John Romero Finally Releases Fifth Episode of 'Doom' For Free (hothardware.com) 102
John Romero has finally released Sigil, his unofficial fifth episode of Doom with nine new single-player levels and nine deathmatch levels. It's available for free on Romero's web site (though you'll also need the original Doom to play it). Hot Hardware reports:
If you want to know what Sigil is about, Romero explains it best. He wrote, "After killing the Spiderdemon at the end of E4M8 (Unto the Cruel), your next stop is Earth -- you must save it from hellspawn that is causing unimaginable carnage. But Baphomet glitched the final teleporter with his hidden Sigil whose eldritch power brings you to even darker shores of Hell. You fight through this stygian pocket of evil to confront the ultimate harbingers of Satan, then finally return to become Earth's savior. In summary, rip and tear!"
Kotaku calls it "some of the most punishing and devious Doom I've ever played... I've been playing it all day, and it owns..." What makes Romero's designs work so well is how unabashedly excited he seems to be about them. Levels are teeming with enemies, including many tougher ones such as the beefy, energy hurling Barons of Hell. Each new maze is punctuated with fights that mix and match Doom's precisely-designed enemies... There's a real giddiness here, a sense that a master is excitedly returning to his favourite tools... The default difficulty is tricky; higher levels feel like borderline trolling. Screw it, let's just toss a few cyberdemons at the start of this level. You know how to dodge, right?
In the old days, we used to call all first-person shooters "Doom clones". But there's nothing else like Doom. There's a particular, nearly impossible to describe playfulness that even the 2016 reboot sometimes misses. A single run through Romero's new levels feels positively joyous, a chance to see fantastic level design in action and observe a master at play.
Kotaku calls it "some of the most punishing and devious Doom I've ever played... I've been playing it all day, and it owns..." What makes Romero's designs work so well is how unabashedly excited he seems to be about them. Levels are teeming with enemies, including many tougher ones such as the beefy, energy hurling Barons of Hell. Each new maze is punctuated with fights that mix and match Doom's precisely-designed enemies... There's a real giddiness here, a sense that a master is excitedly returning to his favourite tools... The default difficulty is tricky; higher levels feel like borderline trolling. Screw it, let's just toss a few cyberdemons at the start of this level. You know how to dodge, right?
In the old days, we used to call all first-person shooters "Doom clones". But there's nothing else like Doom. There's a particular, nearly impossible to describe playfulness that even the 2016 reboot sometimes misses. A single run through Romero's new levels feels positively joyous, a chance to see fantastic level design in action and observe a master at play.
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Here you are. Right in TFA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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She dies 4 times in 11 minutes and makes dumb mistakes. It's no walkthrough.
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millennials and their walkthroughs. just play the damn game already.
Re: Is there a walkthrough somewhere? (Score:2, Insightful)
Millennials don't want to play the game, they just want to watch other people play it on twitch.
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We're into the post-post-millennial generation now, or as I like to call it, "Generation XX" because it's become so feminized. :-P
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Lol! Nope, I just think there's still room for real men in the world. You don't have to apologize for being a man just because "some men did some things."
Re: Is there a walkthrough somewhere? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have an 8-bit micro on my desk here; it's being taught how to run an electric steering pump thru CanBus, for a mod for my car.
Who needs a Pi to do basic stuff?
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When all the superlatives in the summary are meta, about being excited for the author and caring who he is, I consider that a hint that there are no substantive reasons to bother actually playing it.
If it was a good game, they'd have talked about that. They didn't.
Re:Is there a walkthrough somewhere? (Score:5, Insightful)
They did.
"Kotaku calls it "some of the most punishing and devious Doom I've ever played... I've been playing it all day, and it owns..."
"Playing Doom kicks off the highly specific level design observation node in my brain, and Sigilâ(TM)s reveal some great tricks for making not just good Doom levels but great first-person designs in general."
"Pits feature side walls where projectile-spitting cacodemons and rushing floating skulls force players to dance in the tightest of spaces. Thin walkways span over chasms, doors waiting at the end. Open them, backstep, and youâ(TM)ll find demons and zombies guided into the most perfect funnels.
The result is a challenging experience that manages to add bloody moments of triumph. Hell, the opening level starts with the player surrounded by fireball-spewing imps, inches away from a shotgun." ...
Just saying.
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It really does feel like Doom but with 25 years of level design theory at work. (e.g. drop-offs and closing doors that prevent the player from getting lost, you can see most of the light sources in the game, secrets that invite more exploration than just spamming the use key at everything.) The only thing I felt didn't work 100% was a section with a bunch of crushers but that's mostly because you can't look up to see if you're about to get squished.
Had a blast. Entire episode clocked in at a little over an
cool, but (Score:2)
Time (Score:5, Informative)
By today's standards they *were* awkward. But, you have to remember, this is one of the first semi-true-3d games - Wolfenstein was basically a 2.5D game, as you couldn't go up or down. Doom had up-and-down, but no underneath, so you didn't have to aim up or down, so there as no "mouselook." The mouse simply moved you around the level. It was entirely possible to play doom using just the keyboard, which is how I remember playing it.
Marathon and Dark Forces were the first games I remember playing where you had to aim in the 3rd dimension, so mouselook was important.
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The original Doom was fully keyboard based and didn't even support using the mouse.
I don't recall mouselook even being an OPTION until Quake 1, and that required a console command to enable. mlook 1 or something. Quake II is the first game I recall playing that had proper mouselook as a fully supported feature.
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Funny, I played hundreds of hours of Doom using the same keyboard and mouse controls still used by FPSes today.
You're playing some modernized port, because standard controls back then were arrow keys, left/right to turn not strafe, and pushing the mouse walked forward.
This is entirely different from WASD, strafing, and rotation on two axis with mouse.
Strafing (Score:2)
left/right to turn not strafe
strafing was mapped just a couple of key away (were US keyboard have '' on the equivalent position).
knowing that made you able to circle-strafe the shit out of your opponent on LAN multiplayer.
Horizontal (Score:2)
Funny, I played hundreds of hours of Doom using the same keyboard and mouse controls still used by FPSes today.
Though note that the original Doom engine was incapable of rotating the display up or down (so impossible to render looking up/down).
So only the horizontal axis was any usefull.
DarkForces was the first to modify the engine to do that, and it was achieved by applying a vertical *tilt* (i.e.: still keeping the walls in the same vertical orientation as the display port) thus leading to horrible distorsion if you look too much up or down.
Mouse (Score:2)
The original Doom was fully keyboard based
Yup, it was mostly though about being played with keys.
Even *arrow* keys, with WASD haven't been invented yet, and the straffing keys on purpose positionned nearby the arrows (usually "" on US keyboard or you local variation at this position in your locale, here around it's "," and ".")
and didn't even support using the mouse.
LOL, WUT ?!?
Even Wolfenstein 3D [mobygames.com], long before Doom did support mouse as an input.
Only, as that game was purely 2D, the mouse is only used for latteral movement (mouse-up and mouse-down could be mapped to walk forward and backw
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> The original Doom was fully keyboard based and didn't even support using the mouse.
Yes, it did. You are configuring it wrong.
WASD for movement. Mouse left/right for aiming. (You need to set your Y sensitivity to ZERO so your mouse does NOT accidentally move you forward/backward.)
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'Marathon "
Please accept my virtual high five. o/' '\o
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That's not true. (Score:4, Informative)
GZDoom is running it fine.
It has a lot better setup front end, and it makes it really easy to play, unlike the Steam versions.
I fucked with setting up my preferred keys longer in the steam versions than it took me to download GSDoom, copy the files, and die the first time playing it.
Don't bother with Nightmare mode; It's a bitch. :)
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FUD - This mod works with most any port. With GZDoom, you can literally drag and drop SIGIL.WAD on GZDOOM.EXE (assuming GZDOOM knows where your registered DOOM.WAD is).
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Dafuq you say? It was explicitly made to be compatible with any engine that can run the base Doom wads.
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Fact is, the wasd/mouse configuration quickly became the standard among most everyone who played doom. Personally, I played wolfenstein after picking the shareware up at my local grocery, and I played doom from day one. I used my mouse for both games, asdx were my movement keys in doom.
The only thing remotely awkward about a proper configuration was holding down the run key.
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WASD wasn't even close to the original DOOM controls, the original DOOM was designed to be played with arrow keys. Hell, it didn't even let you look up or down, and strafing used the Alt key. You *could* use the mouse to look around (if your computer had one), but it definitely wasn't designed around WASD or mouselook. It was more Quake players and Half-Life et. al. that solidified WASD as the default control scheme.
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Just takes getting used to (Score:2)
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Civvie11's review points out that HMP is actually balanced properly with UV being kicked into overdrive pretty explicitly to give the hardcore corwd something to chew on for at least a bit. Be glad this was limited to Doom monsters and that Pain Elementals and Revenants weren't in play.
They fixed that, pretty much. (Score:3)
Use the Doom recommended, if you have Steam.
The steam version sucks, pretty much.
I hadn't seen a keyboard scan code table in 30 years, but I still had one within reach, lol
It's in the Macro Assembler opcodes guide, lol.
This sounds cool. (Score:2)
Doom was way ahead of its time; the only think I hated was the lack of a jump function.
I still have versions with tons of mods, from the full-auto BFG to the freeze ray from Duke Nukem.
Here goes a few hours, lol.
This is really hard! (Score:2)
Thanks, John, for a cool release!
I'd forgotten how difficult a few dozen imps + guards were; nightmare mode in this game is much harder than the Nightmare mode in the new Doom release from 2016.
I play the new one at nightmare mode, and do speed runs in Arcade mode, and it's fun, but it's not this difficult.
Nightmare mode here just freaking kills me quick, lol.
And for you Dumbasses Trolling politics; get a life.
I know there's nothing to do in Russia, but go play some games or something.
So bite me (Score:2)
Try Doom3. (Score:2)
It's dark as Fuck, and every corner you want to hide in already has something in it, trying to kill you.
The only bummer with it was the freaking cabinet codes; but luckily there's a printout for those, lol.
It's what you go thru... (Score:2)
While the game is running on the other computer, lol.
Hard to open a text window and search thru 15 pages looking for a particular code to a particular location's cabinet.
I used to have two computers on this desk, and it made things like that easy, but with Win7x64, I don't need Win32 anymore, unless I want to run specific programs.
The printout I made in the early '00's is still sitting right here, and I don't have to toggle out to read it.
No one reads books anymore, they need it read To them.
Poor humans.
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What's a printout? lol
The same thing as a hard copy. Lol...
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You're thinking of Doom 3 from ~2003. It was dark and generally garbage. In that era, Half Life 2 was king.
The "new" Doom released in 2016 is fantastic, if you haven't played it.
2016 Reboot... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah... 2016 came closest; but none of the "modern" Doom games every really managed to recreate some of those "oh crap" moments when I'd open up a door to a room and there are literally *dozens* of imps in there waiting to kill me, by claw or fireball.
I did have an LOL though when I bought 2016. Not being a fan of what FPSs have morphed into since consoles took over and the xbox-live generation ruined multiplayer; I didn't wind up buying it for my PS4 until it hit the bargain bin at Target. And the register minion actually CARDED me to buy the thing!!! Now, I've hit the age where I'm usually flattered when I occasionally still get asked for ID at bars and clubs. But at Target? For Doom? When I played the original back when you had to wait something like an hour for ep1 to download from a BBS, and then send in a check to get the rest of the game mailed to you? I actually missed a few beats standing there dumbfounded and incredulous with a "Seriously? WTF???", expression before I realized that said register minion was serious and I showed her my ID.
I remember those days... (Score:2)
Our local RidgeRunner BBS was a pretty happening place back then.
We had 14 public dialups, and 2 admin dialups; we had a setup that allowed up to play against each other, but IIRC doom was 1:1 in those days; maybe that was only with a RS232 cable, lol.
It's been awhile. :)
I remember getting NE2000 cards with 10base-2 coax networking running, so we could play LAN games.
In the late 90's, we had a 250 person LAN game at a buddys house; we blew a 200A main breaker when someone put something in the microwave, lol
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Doom was definitely just 1:1; at least at first. I remember in college, my roommate and I bought the longest serial cable we could find, and rearranged our dorm room so our computers would be close enough together to play against each other. I *think* where was a way to get up to 4 players with an add-on to Doom 2... extra serial port cards and daisy-chained connections, IIRC. But I may be misremembering that. Fun times either way though.
And yeah... the removal of private LAN play from most games spelle
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Also, these games started the Whole "Upgrade Wars".
Wolfenstein 3D ('92), Doom('93), and Heretic('94) played on anything, then there was Duke Nukem('96), the last of the popular Sprite-based 3d games.
Quake(96) kicked it in the ass, and made high performance graphics cards a thing, due to polygon based rendering; (Remember Voodoo?), and Q2 kicked it up a big notch.
I spent a weekend getting a 4MB Tseng Labs card to run in OpenGL mode for Q2, and while it looked beautiful, it ran 4 frames per second. :)
I bought
IPX/SPX networking (Score:2)
I *think* where was a way to get up to 4 players with an add-on to Doom 2... extra serial port cards and daisy-chained connections, IIRC. But I may be misremembering that.
The add-on was called "a network card", and was even available in Doom 1.
It just wasn't cheap enough to be afforded by kids. It was enterprise-only equipment back then.
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What? An ne2000 clone was like twenty bucks, and cabling might cost you another twenty, but I grew up in Santa Cruz which was full of tech companies at the time so my friends and I got our 10 base 2 and tees for free.
LAN (Score:2)
but IIRC doom was 1:1 in those days; maybe that was only with a RS232 cable, lol.
Yup. For the poor kids like us who only had a serial cable to play with (and/or a modem on that port for those happy enough to live in a country with cheap local rates), it was only possible to play doom 1:1 over serial.
I remember getting NE2000 cards with 10base-2 coax networking running, so we could play LAN games.
For the richer people (or people at work), LAN was supported in Doom (initially only built-in SPX, but then using a special external component [fandom.com]) with to 4 players.
Or 1 single player with 4 side-view, because why not. (i.e.: main computer display what's in front of the player, like any other g
John Romero (Score:2)
Does he still look like he’s about 14 years old?
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He looks the same, but with graying hair and thicker glasses.
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What a stupid thing to say. Daikatana only sold 8000 copies in the USA. Nobody played it. Nobody was affected by it. Mostly, anyone unfortunate to have played it would have pirated it. And then, you're complaining that the thing you stole wasn't very good ...
The only person really put out by Daikatana was John Romero.
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Only the extremely small number of people who bought it then found out it wasn't very good should be that upset. But, they only have themselves to blame for not researching what they are buying.
Isn't it interesting... (Score:1)
That these legacy games are hard to find/locate? Some games/versions of them are shareware, others aren't.
It's the same problem with the emulation scene and the console games. The manufacturer holds on tight to the source code and nothing nostalgic or memorable in terms of preserving the games ever happens aside from roms and emu programs. Nintendo released a limited rerelease of NES and SNES games, but that was it.
Some of us had to move a lot when we were younger and lost our copies of Doom. What about us,
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
AAAAAHAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! (Score:1)
Does anyone but niche-fetishists care? (Score:1)
Romero's 15 mins of fame was up arguably even before iD fell apart.
Same ole stuff (Score:1)
Not a fan of hell themed level designs. (Score:2)
I always loved the human bases like in E1, E2M2, etc.
Crying need for a game (Score:3)
Marathon (Score:1)
I'll still prefer Marathon. It was better than Doom 25 years ago, and it's still better today.
And Marapfhont kicks the tar out of AmazDooM. ;)