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Prerelease:Doom II: Hell on Earth (PC)

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This page details prerelease information and/or media for Doom II: Hell on Earth (PC).

And you were just a scroll away from being fired too...
Oh dear, I do believe I have the vapors.
This page contains content that is not safe for work or other locations with the potential for personal embarrassment.
Such as: A realistic-looking model of a human but without skin and with a bunch of visible veins and flesh surrounding the skeleton.
Hmmm...
To do:
  • Prerelease screenshots can be found here.
  • Sources for everything.
  • Development timeline.

Early Monster Sprites

Elementary, my dear Cactus.
This needs some investigation.
Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page.
Specifically: Look through images where a specific map and level locations can be identified if possible, and take screenshots of those locations and then make side-by-side comparisons in the "Map Changes" section using wiki tables. More screenshots could later resurface, and will need to be identified on what location it was taken from.

Arachnotron

Oh God, what is that thing? IT'S SHOOTING AT ME NOW!

An early Arachnotron which looks more like a scaled down Spider Mastermind. It's armed with a chaingun, which is consistent with its attack in the beta executables. The skybox texture is reused from Doom E1M1.

Why are you fighting your own CHILD?

This Arachnotron is showing it's side while facing their older and tankier boss counterpart.

Revenant

Step 2: CASUALLY APPROACH DOOMGUY.

The Revenant here is very rough, seemingly using its raw, unedited model captures. The shotgun is using the super shotgun's muzzle flash sprite.

Step 3: BE VANQUISHED FROM DOOMGUY.

The Revenant's death sprite is not just the raw capture, but also appears to be almost entirely different. The Revenant's arm extends farther than what the original sprite shows, and the legs are also jutting out more than the finalized sprite.

Arch-Vile

What you doin', boy?

The Arch-Vile from is also using it's raw captures for it's devil magic casting attack (albeit without the yellow magic flames, and with added cyan in the background, which cannot be seen as cyan is marked as transparent within the game and thus the background is removed). The BFG appears to be using bullets as ammo for some reason even though though it's ammo is already finalized from the first Doom? Maybe this strange oddity is a placeholder for more ammo, maybe it's a placeholder for a scrapped weapon, or maybe it's even a mock-up, who knows.

Pain Elemental

So, is the Pain Elemental shooting the fireball or is it the Lost Soul inside shooting? Hmm...

The Pain Elemental appears to have a complete sprite set, but the only thing that isn't complete is with it shooting Lost Souls. The Pain Elemental assumingly appears to have duplicated Cacodemon AI in this case.

Mancubus

PreDoom2-MancubusFireballs1.gif

The Mancubus sprite set also appears to be finalized, but projectiles are not. The Mancubus in this case is shooting two Baron of Hell/Hell Knight fireballs.

Map Changes

MAP15: Industrial Zone

PreDoom2-EarlyMap15 1.gif

The dark sand flat from Doom Episode 3 is being used for the city's streets instead of grass.

PreDoom2-EarlyMap15 2.png

Aerial shot of the map from the top of the teleporter building from the first side of the map. Some wall textures and some level geometry have minor changes from this view.

PreDoom2-EarlyMap15 3.gif

An aerial shot on top of the BFG building and the southwest fortress building has marble walls from the original Doom instead of green slime bricks from the release. This appears to be an earlier screenshot as the skybox for Doom Episode 1 is used.

PreDoom2-EarlyMap15 4.GIF

The BFG room is a bit different.

PreDoom2-EarlyMap15 5.gif

The gate to the final building's entrance has the dark sand from Doom Episode 3 as the floor texture.

PreDoom2-EarlyMap15 6.gif PreDoom2-EarlyMap15 7.gif PreDoom2-EarlyMap15 8.gif

The rooftop of the southwest building (once again) uses marble bricks from the original Doom instead of green slime bricks. The skybox is also using Doom episode 1's skybox, similar to or exactly the same as the July 29th, 1994 build.

MAP16: Suburbs

Why are they staring at me again? This isn't Inferno!

The plasma rifle platform has the gargoyle head texture plastered around it (which is present in July 29th prototype), and the ground has the white pebble floor texture.

MAP20: Gotcha!

The fight looks boring this way...

The wall of MAP20's "Gotcha!" level are using a generic stone/marble wall texture seen from Episode 2 and 3 of the first Doom.

Interactive Entertainment Coverage

Interactive Entertainment Magazine - Issue 3: Doom II: Hell on Earth (PC Preview)

Hmmm...
To do:
Time frame 0:52 to 1:09 looks like a video of early MAP16: Suburbs. Document changes.

Publisher Interactive Entertainment played an early version of Doom 2 and had some screen captures of the game along with some notable changes. Time frames for each part of the game that has changes is listed below.

[0:01-0:27]

A close-up shot of the Arch-Viles's face is seen, likely a test.

[1:45-2:01]

A capture of the original Baron of Hell/Hell Knight clay model.

[2:03-2:43]

This is possibly the entire video of the Mancubus model rotating that was used for the game. This specific pose looks as if it was in its waddling animation. The Mancubus' eyes do not seem to be green or yellow (as seen later) but looks more like realistic human eyes. Note that he said the Mancubus has "plasma guns on his arms and your experience with wielding them in Doom should arm you with one important fact, they hurt." Based on what we have seen in this page already, the Mancubus may have had several changes throughout its time in the game for the projectiles. First, it may have had plasma for ammo (similarly to the Arachnotrons), then was switched the Baron of Hell's fireballs to likely deal more damage, then was finally given its own projectiles (albeit edited Lost Soul flames for fireballs).

[2:44-3:21]

Similarly to the Mancubus video, this is also a video that was captured for the in-game sprites. This pose looks like it was used for the second punching frame. the Revenant doesn't seem to have fleshy legs or arms as seen in the game's current sprite set.

[3:22-4:00]

This is the Arch-Vile's rotation capture for its frames. The reporter also says that the Arch-Vile would resurrect gibs as Lost Souls, which does not happen in the game and would just resurrect the enemy that was gibbed. The Arch-Vile is also said to inflict a "lighting strike" at the player with the damage like "getting nailed with a BFG", which is very accurate as his attack damage for his devil magic is similar to a BFG's tracer's. The devil magic (for both phases) deal from 20 to 70 damage, while a BFG tracer can deal more, but still does a lot of damage with that being from 16 to 128.

[4:01-4:15]

The journalist partially spoils the final boss room, but it's notable he said "just beware of anything that sits on a throne...", which what this might be referring to is the section where the Icon of Sin's wall texture is, as there is a platform where two Revenants are located when playing on Ultra-Violence. This might be a change in difficulty back then as other modes do not have the two Revenants on the middle platform besides Ultra-Violence and Nightmare.

[4:16-4:31]

This is a close-up shot of the Spiderdemon's face.

Interactive Entertainment's 5 PC Games Preview - Doom 2

[3:46-4:07]

The Hell Knights described in MAP23's Barrels o' Fun level, are called "Death Barons of Hell." Perhaps its likely ID was thinking of the Hell Knights to be stronger variants instead of being 50% weaker? Who knows.

Promotional Trailer

Hmmm...
To do:
Begin noting differences here, along with source. If there aren't any major differences, its probably still worth noting.

A promotional video from GT Interactive featuring the developers at id discussing Doom II.

Concept Art

Revenant

Hey kids! Look! It's the Marin- wait a second...

The Revenant is EXTREMELY different as it resembles more of a taller Marine (but still a skeleton,) equipped with what looks like an equivalent of the Cyberdemon's rocket launcher or some sort of machine gun. The Revenant later on would just be a skeleton with a chestplate equipped with two cannons to shoot missiles.

Pre-Production Models

Revenant

Bad to the, flesh., okay then.

Speaking of the Revenant, here it is in the flesh! Quite literally! The Revenant appears to have more flesh than what it does in the game.

Mancubus

PreDoom2-OriginalMancubusModel.jpg

This is the original Mancubus model, but because it got damaged later on, another one had to be made. The Mancubus here doesn't appear to have that much body scars, but where the scars would lay on the original model are just darker skin shading. The Mancubus on this model also appears to have more realistic eyes, larger fangs, more machinery and cybernetics than the in-game sprites.

PreDoom-FinalizedMancubusModel.jpg

This is the finalized Mancubus model used for the game. The scars seem to be darker than the digitized sprites, but that may be because of the lighting.

As a side note, Gregor has stated that the design of the Mancubus was inspired by the design of a creature from the 1980 film The Day Time Ended.

Arch-Vile

PreDoom-ArchVileModel1.jpg

The Arch-Vile, but it doesn't have its tubes as previously seen from Doom 1's marble texture. The Revenant is also here, once again.

WIRED Article of Doom

Icon of Sin

PreDoom2-RomerosHeadScan.jpg

The same model of the previously mentioned Revenant is also here, but with its chestplate. John Romero's head was later scanned and edited into the graphic of his head on a pike, which the game uses for the Icon of Sin's hitbox.