Doom II: Hell on Earth (PC)

Doom II: Hell on Earth
Also known as: Doom II Developers: id Software, Infinity (PC-98), Vicarious Visions (Xbox), Nerve Software (Xbox 360, No Rest for the Living expansion and 2019 remaster.) Publishers: GT Interactive (original PC release), Imagineer (PC-98), Virgin Interactive Entertainment (DOS, Europe), Activision (Xbox), Bethesda Softworks (current re-releases since 2010) Platforms: DOS, Mac OS Classic, PC-98, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android Released internationally: May 26, 2010 (Xbox 360), November 20, 2012 (PlayStation 3), July 26, 2019 (2019 remaster) Released in JP: September 29, 1995 (PC-98) Released in US: October 10, 1994 (DOS), June 27, 1995 (Mac) Released in EU: 1994 (DOS) This game has unused code. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused sounds. This game has unused text. This game has debugging material. This game has regional differences. This game has revisional differences. This game has a development article This game has a prototype article This game has a prerelease article This game has a bugs page

To do: Verify how much of the page applies to the non-PC versions. There's music lumps, aka alternating versions or minor revisions of tracks, document those. Anything unused in the No Rest for the Living expansion? Sources for release dates and more info about Japanese releases. Doom 2's source code leaked alongside the source code of MacDoom/Ultimate Doom in 2023.

Released just ten months after the first game, Doom II: Hell on Earth was hardly a large change from its predecessor...but it did get a commercial release.

Sub-Pages

Development Info

Prototype Info

Prerelease Info

Bugs

Revisional Differences Not as many as the previous game.

Unused Code

Waterfalls

animdef_t		animdefs[] =
{
[...]
    {false,	"SWATER4",	"SWATER1", 	8},
[...]
    {true,	"WFALL4",	"WFALL1",	8},
[...]
};

Code exists to animate the WFALL1-4 textures and SWATER1-4 flats, however these are not present in this game. Both WADs in Final Doom later take advantage of this unused code by adding textures using and between the WFALL1 and WFALL4 names, allowing them to animate. The original patches intended for the waterfall were included with the textures John Romero released.

    {SPR_PAIN,12,8,{NULL},S_PAIN_RAISE2,0,0},	// S_PAIN_RAISE1
    {SPR_PAIN,11,8,{NULL},S_PAIN_RAISE3,0,0},	// S_PAIN_RAISE2
    {SPR_PAIN,10,8,{NULL},S_PAIN_RAISE4,0,0},	// S_PAIN_RAISE3
    {SPR_PAIN,9,8,{NULL},S_PAIN_RAISE5,0,0},	// S_PAIN_RAISE4
    {SPR_PAIN,8,8,{NULL},S_PAIN_RAISE6,0,0},	// S_PAIN_RAISE5

Sliding Doors

The source files p_doors.c and p_switch.c have some remnants of code for sliding doors. These are restricted to the commercial version (Doom II). They would've been created with line action 124, but the code to activate them was commented out in the source.

Anyone familiar with Doom's renderer knows that sectors can only change vertically, the result of using a static BSP tree defined in the NODES lump for each map. To work around this limitation, these doors aren't sectors at all – they're animated textures applied to a linedef. They would use the textures GDOORF1-4 (front) and GDOORB1-4 (back), which aren't present in the final version. The code sets the blocking flag when the door is closed, preventing you and monsters from passing through it, and unsets it when the door is open.

The video to the right shows these doors in action using the original code, which is a bit bugged: sometimes the doors don't close properly and since the blocking flag doesn't stop hitscans or projectiles, they can pass through these doors like they're not even there. It's subjective, but the limited amount of animation paired with the fact that they're paper-thin also makes them look terrible.

These doors are functional in the v1.4 and v1.5 Doom betas. The code was later recycled for the animated doors in Strife.

(Code restoration, video: fraggle)

Unused Graphics

Doom Leftovers

This section dedicates to all graphics that were previously described in the previous game, along with some that were seen in the previous game but were unused in this sequel.

Menu heading and option for a display options menu. Once again, these are leftovers from Doom 0.5 alpha.

Headings for the load and save game menus. These menus just reuse their option graphics for their headings.

Additionally, the "Read This!" menu option does not appear in Doom II, but its graphic is still present in the IWAD.

As are all of the graphics for Doom's episode selection menu. In the version of Doom II bundled with the Doom 3: BFG Edition, these lumps are used with the exception of M_EPI3 (Inferno), but the actual graphics have been altered to read "Which expansion?", "Hell on Earth", and "No Rest for the Living".

Like in the original game, the "ouch" face was meant to occur if the player lost 20 or more health in a single attack. A mistake in the game's coding makes it visible only if you gain 20 or more health while taking damage, rendering the face unseen outside of uncommon situations, like getting hurt while standing on a medikit. Like most of Doom's status bar faces, the ouch face has five different sprites depending on how healthy the player is. The Unity port fixes this oversight, allowing it to be seen as it was intended.

The two unused recoil frames for the pistol once again. Why they're still present in the IWAD is unknown.

The unused recoil frame for the BFG. Ditto.

Used	Unused

The gray stalagmite variant makes a return in Doom II, still unused and without a corresponding thing.

Doom 3: BFG Edition IWAD Specific

DMENUPIC is a rather impressive graphic that's used in place of the TITLEPIC and INTERPIC in the Xbox Live Arcade version. It is still included in the IWAD for the version included in Doom 3: BFG Edition, but goes unused in favor of the original INTERPIC. This picture is used in the PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch release of this game for the credits roll and within the No Rest for the Living expansion.

This multiplayer menu option graphic is present in the Doom 3 BFG Edition IWAD. It's used in the console versions, but the PC version doesn't have multiplayer support.

Unused Messages

If the player gets a medikit with less than 25 health, this should be displayed:

Picked up a medikit that you REALLY need!

However, health is added before the check is made, so the player's health is always greater than 25 when it checks which message to use. The 3rd September update for the Unity-wrapped 2019 re-release restores this behavior.

Unused Sector Type

A fully-functioning sector type, 14, is never used in any level in The Ultimate Doom, Doom II, or Final Doom. When used on a sector, it will open like a regular door after five minutes of gameplay have passed, then close a few seconds later. It behaves much like the used sector type 10, which closes the sector like a door after 30 seconds have passed.

Unused Sounds

There is a single sound included in both Doom and Doom 2, called DSSKLDTH, which due to its position whithin both WAD files, seems to have originally been intended to serve as the Lost Soul's death sound. However, it's simply a duplicate of the DSOOF sound the player makes when bumping into a wall, due to Lost Souls simply reusing the fireball explosion sound (DSFIRXPL). The sound file's name, possibly coming from "Doom Sound, Skull Death" was probably a leftover from the Doom Press Release Beta's version of the lost soul, whose death animation consisted in breaking apart and falling into pieces. This file is also present in the Final Doom IWADs.

Inaccessible Rooms

MAP16: Suburbs

A small portion of the map has an inaccessible room near the podium with the blue skull key, where there is a small, wide horizontal vent to have sound to travel through to alert the monsters. Once you noclip inside the vent, there is a small enclosed room with the BODIES wall texture and the floor and ceiling with the CONS1_1 texture. The next room afterwards shows several imps, cacodemons, and mancubi. There is a wall in front of the swarm of monsters, where it lowers once the linedef is triggered where the location of the blue key is. The monsters walk to the other side of the room to teleport into the outside of the map in various directions.

Debug Mode

Entered by passing the parameter "-devparm" when starting the game, the Doom engine's debug mode is pretty bare-boned. You can take screenshots (in PCX format) by pressing F1 (which replaces its original function of bringing up the help screen), and a series of dots appears in the bottom left that roughly indicate the frame rate. One dot indicates the full 35FPS, while more dots indicate a frame rate of 35/(number of dots).

Store Demo Mode

Curiously, there's a check in the engine for a "Store Demo" mode - If MAP01 is not present in DOOM2.WAD, then all player input will be disabled, resulting in the game going through the pre-recorded demo loop until the computer is turned off or the program is forcefully terminated.

(Source: Doomworld)

Regional Differences

Germany

According to the German Strafgesetzbuch §86a, the usage of unconstitutional symbols (Nazi symbolism, basically) is forbidden outside of certain contexts such as research and teaching. Because the two secret maps, Wolfenstein and Grosse, use those symbols, the German version does not contain these maps, to prevent the game from being the subject of search-and-seizure procedures.

The game engine has a special catch to handle this: If the player takes the secret exit in level 15 and the MAP31 lump is absent, the engine will instead send the player to level 16 as if they had taken the normal exit. However, if players of the German version use cheats in attempt to warp to the missing levels, the game crashes.

(Source: Doom Wiki: Doom II - Legal Issues In Germany)

France

Doom II was translated into French by Art of Words and published by Virgin. This translation is derived from version 1.8, contains French text strings in the executable instead of English, and uses DOOM2F.WAD, which contains French translations of any graphical text, for its data. DOOM2F.WAD does not contain the unused legacy graphics from Doom. The images used for detail settings in the options menu overlap because that menu was never updated to account for the larger graphics. Likewise, some graphics that are centered in the English versions aren't in French. The setup program and command line tools have also been translated.

(Information and video: fraggle)