6M2, if you can enter the timed secret room and open the door from the inside (or prevent it from closing), then you will have more than enough bullets for the rest of the level.

 

Thank you for the info, but I got through that one eventually without the secret. I'm really not very fond of the idea of having one shot secrets on a timer, it's basically 100% blind unfriendly. Probably doable to UV max with quite a bit of practice, but sadly I'm not in the mood with this mapset.

Edited December 10, 2023 by DreadWanderer

[Faceman2000]

Those new textures in E6M9 are the most 90s PWAD-looking thing I’ve ever seen. XD

[Rudolph]

4 minutes ago, DreadWanderer said:

Thank you for the info, but I got through that one eventually without the secret. I'm really not very fond of the idea of having one shot secrets on a timer, it's basically 100% blind unfriendly. Probably doable to UV max with quite a bit of practice, but sadly I'm not in the mood with this mapset.

I understand what you mean, but ironically, in my case, I stumbled upon said secret entirely by accident. XD

[Flyxolydian]

Well I've managed to UVMAX maps 1-4, and map 9 so far. Credit to John for making the Cyberdemon actually feel like a real threat again, though I can't say I'm impressed that you have to take forced damage in the crusher room in map 4. That's a little rude.

*EDIT*

Add 5 and 6 to that... can confirm that map 6 is doable. It's hard though. All I'll say is... be smart about your Invuln use.

*DOBULE EDIT*
Done them all... map 8...WAT.

Hard mapset, but very fun. Also, the music is great, can't think of a bad track on it. Nice job Jimmy!

Edited December 10, 2023 by Flyxolydian

[Mystic 256]

I'm enjoying it but the timed secrets are kind of annoying

[Sena]

7 hours ago, pianolarva said:

Does it work well with Crispy Doom?

I've gotten halfway through so far on Crispy, and it works fine, although I had to idclev to start since there's no option directly on the title screen, and it just uses the regular E3 soundtrack which is a bit of a bummer.

[Trov]

10 hours ago, UberGewei said:

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).

10 hours 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.

Using the _ZD version is not a great solution since it's short in height, and therefore doesn't look good when looking up and down (which DSDA Doom and Woof both support). In fact, I think even ZDaemon ought to use a taller version of the sky too for the same reason.

256x240 would be fine.

To match how it looks in GZDoom, stretching it to 512x240 would be the way to do it. But I don't think it's all that important. It probably wouldn't look that great due to stretched pixels.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Trov

[drygnfyre]

6 hours ago, Faceman2000 said:

If you want the secret map to work in ports that don’t support MAPINFO, you need to set everything to E1, not E2 or E3, as I said previously.

 

I haven’t played E6M8 so I’m not sure what Boss Action(s) are required.

I discerned this just from noticing that M3 had the secret exit. Just like Sigil put it in M6, I used that to figure out what episode these are supposed to replace.

[Ar_e_en]

6 hours ago, DreadWanderer said:

Would it be accurate to say that UV-maxing these levels single seg amounts to masochism? I'm trying to enjoy them but I'll be damned if Romero isn't cruel in this set. Guess I'll simply have to get used to ammo and health starvation, 20% damaging floors everywhere, and surprise cyber rockets to the face.

Once you realize that every map has a 30 second secret near the player start area - It's not as bad as you think.

[Rudolph]

What is E6M1's timed secret? The map took me forever to beat, yet I still managed to get 100% secrets.

[Ar_e_en]

Aaand... SIGIL II has been beaten!

 

Overall: It's good! Sure, the 30 second secrets might not have been the best idea, but once you know that all maps have these secrets - they're actually really easy to find. I think that the best aspect of this wad is that (to me at least) this wad really does feel like an actual episode from Doom 1, more so than the first SIGIL did for me. The first SIGIL was tough, but my knowledge of Doom's mechanics was good enough for me to beat it as if it was just another wad, but with SIGIL II - because some of the encounters made the chainsaw actually viable - it made me rethink some of my approaches to combat in this wad. In a weird way - my tactics for combat in this wad was a weird mix of my current combat tactics (built through acquired online knowledge and improved skill) as well as the type of tactics that I would have originally used as a kid (old outdated methods as well as unlearned modern behaviors). 

 

The best map for me was probably E6M5. It had great visuals, great combat encounters and the best midi in the entire wad!

[Ar_e_en]

2 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

What is E6M1's timed secret? The map took me forever to beat, yet I still managed to get 100% secrets.

It's an alcove near the graves. You can get in there through speed or by finding the crusher switch (there is a walkable linedef near that switch that opens the alcove again).

[Rudolph]

Damn! And here I was, lamenting the fact that I could not access those supplies sooner. :o

 

Anyway, E6M3's done. Maybe it is because I am doing a continuous play run, but this one, while harder than E6M2, also does not feel as brutal as E6M1.