DOOM Is 30 Years Old!!! John Romero Releases SIGIL II

stinger608

stinger608

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From a news article over at TechPowerUP! This is frigging awesome!!!!


The original team that designed DOOM, ace designers John Romero and Tom Hall; and artist Adrian Carmack, congratulated gamers for making DOOM the indispensable piece of video gaming history that it is. DOOM is among the games that turned the PC into a serious gaming platform, as games on PCs were seen mostly as a novelty software for what was predominantly a machine for work. To celebrate the 30th Anniversary of DOOM, John Romero announced the release of SIGIL II, the unofficial sixth episode of the original DOOM. Due to commercial restrictions, the WAD (where's all the data?) files for SIGIL and SIGIL II are free, but you can support Romero's work by buying its unique soundtrack that's been developed by Buckethead and THOR; collectible boxes, and other merchandise.


And of course the Megawad files are free for the downloads.

https://romero.com/sigil



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I played SIGIL II a bit last night. Had a blast. That first level is friggin hard. I guess I should have expected that. I can appreciate Romero's approach to minimalist level design.
 
Absalom said:
I played SIGIL II a bit last night. Had a blast. That first level is friggin hard. I guess I should have expected that. I can appreciate Romero's approach to minimalist level design.
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what version of doom do you use to load up the files? or are you playing on a retro rig?
 
d3athf1sh said:
just found this list of original wad files that are needed for i guess any doom engine on archive. will update if they are plug and play with GZDoom, or if not i'll keep experimenting

https://archive.org/download/2020_03_22_DOOM/DOOM WADs/
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You'll need the DOOM.WAD from the original (not sure if shareware works too). You don't need DOOM2.WAD or any other.

To play SIGIL II, you need the DOOM.WAD file from the original DOOM or from The Ultimate DOOM.
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SIGIL I and SIGIL II definitely work with GZDoom out of the box. SIGIL's docs recommend it and ZDoom ports. I haven't run into any problems yet.

I did confirm Chocolate isn't going to happen. Romero has pushed past vanilla limits. But maybe a fork like Crispy (limits removed) will work?
 
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OutOfPhase
Absalom said:
You'll need the DOOM.WAD from the original (not sure if shareware works too). You don't need DOOM2.WAD or any other.

SIGIL I and SIGIL II definitely work with GZDoom out of the box. SIGIL's docs recommend it and ZDoom ports. I haven't run into any problems yet.

I did confirm Chocolate isn't going to happen. Romero has pushed past vanilla limits. But maybe a fork like Crispy (limits removed) will work?
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yeah, i just got GZDoom up and running. i just dropped one of the wads from my previous post and it's up and running. (after it's unzipped of course) def worth a look, it's got the wads for every game and version ever made to run on that engine. :)

thanks for the reply. and happy doom day!
 
d3athf1sh said:
OutOfPhase

yeah, i just got GZDoom up and running. i just dropped one of the wads from my previous post and it's up and running. (after it's unzipped of course) def worth a look, it's got the wads for every game and version ever made to run on that engine. :)

thanks for the reply. and happy doom day!
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Yeah, I use GZDoom as well. Also, have the original DOOM floppies, not that I can read them. Luckily have all the WADs from the time where I had a working drive.
 
I remember my USR HST Courier external modem chewing up the kilobits downloading a hot new ware making the rounds...it was a no-sound demo of the first level..and I think I played it over and over for hours imagining what the sound effects must be like. About a week later I think a version with sound dropped (turned out it was the demo level they were letting people try out) and we hadn't heard sound like that either, if you were lucky enough to have like a Soundblaster to play the digital effects anyhow..........I just remember how buttery smooth it ran...like I'd never seen anything run that smoothly, ever, on a PC.
 
I remember dialing into my local BBS using Procomm or Telex and downloading the shareware Doom package (around 2 MB if I remember correctly) on a 2400 baud modem. Took all day to d/l, after a couple failed attempts (i.e. someone picked up the phone). Those were the good old days :)
 
Sadly, could not get these to load with GLDoom on my Voodoo 3 retro PC, although it plays the Doom.wad and Doom2.wad files fine and renders in OpenGL 1.1, I suspect this program was never meant to load these newer .wad files (being from the early 2000's).

No version of GZdoom or Zdoom or ZdoomLE will work on that machine with 3D rendering because of the Voodoo 3 only being OpenGL 1.1 and not 1.2. Which sucks because I loved the idea of playing this on retro hardware with real 3D rendering. It will do software DOS style just fine though. So, I caved and loaded the newest GZDoom on to my main gaming rig to play these. A 4090 should be enough... lol. SmartScreen likes warning me every time that the program developers didn't pay for a certificate tho...
 
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III_Slyflyer_III said:
Sadly, could not get these to load with GLDoom on my Voodoo 3 retro PC, although it plays the Doom.wad and Doom2.wad files fine and renders in OpenGL 1.1, I suspect this program was never meant to load these newer .wad files (being from the early 2000's). No version of GZdoom or Zdoom or ZdoomLE will work on that machine because of the Voodoo 3 only being OpenGL 1.1 and not 1.2. Which sucks because I loved the idea of playing this on retro hardware with real 3D rendering. So, I caved and loaded the newest GZDoom on to my main gaming rig to play these. A 4090 should be enough... lol. SmartScreen likes warning me every time that the program developers didn't pay for a certificate tho...
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Yeah, it's probably the same reason SIGIL II doesn't work on Chocolate, Crisp, etc. Those ports aim to be highly accurate to the original but to a fault in this case.

Have you tried LZDoom? It's a fork of ZDoom aimed to work on older OSes and hardware. Might be worth a try.

I did get SIGIL II to run in Crisp, but the skybox is broken. It's certainly playable but not worth the visual tradeoff. Lessoned learned here is that, for the best experience, a highly customized WAD pretty much requires a highly customized Doom port.
 
Absalom said:
Yeah, it's probably the same reason SIGIL II doesn't work on Chocolate, Crisp, etc. Those ports aim to be highly accurate to the original but to a fault in this case.

Have you tried LZDoom? It's a fork of ZDoom aimed to work on older OSes and hardware. Might be worth a try.

I did get SIGIL II to run in Crisp, but the skybox is broken. It's certainly playable but not worth the visual tradeoff. Lessoned learned here is that, for the best experience, a highly customized WAD pretty much requires a highly customized Doom port.
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Yeah, LZdoom has the same problem as GZdoom and Zdoom, no OpenGL rendering because a Voodoo 3 only does OpenGL 1.1 without wrappers. However, all those programs will run software just fine and it doesn't look bad at all really, its just not "3D" .

GLdoom (a very old and lost port) is the only program I found that renders in OpenGL 1.1, just will not load these newer wad files. I even get the 3dfx logo too for doom and doom 2 and they both play and look fantastic on that retro pc.
 
So yeah, does the newest GZdoom flag anyone else's windows bit defender smart screen in Windows 11 when you try to run it? I got it from the official website listed in the SIGIL Readme file. I know its safe, but seems odd it is not whitelisted for such a popular way to play doom on a modern PC.
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
So yeah, does the newest GZdoom flag anyone else's windows bit defender smart screen in Windows 11 when you try to run it? I got it from the official website listed in the SIGIL Readme file. I know its safe, but seems odd it is not whitelisted for such a popular way to play doom on a modern PC.
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It's probably just whining that it wasn't signed with a code signing cert.
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
So yeah, does the newest GZdoom flag anyone else's windows bit defender smart screen in Windows 11 when you try to run it? I got it from the official website listed in the SIGIL Readme file. I know its safe, but seems odd it is not whitelisted for such a popular way to play doom on a modern PC.
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Personally I turn that shit off immidietly. Only things that works in Defender is the antivirus itself (set up to ask before quarantine) and Firewall. Everything else is unnecessary fluff for me. If I want to run a prorgram that is not "M$ approved" then that is up to me and want to do it without a single complaint and "warnings".
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
Yeah, LZdoom has the same problem as GZdoom and Zdoom, no OpenGL rendering because a Voodoo 3 only does OpenGL 1.1 without wrappers. However, all those programs will run software just fine and it doesn't look bad at all really, its just not "3D" .

GLdoom (a very old and lost port) is the only program I found that renders in OpenGL 1.1, just will not load these newer wad files. I even get the 3dfx logo too for doom and doom 2 and they both play and look fantastic on that retro pc.
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SIGIL should work on PrBoom+. GLBoom+ supports OpenGL 1.1.

https://github.com/coelckers/prboom-plus
 
sc5mu93 said:
Now do you have a floppy drive is the next question;) (I’m sure you do). Stupid kids these days think those are “3d prints of the Save icon”
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Speaking of Floppy drives, I still need to snag a working 5.25" drive on ebay, I do not have one anymore, but I was surprised 3 of my 4 3.5" drives still work. :) Also, both of my ZIP 100 IDE drives work too!

Armenius said:
SIGIL should work on PrBoom+. GLBoom+ supports OpenGL 1.1.

https://github.com/coelckers/prboom-plus
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Thanks, I'll have to check these out. I love the idea of playing this on my Voodoo 3 retro PC.
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
Thanks, I'll have to check these out. I love the idea of playing this on my Voodoo 3 retro PC.
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curious why. Doom was never hardware accelerated until source code was released and it got ports. To me playing doom with opengl on voodoo3 somehow doesnt feel retro. But to each his own.
 
serpretetsky said:
curious why. Doom was never hardware accelerated until source code was released and it got ports. To me playing doom with opengl on voodoo3 somehow doesnt feel retro. But to each his own.
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i think chocolate doom is suppose to be closest thing to platying vanilla doom even down to the frame rate lock (30fps?) like the original. but gzdoom feels just like the original to me too but i think it's got higher framerates and improved textures for bigger screens but they are faithful to the originals when you use the original wad pack.

i'm almost done with my run through the original and about to do sigil and sigil 2 next. maybe even tonight
 
serpretetsky said:
curious why. Doom was never hardware accelerated until source code was released and it got ports. To me playing doom with opengl on voodoo3 somehow doesnt feel retro. But to each his own.
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Well, I played the originals on my Dad's 486 back in the day, all software rendering, including Doom II as well. So the idea of replaying these in OpenGL just seems fun on retro hardware, even though I can do the same on my modern gaming PC.
 
serpretetsky said:
curious why. Doom was never hardware accelerated until source code was released and it got ports. To me playing doom with opengl on voodoo3 somehow doesnt feel retro. But to each his own.
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Doom95 runs on DirectX.
 
MaZa said:
Personally I turn that shit off immidietly. Only things that works in Defender is the antivirus itself (set up to ask before quarantine) and Firewall. Everything else is unnecessary fluff for me. If I want to run a prorgram that is not "M$ approved" then that is up to me and want to do it without a single complaint and "warnings".
Click to expand...

Unfortunately people love to fearlessly run anything and everything and crypto themselves so here we are with obnoxious warnings that are intended to tell you "this might not really be from who/where you think it is, please look behind you leap and wreck your shit"

Has nothing to do with being Microsoft approved, it's there as one last resort to possibly avoid blowing your leg off.

Armenius said:
Doom95 runs on DirectX.
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It's still software rendered. They just use it to get a framebuffer in Windows, probably from DirectDraw.

GDI is slower and has less control. I think there's no way to get proper fullscreen or vsync.
 
just remembered something. someone came out with this trippy mod / game for the original doom engine called myhouse.wad it looked really cool and now that, we have doom setup and running, it would probably be as good a time as any to give this a shot. a couple videos have been made on about it on youtube. here's the first one (another one was made by "some ordinary gamers")


View: https://youtu.be/5wAo54DHDY0
 
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