Romero’s Doom II WAD: HELLION. Coming soon…ish?

[EduardoAndFriends]

This might not be news to some but I spied this on Instagram and was like “hey, nice!”. 
 

“One Humanity will feature as a level in the upcoming Doom II WAD, HELLION (release date TBD).”
 

Thoughts? 🤔 

 

Link: https://www.instagram.com/p/C3_aT9jtZ8h/?igsh=MTYyamduNTRwZHE5cg==

[EduardoAndFriends]

I can only assume from the provided (brief) info that this is the WAD hinted at in the past and then Sigil II emerged instead. I’m also assuming that this is another solo project from Romero… very interested to see more info.

[DreadWanderer]

4 hours ago, EduardoAndFriends said:

This might not be news to some but I spied this on Instagram and was like “hey, nice!”. 
 

“One Humanity will feature as a level in the upcoming Doom II WAD, HELLION (release date TBD).”
 

Thoughts? 🤔 

 

Link: https://www.instagram.com/p/C3_aT9jtZ8h/?igsh=MTYyamduNTRwZHE5cg==

 

Might as well pitch in, though nothing I'm going to say is groundbreaking in any way.

 

Playing Sigil 2 (and to a certain extent Sigil 1) convinced me that Romero is trying to push the boundaries of modern mapping while still staying true to his style. I have no doubt that he was kind of aware of how far the modding scene has come since the 90s and decided to come back to Doom level design with the Sigils, giving his own quirks a modern flavour. Two things happened: 1. he did a more comprehensive type of research and 2. his use of more advanced tools allowed him to go wild and explore the many possibilities of the new formats and the removal of engine limitations.

 

The Sigils had a great impact partially because of the fact that Ultimate Doom wads are few and far in between when compared to Doom II, though that space already had its own fair share of awesome wads like Jimmy's Deathless, Solar Struggle, or Stickney Installation. When it comes to Doom II the competition is much stiffer because most of the custom content for this game is for Doom II, so in a way Romero faces an uphill battle in coming up with something truly refreshing. I'm quite excited for Hellion and I'm sure that a lot of people will play it due to how Romero is a huge brand, but I am a bit cautious and reserved. I'd love to be wrong though. Who knows, maybe he'll really come up with an amazingly original set!

Edited March 7 by DreadWanderer

[EduardoAndFriends]

1 hour ago, DreadWanderer said:

 

Might as well pitch in, though nothing I'm going to say is groundbreaking in any way.

 

Playing Sigil 2 (and to a certain extent Sigil 1) convinced me that Romero is trying to push the boundaries of modern mapping while still staying true to his style. I have no doubt that he was kind of aware of how far the modding scene has come since the 90s and decided to come back to Doom level design with the Sigils, giving his own quirks a modern flavour. Two things happened: 1. he did a more comprehensive type of research and 2. his use of more advanced tools allowed him to go wild and explore the many possibilities of the new formats and the removal of engine limitations.

 

The Sigils had a great impact partially because of the fact that Ultimate Doom wads are few and far in between when compared to Doom II, though that space already had its own fair share of awesome wads like Jimmy's Deathless, Solar Struggle, or Stickney Installation. When it comes to Doom II the competition is much stiffer because most of the custom content for this game is for Doom II, so in a way Romero faces an uphill battle in coming up with something truly refreshing. I'm quite excited for Hellion and I'm sure that a lot of people will play it due to how Romero is a huge brand, but I am a bit cautious and reserved. I'd love to be wrong though. Who knows, maybe he'll really come up with an amazingly original set!

Very true! Some VERY stiff competish and I’m sure it will be judged accordingly and potentially quite harshly depending on what he serves up, as is the way of things. Super interested to see what ends up on the menu!

[DreadWanderer]

1 minute ago, EduardoAndFriends said:

Very true! Some VERY stiff competish and I’m sure it will be judged accordingly and potentially quite harshly depending on what he serves up, as is the way of things. Super interested to see what ends up on the menu!

 

You can be certain that the community will absolutely not give John a pass just because he's John Romero, and I find that to be fair. This will probably sound silly but before the Sigils, Romero was ironically in the position of "mapping newbie" given how much we've been spoiled by constantly evolving styles and content, and he had to play catch-up. Despite my gripe with torturous gameplay in the Sigils I think they're pretty great and John did a very fine job, and I'm sure he's gathering information and impressions in order to come up with something neat for Doom II. Guess we'll see 😄

[Tangra]

Probably won't be sooner than Doom II's birthday, but that's still soon enough. Has he announced the number of maps in Hellion yet? There were rumors of a full 32 level megawad, but i don't believe it, considering Sigil II took more than a year to be built.

[EduardoAndFriends]

34 minutes ago, Tangra said:

Probably won't be sooner than Doom II's birthday, but that's still soon enough. Has he announced the number of maps in Hellion yet? There were rumors of a full 32 level megawad, but i don't believe it, considering Sigil II took more than a year to be built.

Not that I’ve found (yet) but yeah, that’s a very good point…! I would cautiously guess that it might be an episode mapset, which is common these days, maybe maps01 - 11? Hmm. 🧐 

[Gregor]

Definitely interested in playing a Doom II set by Romero and cautiously excited. I don't really play Doom 1, so SIGIL was always a hard sell for me. But this could be nice. Romero's Doom II maps are still some of my favorite 90s maps.

Edited March 7 by Gregor

[DreadWanderer]

1 hour ago, Tangra said:

Probably won't be sooner than Doom II's birthday, but that's still soon enough. Has he announced the number of maps in Hellion yet? There were rumors of a full 32 level megawad, but i don't believe it, considering Sigil II took more than a year to be built.

 

Tbh I'll settle for half a megawad in September of this year, though it really depends on how you define "megawad". There seems to be a rule of thumb in the community that any wad with 15 maps or more is a megawad, so Running Late 2's 16 means it's a megawad. PUSS XXV: Lunacy has 44 and is also a megawad, so maybe there's a bit of a definitional problem here. Hellion will most likely be "episode-length" which is around 10 maps, give or take a few.

[Eurisko]

Has he at all given any indication as to when Hellion will be released? 

[DreadWanderer]

1 hour ago, Eurisko said:

Has he at all given any indication as to when Hellion will be released? 

 

Couldn't find anything relevant on the Instagram page or his website. I'm not a big social media person so I don't keep up with stuff like his Twitter/X account, where he's probably quite active. I doubt that he would drop any hints though, that just creates hype and endless discussions. When it drops it drops. Using a sort of argument from inference, given that Sigil 2 dropped for Doom 1's 30th, I expect Hellion to be out in September/October of this year, in time for Doom II's anniversary. Hard to say for sure but it feels like a decent guess.

[ReaperAA]

An interesting thing to note is that at one point, One Humanity was referred to as S2MAP05 in the readme file (until it got patched), which means that it was to be part of Sigil 2 and thus Sigil 2 was initially meant to be for Doom 2. I still wonder why Romero decided to change the plan and make another Doom 1 mapset.

 

But anyway, I think that if Hellion is to release on Doom 2's 30th anniversary, it would likely be 9/10 map wad rather than a megawad. Think NRFTL sized. Though given that Sigil 2 released 4.5-ish years after the original, it is possible thayt Hellion might also end up releasing late.

[EPICALLL]

2 hours ago, Gregor said:

Definitely interested in playing a Doom II set by Romero and cautiously excited. I don't really play Doom 1, so SIGIL was always a hard sell for me. But this could be nice. Romero's Doom II maps are still some of my favorite 90s maps.

I have a feeling Hellion would lean into the slaughter direction a little bit. Given the fact that Sigil II already had a lot of ridiculously obtuse fights, I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that he was perhaps leaning into slaughter territory, and furthermore could continue to do so in Hellion. And by that metric, if that does happen... I am equally excited as I am terrified.

[Plerb]

I hope Romero brings some other classic IWAD mappers on board. Tom Hall and Dario Casali seem to be the most likely candidates as both of them have expressed interest in mapping again. That would be so cool.

[Gregor]

28 minutes ago, EPICALLL said:

I have a feeling Hellion would lean into the slaughter direction a little bit. Given the fact that Sigil II already had a lot of ridiculously obtuse fights, I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that he was perhaps leaning into slaughter territory, and furthermore could continue to do so in Hellion. And by that metric, if that does happen... I am equally excited as I am terrified.

A bit of slaughter never hurt anyone...

As long as I have my trusty SSG at my side, I'm ready for anything Mr John can conjure up.

[Insaneprophet]

I could so so geek out over an entire set of maps in the vein of "industrial zone" and "the living end"

[drygnfyre]

10 hours ago, DreadWanderer said:

and he had to play catch-up.

He admitted this back in 2013 when he did the E1 play-through with some IGN guy. He was asked about if he still made maps, and he said he didn't because anything he released would have paled in comparison to what the fan community had made. He even said how primitive E1 was by comparison. This was six years before Sigil appeared.

[DreadWanderer]

34 minutes ago, drygnfyre said:

He admitted this back in 2013 when he did the E1 play-through with some IGN guy. He was asked about if he still made maps, and he said he didn't because anything he released would have paled in comparison to what the fan community had made. He even said how primitive E1 was by comparison. This was six years before Sigil appeared.

 

Thanks for the info, didn't know that. I think Romero adapted to the times though, and the experience of Sigil 1 and 2 will be a nice starting point for Doom II's admittedly very different flow.

[DreadWanderer]

6 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

But anyway, I think that if Hellion is to release on Doom 2's 30th anniversary, it would likely be 9/10 map wad rather than a megawad. Think NRFTL sized. Though given that Sigil 2 released 4.5-ish years after the original, it is possible thayt Hellion might also end up releasing late.

 

NRFTL is a really underrated and tight wad, I was really impressed by it. If Hellion can do what NRFTL did and perhaps with a bit of that style, I'll be very satisfied.

[drygnfyre]

7 minutes ago, DreadWanderer said:

 

Thanks for the info, didn't know that. I think Romero adapted to the times though, and the experience of Sigil 1 and 2 will be a nice starting point for Doom II's admittedly very different flow.

Well he was supposedly working on an unrelated FPS in the 2010s that either got canceled or never released. To get into shape for that, he first did the "Tech Gone Bad" E1M8 replacement. Then after the other FPS never got to fruition, he was in the mood to do smaller projects like Sigil and Sigil II. He mentioned using Doom Builder for Sigil, I would imagine Sigil II probably used Ultimate Doom Builder, which is a great tool for making stuff.

 

He was also well aware of the many enhancements. In the 2013 video, they were playing on Doomsday, and he mentioned how fun Brutal Doom was.

 

The specific comment he made was "Doom was state of the art in 1993" and that "anything I did today [in 2013] would likewise have to be state of the art." He was also referring to how vast maps have gotten, and how modern source ports even allow for legitimate 3D maps. So he recognized that he would basically have to relearn mapping all over again.

Edited March 7 by drygnfyre

[DreadWanderer]

1 minute ago, drygnfyre said:

Well he was supposedly working on an unrelated FPS in the 2010s that either got canceled or never released. To get into shape for that, he first did the "Tech Gone Bad" E1M8 replacement. Then after the other FPS never got to fruition, he was in the mood to do smaller projects like Sigil and Sigil II. He mentioned using Doom Builder for Sigil, I would imagine Sigil II probably used Ultimate Doom Builder, which is a great tool for making stuff.

 

He was also well aware of the many enhancements. In the 2013 video, they were playing on Doomsday, and he mentioned how fun Brutal Doom was.

 

Yeah I was sort of aware about some things like John knowing about certain mods and the newer and more advanced creation or editing tools, but I guess it was quite another thing to actually sit down and make the maps. In general I'm glad to see him back with stuff like playing myhouse and generally having a renewed interest in what's going on. Ultimately it's a great feat of the community to motivate one of the main designers to return to a 30 year old game by keeping it alive with awesome content. I don't know of many other series which can make that claim.

[drygnfyre]

I can only imagine the joy he probably feels in seeing things like Ultimate Doom Builder, where you can design things in a 3D mode and then in one click, have all the textures lined up and even do things like auto-generate staircases. Compared to his own tool DoomEd. I would imagine Romero probably approaches mapping from that perspective a little bit, seeing how people took his original tool and exponentially evolved it. I mean how often do you get to make a game that is still being played and enjoyed three decades later? I mean sure, there are always ROM hacks of popular games, but it's really hard to find anything on the same level as Doom. One of the benefits of getting the source code released.

[DreadWanderer]

15 minutes ago, drygnfyre said:

I can only imagine the joy he probably feels in seeing things like Ultimate Doom Builder, where you can design things in a 3D mode and then in one click, have all the textures lined up and even do things like auto-generate staircases. Compared to his own tool DoomEd. I would imagine Romero probably approaches mapping from that perspective a little bit, seeing how people took his original tool and exponentially evolved it. I mean how often do you get to make a game that is still being played and enjoyed three decades later? I mean sure, there are always ROM hacks of popular games, but it's really hard to find anything on the same level as Doom. One of the benefits of getting the source code released.

 

Funny that you mention ROM hacks since I'm on a Super Metroid binge, and that is a very good example of how a community is striving to keep a series alive. Sure Nintendo themselves also made more games, but I can firmly say that the revival of Metroid is in no small part thanks to the community. If anything, Nintendo deservedly got a bad rap for being extra litigious and conflictual regarding fan-made content, with AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake) being the most well-known fan-driven project that got hit with cease and desist letters from the company. Which kind of segues nicely into your point about how, by contrast, id are much more open with fan stuff. The release of the source code back in '97 is probably the most important decision taken in this whole history.

[bioshockfan90]

Not a huge fan of the SIGIL wads, but I respect them in the "IWAD... sorta" canon and will always find it a treat to play through. Excited at what Romero can do with the SSG and expanded bestiary, I feel like one of the main things holding the SIGIL duology back is the game it is being mapped in. Not to say good UDOOM wads don't exist, I've played plenty - just a lot of the real good stuff is for 2. 

 

Not to mention Romero has some of my favorite maps in D2, he doesn't have much on the roster but the stuff that's there is always super fun to play. 

[drygnfyre]

22 minutes ago, DreadWanderer said:

with AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake) being the most well-known fan-driven project that got hit with cease and desist letters from the company.

It sucks what happened, but they did give the community enough time to download it before it got C&D'd. It's their IP. And it probably didn't help they were doing their own M2 remake at the time. It would be nice if Nintendo was a bit more lenient, but basic trademark law is you have to defend your IP or you can lose it. They might be more militant than others, but Metroid is an IP they want to protect.

 

Romero also commented in the same video it was the product of id being like 13 guys at the time. They were all hackers at heart. Once id got bought by larger companies, you're not going to see the source code of Doom 3 or anything else anytime soon. Which leads into the kind of ironic decision that Romero wanted id to get larger and more commercial, while Carmack wanted to stay small and independent. Because the former, while no doubt the key to making more profits, is also what ensures that commercial games don't get open sourced.

Edited March 8 by drygnfyre

[drygnfyre]

18 minutes ago, bioshockfan90 said:

Not to say good UDOOM wads don't exist, I've played plenty - just a lot of the real good stuff is for 2. 

As far as I know, you can put D2 assets into Doom. I remember playing some E1 "remake" WADs that added the mancubus and super shotgun. Although maybe that was only possible with source ports, I'm not sure. But it can be done. Which kind of blurs the lines between Doom and D2 in that regard.

 

Frankly, I've always preferred the presentation of Doom. I love the episode format, and some of my favorite megawads (like "E1 the way id did it") will even create their own intermission screens. That's the kind of little touches that are missing from D2. So any set of maps that take advantage of the presentation style of Doom, I'm a fan of.

[bioshockfan90]

3 hours ago, drygnfyre said:

As far as I know, you can put D2 assets into Doom. I remember playing some E1 "remake" WADs that added the mancubus and super shotgun. Although maybe that was only possible with source ports, I'm not sure. But it can be done. Which kind of blurs the lines between Doom and D2 in that regard.

 

Frankly, I've always preferred the presentation of Doom. I love the episode format, and some of my favorite megawads (like "E1 the way id did it") will even create their own intermission screens. That's the kind of little touches that are missing from D2. So any set of maps that take advantage of the presentation style of Doom, I'm a fan of.

I find the inverse being true - you can recreate D1 maps in D2 - the entire bestiary and weapons are there and a lot of textures are the same - importing textures is a whole lot easier than adding monsters or weapons. I don't doubt you're right on your claims, I'd wager it's a rarity in the limit-removing/Boom scene unless there's any really notable wads I'm forgetting about. 

 

I guess KDiKDiZD? But that's for the Doom 2 IWAD and is the result of a lot of trickery and its inspiration was basically the same concept, just in ZDoom ports. 

 

I agree with you about the intermission maps and the episode formats, but as more advanced mapping formats come out it slowly merges into Doom 2 and at that point you have the extended features, it'd be kind of a hassle to reverse-port these features to Doom 1 for the sake of a couple hardcoded things that already can be edited to a high degree in Doom 2 using advanced standards. But I get your point. In fact, one of my favorite megaWADs of all time is for Doom 1, that being "No End in Sight". 

[stylo]

Oh! I just saw one of your videos today, on 'recommended Doomtubers' or somesuch. I enjoyed it, despite your being Australian. Almost impossible to come back from that but you managed.

(Nah, I dug it, your demeanour & sense of humour. It can be difficult to find anyone on yt, esp. in the realm of games who doesn't have that kind of bombastic/screamy tone, nor the... not sure how to put this, the Youtube Gamer Nerd Accent.)

 

re: Romero

I haven't gotten to the Sigils yet but it's so cool that he keeps up with the scene & kind of came full circle, and seems happy doing Doom maps again, 'as a fan' I believe he said.

[Individualised]

16 hours ago, drygnfyre said:

seeing how people took his original tool and exponentially evolved it

DoomEd wasn't released until 2015, all community editors were built from scratch.

Edited March 8 by Individualised

[LadyMistDragon]

On 3/7/2024 at 5:47 AM, DreadWanderer said:

 

Tbh I'll settle for half a megawad in September of this year, though it really depends on how you define "megawad". There seems to be a rule of thumb in the community that any wad with 15 maps or more is a megawad, so Running Late 2's 16 means it's a megawad. PUSS XXV: Lunacy has 44 and is also a megawad, so maybe there's a bit of a definitional problem here. Hellion will most likely be "episode-length" which is around 10 maps, give or take a few.

Oh, it's definitely going to be a megawad. The question is whether he'll have folks like Dario Casali and Tom Hall to provide the secret maps or whatever. From everything I can tell in the streams, he's aiming for full-length if nothing else, although honestly....it would prove impractical to get out before Doom II's anniversary. Good things come to those who wait and so on and so forth though.