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SIGIL, a New Doom Campaign by John Romero
- ArtWomb 8y agoRespect. DOOM nostalgia runs deep. And if anyone hasn't read Masters of Doom it is certainly of the most powerful origin stories imaginable ;)
- ian0 8y ago> a wad is a default file format for DOOM® and DOOM II®. It stands for “where’s all the data?” All this time and I never knew that.
- cjsawyer 8y agoI always thought a “wadded up” ball of paper, like a map or a blueprint
- sedatk 8y agoI think they aimed for that double meaning.
- thsealienbstrds 8y agoMe too, me too... :)
- b_tterc_p 8y agoSo this guy just asked buckethead to make some music and he did. Huh. That’s cool.
- SolarNet 8y agoIt's like if one of the beetles (of video games in this case) asked if you wanted to do a collaboration. Of course he did it.
- acct1771 8y agoAnd then says this about himself! > if I hadn’t been a part of DOOM®’s creation, I would have absolutely been a hardcore member of its community. ...who's harder-core?! Roll them out, please!
- jmiserez 8y agoI wonder how many game developers can say that of themselves nowadays!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- deuzj 8y agoIn fact that's the official reason John Carmack fired Romero from id: "not working hard enough". This is, spending too much time on IRC, newsgroups, etc. engaging with the community instead of working.
- PostOnce 8y agoThis business model is cool, free game digitally, but boxed it costs money. (let's ignore the "you need the original doom" stuff for the purposes of considering this business model) Also, the company providing the actual boxes, Limited Run Games, does cool stuff. I thought a game was going to be digital only, and then found them doing a version in a real box, DRM free, no steam activation required; I thought that was cool of everyone involved. I miss big boxes. Apparently they disappeared because Walmart wanted to make room for DVDs by removing software SKUs, so the software publishers downsized the boxes so they wouldn't have to put fewer SKUs on the shelf at Walmart. https://rome.ro/news/2018/4/18/big-box-extinction https://rome.ro/news/2018/4/18/big-box-extinction (intro) and https://rome.ro/bigbox https://rome.ro/bigbox (actual blog post w/ story) Lastly, John Romero, if you're reading: fix your blog ^ why is the intro not included on the blog post page?
- pdpi 8y agoNeeding the original Doom is par for the course for this sort of megawad project, even if it’s Romero making it. There’s a bunch of tricky licensing issues around shipping the original Doom wad that you’d need for core game resources.
- PostOnce 8y agoYeah, understandable; that's what I meant by the "let's ignore you need DOOM" part, because everything Romero made he's giving away free. So his business model is still "it's free digitally, but costs for the box set". What I wanted to avoid was people saying "oh but it's not free you have to buy DOOM", which is irrelevant to the idea at hand. Now that I think of it, locomalito did this before, http://www.locomalito.com http://www.locomalito.com -- he makes retro freeware games, and occasionally sells box sets of those for a fee.
- ido 8y agoI've looked into it & you're basically making cents on the dollar on these limited edition boxed sets due to manufacturing cost at such a small scale + shipping. It's nice for a hobby but not a good way to make a living.
- queensnake 8y agoe1m8b: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/Ports/d-f/e1m8b https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/Ports/d-f/e1m8... -- has mirrors Be very gentle, the server seems taxed: e1m4b: https://www.doomworld.com/e1m4b/e1m4b.zip https://www.doomworld.com/e1m4b/e1m4b.zip
- gammateam 8y ago> A 16GB 3 1/2-inch floppy disk themed USB that includes the free megawad data and extras. Should be 5 3.5gb 3 1/2-inch floppy disk themed USBs I mean, if this is what we’re doing
- benj111 8y agoIf that's what you're doing, then surely 12 1.44gb USBs?
- grendelt 8y ago> and requires players own the original 1993 registered version of DOOM® in order to play Dude. Even if I could find the game I had back then, I don't even have a floppy or CD drive anymore.
- rangibaby 8y agoDOOM.WAD and DOOM2.WAD are literally two of the easiest files on the internet to find
- keyle 8y agoHe also knows you know that. He fully expects people to have a copy or to have got it from one of the stores (it's findable I believe)
- cwyers 8y agoI think he means "the original DOOM, not the recent reboot of it" not "break out the floppy disk drives." It's five bucks on Steam. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2280/Ultimate_Doom/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2280/Ultimate_Doom/
- kayoone 8y agoI grew up with doom so this is awesome. I know that he is the original creator and that this is technically a free mod, still wonder if Bethesda will just let him do this if it proves to be popular.
- aedron 8y agoThe original creator is a bit much. John Romero was mostly a level designer. Carmack did the heavy lifting.
- chapium 8y agoIt takes both kinds of genius to make a great game.
- phaus 8y agoCarmack worked on the engine. Romero built the dev tools in addition to designing levels. Both contributed significantly to the design of the game. Carmack is one of the most talented engineers alive, but that doesn't negate all of the work that the rest of iD put into Doom.
- mothsonasloth 8y agoI noticed Romero has been selling a lot of his gaming collection in eBay the past year. Along with this Sigil release, it makes me think he's struggling a bit, I hope not. Still a cool concept, I miss games that come with packaging and games.
- jchw 8y agoReading the Q&A on the page, it seems like this is something he worked on in free-time: >Q: How long did it take you to create Sigil? >A: I worked on it part time during 2017 and 2018, mostly while I was on vacation or in the evenings. I wanted to have a surprise for DOOM’s 25th anniversary. If he is downplaying a need for income, then he definitely is masking it well. It seems like it's just a labor of love.
- benj111 8y agoMid life crisis? Not meant as an insult. I assume he's had all the sports cars etc, so he cant really reach for those.
- DavidNielsen 8y agoThe husband of noted game developer Brenda Romero is doing fine. By all accounts, he is selling his old treasures mostly for nostalgia reasons. He has fond memories of those times developing Doom and he wants to share those pieces of gaming history. Plus at a certain age you just realize that you have stuff cluttering up your attic which is doing you no good but still has value to others. His company Romero Games Ltd. has had at least one big hit in recent years, Gunman Taco Truck, which by all accounts made a nice little profit. I believe he also occasionally lectures in Ireland on game design. From everything I gather, John is happy, healthy and wealthy enough to be able to devote the odd few hours to a passion project which is dear to his heart. He loves Doom something fierce and given both the impact it had on society and the period of his life developing it took place it, it is hard imagine how he wouldn’t have it occupy a special place.
- Jerry2 8y ago>Along with this Sigil release, it makes me think he's struggling a bit, I hope not. You can check his auctions for prints and he says there that the funds are going towards a Game Design museum he's trying to build in Ireland.
- wodenokoto 8y agoCan someone elaborate on the meaning / significance of E1M4B and E1M8B ? Particular in this context: > I learned a lot from E1M8B and E1M4B, so I think I did a better job this time. Also, why does a few doom levels need 16gb?
- Tsiklon 8y agoE1M8B and E1M4B were Romero's first new Doom levels in years - https://mashable.com/2016/01/15/doom-john-romero-new-level https://mashable.com/2016/01/15/doom-john-romero-new-level as for the 16GB flash drive - I assume that in a bulk purchase the price difference between that capacity and lesser capacities were negligible. It does appear that they are packing some extras on the flash drive too (though i can't guess as to what - I assume wallpapers and audio)
- pmhpereira 8y ago> Can someone elaborate on the meaning / significance of E1M4B and E1M8B ? Those were the last two levels created by John Romero, more than 20 years after the original launch of the game.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoThey were also really good. He certainly doesn't seem to have lost his touch.
- krallja 8y agoDOOM levels (“maps”) are grouped into “episodes” — these are the E and M numbers. B implies some sort of “alternative” to the original maps.
- DeathArrow 8y agoAre you also required to own a PC with 386 CPU, 4 MB of RAM, a VGA card and MS-DOS in order to play this?
- dsl 8y agoYou can get DOOM ported to run on modern hardware on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2280/Ultimate_Doom/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2280/Ultimate_Doom/
- Zardoz84 8y agoInstall Zandronum or ZDoomGL, and copy the doom.wad to it. You will get a much better experience.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoI'm certainly planning on playing on my DOOM machine - 486 DX4/100 with 16MB RAM, SoundBlaster 16 etc.
- boomlinde 8y agoLooking at the complexity of the designs you'd probably best use a Pentium.
- xtrapolate 8y agoThe favicon is Apple's logo? https://www.romerogames.ie/favicon.ico https://www.romerogames.ie/favicon.ico
- novaRom 8y agoDOOM was great game in mid 90th. It has inspired me as a schoolboy actually to learn computer programming and graphics. It actually inspired me to read some great books like "Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice in C" and "C programming language". I learned a lot about BSP trees, sprites, 3D modeling, I did modify WADs, wrote my own simple engine to work with them. I finally could understand how this amazing Game was made! Thank you Mr Romero!
- malux85 8y agoI followed a similar path as you, I didn’t learn 3D modelling though, but I went down the hex editor path modifying the doom exe to make rockets move faster. It took me aaaaages to learn this (probably 2-3 months total time over a period of years) Echoing you too, Thank you Mr Romero! I can’t wait to play this for the pure hit of nostalgia
- shroom 8y agoI thought this was pretty cool when reading about it. And then I read Buckethead made the music and now I HAVE to order the Limited Edition! :D Dang it will set me back $166 but hey Christmas is around the corner. Happy holidays!
- throwanem 8y agoFor those unsure what is meant by “you have to have the original Doom”: Doom binaries require the presence of an IWAD with the “full game” flag set in order to load PWADs (i.e. level sets like Sigil). The shareware Doom WAD lacks this flag; the retail version’s WAD, and Doom 2’s, have it. You can buy a copy of Doom, ready to run on modern hardware, from Steam. This will include the “full game” WAD, and thus be able to load and play Sigil. There is also, if you can’t or don’t want to drop a fiver on the official release, a WAD available from the FreeDoom project, which you can use with the more capable GZDoom binary. The FreeDoom WAD also has the “full game” flag, and using it with GZDoom will also satisfy the requirement and enable you to load and play Sigil. You don’t need it to be so original that it comes on floppy disks and specifies a 386 to run on. But, if you have that, that will work too - although it’ll probably have a hard time with modern WADs. Me, I’m looking forward to playing it in Project Brutality, which is something like Doom might have been if the hardware of the time had allowed it.
- jasongill 8y ago> although it’ll probably have a hard time with modern WADs. Excuse my ignorance as it's been 20+ years since I did any DOOM development, but has the format of the WAD file changed over the years? I thought it was just binary assets joined together with a simple header that specified the file names & byte boundaries
- lightedman 8y agoThose of us running Zandronum use a mix of WAD and PK3 now days. Try Complex Doom Invasion.
- michaelt 8y agoIf the game used to limit maps to 8MB and it’s since been changed to allow up to 8GB, new maps can be incompatible due to their size.
- rangibaby 8y agoThere are also some hard limits on the amount of geometry and sprites in the map at one time. I used to use PRBoom which removes the limits while retaining compatibility with the original Doom
- Waterluvian 8y ago"Actually, there are only nine distinct level wad files. It turns out that you can put both the single- player and the deathmatch levels in the same wad..." I would love to understand or even hypothesize why one would want to do it this way.
- rrix2 8y agoThe deathmatch levels are rooms in the single player campaign. Lock some doors and change the spawn point, and save some disk space.
- KIFulgore 8y agoThis is awesome, and I do hope he creates a new level pack for Doom II's anniversary. The new enemy types and double-barrel shotgun make Doom II a lot more interesting IMO.