
SIGIL, a New Doom Campaign by John Romero - mratzloff
https://www.romerogames.ie/sigil/
======
throwanem
For 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
> 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

~~~
fb03
I believe he meant the game engine itself: Those new levels were all designed
using modern Doom engines, you can see even Romero is uzing gzdoom for
screenshots etc. So they usually have a lot more corners and polygons than the
doom maps devised at the time the game went out for the first time. It'd
probably struggle to render in software.

That's what I understood from it tho.

~~~
jsd1982
It's not a hardware VS software thing since modern ports of software renderers
for DOOM are not very demanding and can easily get upwards of 1000fps (yes,
thousand). It's more to do with assumed memory constraints of the original
DOOM.EXE on DOS for PCs which placed constraints on renderer related resources
available which in turn limited level complexity. With modern ports, those
constraints have been loosened quite a bit and more complex levels can be
made.

------
PostOnce
This 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?

~~~
ido

        This business model is cool, free game digitally, 
        but boxed it costs money.
    

If you're not Romero (and probably even if you are) this is a plan to make
basically beer money - or any way, not enough to support a development studio
making these games.

I suspect this is mostly a hobby for him.

~~~
lostjohnny
It works in music though

A friend of mine runs a small music label in Italy (
[https://www.heavypsychsounds.com/](https://www.heavypsychsounds.com/) ) in
the stoner segment and had some success printing vinyls in limited edition of
the bands he publish

You have to create your fan base first, but usually when you build it from the
ground up it's loyal and buys everything you print

He makes enough to sustain a small business and had the satisfaction of
getting in touch with the bands he once listened to when he was younger and to
republish them (Nebula, Nick Oliveri from QOTSA, Brant Bjork from Kyuss)

~~~
transpostmeta
It works for the label, but does it enable the artists to live off of their
music? I doubt it.

~~~
diablerouge
Most musicians live off the money they make touring and performing. It's rare
that a musician makes enough money off of record sales alone.

------
ian0
> 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
I always thought a “wadded up” ball of paper, like a map or a blueprint

~~~
sedatk
I think they aimed for that double meaning.

------
novaRom
DOOM 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
I 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

------
ArtWomb
Respect. DOOM nostalgia runs deep. And if anyone hasn't read _Masters of Doom_
it is certainly of the most powerful origin stories imaginable ;)

~~~
robodale
Whenever _Masters of Doom_ is mentioned, my ears perk up. I've read it four
times. Again, definitely worth the read.

------
b_tterc_p
So this guy just asked buckethead to make some music and he did. Huh. That’s
cool.

~~~
acct1771
And 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
I wonder how many game developers can say that of themselves nowadays!

~~~
deuzj
In 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.

------
mothsonasloth
I 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.

~~~
DavidNielsen
The 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.

------
DeathArrow
Are 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
You 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
Install Zandronum or ZDoomGL, and copy the doom.wad to it. You will get a much
better experience.

------
grendelt
> 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.

~~~
cwyers
I 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/)

------
queensnake
e1m8b:
[https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/Ports/d-f/e1m8...](https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/Ports/d-f/e1m8b)
\-- has mirrors

Be very gentle, the server seems taxed: e1m4b:
[https://www.doomworld.com/e1m4b/e1m4b.zip](https://www.doomworld.com/e1m4b/e1m4b.zip)

------
Waterluvian
"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
The deathmatch levels are rooms in the single player campaign. Lock some doors
and change the spawn point, and save some disk space.

------
kayoone
I 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
_The_ original creator is a bit much. John Romero was mostly a level designer.
Carmack did the heavy lifting.

~~~
phaus
Carmack 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.

------
xtrapolate
The favicon is Apple's logo?
[https://www.romerogames.ie/favicon.ico](https://www.romerogames.ie/favicon.ico)

------
shroom
I 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!

------
wodenokoto
Can 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?

~~~
pmhpereira
> 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
They were also _really_ good. He certainly doesn't seem to have lost his
touch.

------
KIFulgore
This 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.

------
gammateam
> 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
If that's what you're doing, then surely 12 1.44gb USBs?

