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John Romero, the game developer virtuoso behind Hexen, Quake, Wolfenstein, and other games still being remade and sequelized to this day, just dropped a massive, free mod for one of his most famous and popular creations: Doom.
The new expansion is called "Sigil", and it's the unofficial fifth episode in the game's story (three episodes were part of the original release, a fourth was added with the Ultimate Doom edition from 1995). It contains nine single-player levels and nine deathmatch levels and is "megawad"-sized, meaning it's almost the same size as a commercial game.
[...] If you want to try your hand at "Sigil", you can download it from Romero's website. You'll need the original Doom in order to play it, though that's readily available on Steam.
Source: https://thenextweb.com/gaming/2019/06/01/doom-creator-john-romero-sigil-addition/
Previously: John Romero Gifts 'Doom' 18 New Levels For Its 25th Birthday
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Sunday June 02 2019, @08:43PM
What a beast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouGFWaTePXc [youtube.com]
Anyhow, the maps go up there with some of Romero's best works.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snotnose on Sunday June 02 2019, @09:22PM (5 children)
Don't get me wrong, I was a Castle Wolfenstein/Doom/Quake fiend. But something changed. One came out some 10-15 years ago, I was excited as hell to get it, and never got past the first level. I got used to scoping out the area before moving in, and the whole "monster spawns 3 feet behind you" didn't work anymore.
Lately got a Destiny game for my PS4, it's got really high ratings. I hate it. I'm past this whole "if a shitload of monsters in front doesn't work, lets spawn them after he's already passed by."
I seem to play open world games nowdays.
I came. I saw. I forgot why I came.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday June 02 2019, @10:10PM (4 children)
That's called getting old my friend.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday June 02 2019, @10:53PM (3 children)
I don't think age is the only reason here. Enemies respawning behind you was basically the idea of "Nightmare mode" that was added later to the original Doom.
It fundamentally changes gameplay. A level played with finite enemies means you take a strategy similar to how you might act in real life: moving forward cautiously, exploring an area, taking out enemies as you find them.
Enemies respawning behind you (as in Nightmare mode) makes the game almost impossible to play without prior knowledge of a level, because you end up running through and avoiding enemies while conserving ammo and other resources.
I played the original Doom when it came out. At first, I played on the default difficulty (third difficulty -- "Hurt Me Plenty" I think), but I quickly raised it to "Ultra Violence" and then explored even new levels once I moved beyond the shareware episode on that difficulty.
But Nightmare mode was stupid, to me. It turned it from a strategy game for a lone fighter into a race where you picked your enemies/battles and were always worried about finite resources to combat infinite enemies. While I could do it with some levels, the new type of gameplay depended too much on advance knowledge for me. I was never one for games that required you to save every minute or else die and never make progress.
Anyhow, to each his own, and I can don't begrudge those with different tastes. But I agree with GP that there's a difference.
And yeah, I've gotten old too. I don't really do much gaming at all, not have I for the past 20 years or so. But I remember Doom.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday June 03 2019, @09:53AM (2 children)
It was a way to get a rouge-like replayability and speedrun competitiveness out of the game at a time when networked games weren't common.
Anyhow, what's nice about the new maps is the density and the plentiful damaging terrain is specifically designed to convey some of the thrill you get in nightmare into the standard difficulties. The corridors are very tight so you can only barely maneuver around projectiles and have to sprint through some encounters to position yourself better before dealing with them and they still come at you from multiple directions. It's like many little multi-stage boss fights in RPGs where you have to learn the patterns and timings and can only squeeze in a few shots while dodging most of the time.
In hindsight, Doom distinguishes itself from other FPSs by not giving in to deathmatch style strafing. It's not to say it's true for all the episodes and encounters... But with the Hell levels and now with Sigil it's pretty clear Romero was building up towards the Japanese level difficulties where you have to keep trying over and over again and often have to completely restart the run to make sure you have the right gear with you when starting the level or you'll be outgunned later. Nightmare difficulty can admittedly be a cheap way to go about this... But it does add something to the game when it's all said and done.
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(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 03 2019, @03:10PM (1 child)
rouge admins everywhere approve
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Rouge_admin [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday June 03 2019, @07:02PM
Furious for the years of abuse, the rogue spell-checker yelled "No more would I indicate in rouge!" leaving poor RamiK to his own limited devices. With running tears and rouge cheeks, out run RamiK from his basement, blubber swaying about, ensuing minor structural damage to the surrounding buildings and mumbling incoherent words as a rogue bullet caught him in his gravity collapsing rear-end.
So died naked RamiK in a puddle of crimson-rouge blood. Yet one more victim of rogue spell-checkers and grammar Nazis.
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(Score: 1) by zoward on Sunday June 02 2019, @10:19PM
You'd think ID software would host this on their webservers. It's bound to get at least some people buying into (or re-buying into, for nostalgia's sake) the DOOM franchise. Romero's site is probably getting hammered right now.
(Score: 2, Funny) by RandomFactor on Sunday June 02 2019, @10:57PM (2 children)
That sort of jagged high and tight space marine haircut [doomworld.com] actually inspired a coworker of mine back in the day to do his best to imitate it.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday June 02 2019, @11:43PM (1 child)
I actually have the first book in that series. I bought it because I really liked a short story by the author - Dafydd Ab Hugh - called "LaToya is Wounded".
The short story was much better.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Monday June 03 2019, @01:09AM
I've got one or two floating around the basement as well. I suspect if i started rereading my old books from the beginning they would all be new again at this point :-p
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by Farkus888 on Sunday June 02 2019, @11:09PM
2016 release was good. I thought they'd be busy working on a sequel to that. The style seems to be almost dead these days. Closest I can think of is the Arkham series of Batman games. I played the first of the new Wolfenstein games and the puzzle aspects were missing.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 03 2019, @06:01AM
still not a thing
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 03 2019, @03:06PM
I'd rather play pong.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday June 03 2019, @05:01PM
N/T
This sig for rent.