Development:Doom (PC, 1993)
This page details development materials of Doom (PC, 1993).
John Romero freely gave out early content for his games. Doom is one of them.
 | To do: Romero released more early and unused art, archived here. |
Contents
Unused Monster
Dubbed "The Blob", this monster concept would spawn off any wall, animate, and spawn a Lost Soul. Its spritesheet was retrieved from a backup image of one of id's NeXT development servers by an anonymous source. The spawning Lost Soul graphic would later be reused as the inside of the Pain Elemental's mouth in Doom II.
Early and Unused Maps
These map images were provided by the same source as The Blob spritesheet. They were taken with Doom Builder.
A small unused map apparently consisting of staircases with a monster closet at each landing, leading to two larger rooms. There's a Cyberdemon in the last room. It is possible that this was an early rendition of E2M8: Tower of Babel, due to the staircase design and presence of the Cyberdemon, but as it is very small map and with not much room to move, it's not surprising this map never made it to the final game, regardless of what it might have been for.
This is E1M1 from the 0.5 alpha, but with added sections and things. Curiously, the additions are very similar to the ones made to the final E3M1 in E3M9: Warrens.
An early version of E1M8: Phobos Anomaly which is closer to E1M12 in the 0.5 alpha than the final version of the map. Since the alpha, a number of things have been added, some detail sectors and sound blocking lines, and the large room with the Barons of Hell has been brightened.
An interesting take on E2M2: Containment Area. Its texturing is closer to the final map than E1M2 in the 0.5 alpha, but its geometry is still rough compared to E3M2 in the pre-beta. Even stranger, some of the geometry is closer to the final map than the pre-beta, such as the door to the room with the chainsaw being around the corner from the start point.
An early version of E3M2: Slough of Despair. The level layout is mostly the same, only missing the "booger" at the top of the middle finger and a few dividing walls, but a number of detail sectors are missing from it.
21st Birthday Art Release
| To do: Erred on the side of caution with stuff that was actually used in the alphas. Should go over those assets at some point and see if the ones Romero released are earlier/newer. |
On December 10, 2014 (Doom's 21st birthday), John Romero released a large number of in-development and unused art assets for both Doom games on Twitter.
Graphics in Development
Captures of the player sprites, with one frame near final. Based on the filename, this is actually the Zombieman, though, and the first frame is actually present in the 0.4 alpha.
The (Pinky) Demon's legs were actually drawn over a capture of a toy dinosaur! More specifically the Kenner Jurassic Park Dilophosaurus figure.
Grayscale captures of the Baron of Hell, with some early work isolating the different rotations for its head.
A capture of a skull, which would be the basis for the Lost Soul.
Captures of different Cyberdemon poses, the first in grayscale and color.
Test captures of the Spider Mastermind — these are larger than the ones used for the final sprites.
A toy beretta, painted black, which would be used for the pistol. It includes some angled captures not used by the final animations.
A capture of a toy, which would become the chaingun.
A sketch of the episode 1 intermission map background.
Sketches that would become the episode 2 and 3 end graphics.
Demon face sketches in the process of being cleaned up, to be used as wall and floor textures. The last sketch would also become the final boss in Doom II.
Circuit board photos that would be used as the basis for some of the TEKWALL textures.
Unused Graphics
An early title screen, apparently pasted over an id Software logo.
A more finalized copy of the logo used on the screen above.
A possible backdrop for the title.
This is the original font drawn for Doom.
An earlier style for the BFG9000.
In the final game, a number of monsters' right-facing frames are just mirrored copies of the left-facing frames, likely to save space on the disk or in memory. The right-facing frames for the player and enemy marines were drawn, however. Here are the player sprites...
...the Zombieman, with WIP copies of the edits made to the marine in the scratch space on the right of the first frame...
...and the Shotgun Guy.
An unused player decapitation death animation.
At one point in development, the Spider Mastermind was going to have a magic attack that likely would've held the player in place, leaving them vulnerable to the demon's chaingun. This is one of the frames for it. It was evidently cut rather late, as the chaingun uses its final 6-barreled Wolf3D-esque version, and not the small 3-barreled version seen on the original model.
Various projectile and impact sprites, some of which were unused but still present in early releases of the game. The notable thing here is the impact in cell 26, 17, which looks to be a larger blood spat and has never been seen before.
Frames for two different styles of bush, with two burned variants of each. These may have been intended for Doom II, given its setting on Earth.
Marble wall carving textures featured in the final game, but with alternate eye styles/colors for one of the demons included.
An updated copy of SKY1 from the pre-beta, recolored, with a lot more detail added to it.
(Terribad) Sign and monitor patches to go on walls. Some of these were used in the alphas, but most weren't.
Early wall and door patches, and an id logo.
The source image for the big door and lift patches. Unlike the final doors, this one was intended to have a transparent bottom, and looks like it might've been designed to open both up and down. Doors with transparency aren't really (intentionally) possible in the Doom engine, so they ended up giving the final doors a flat bottom instead.
Some pipe patches intended to be used on wall textures.
A wall labeled "Don't use", so they didn't.
Window midtextures, some unused.
