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Quasar

Some alpha/beta stuff

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"the blob"

Looks like an enemy emerging from a wall. So is this where the mysterious "slides along walls" Dehacked property comes from?

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Neat. "Extremely early version of Doom 2 MAP28" consisted almost entirely of 64-wide corridors!?!

Patrol1985 said:

Where'd you get those screenshots from Quasar? :o

I'm also interested, because those map screenshots look like taken in Doom Builder.

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IMX said:

TMDQ (the million dollar question), are we getting more?

That's everything I've seen.

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Just noticed this, but E3M2 also seems to be missing the staircase at the player's spawn point. Are there even any player starts in that version? I'm having trouble seeing the thing colors.

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scifista42 said:

I'm also interested, because those map screenshots look like taken in Doom Builder.


I wish they had been taken with GZDB or SLADE 3... So that we get thing sprites instead of icons. ;)

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I wish they would have introduced that blob monster for Episode 4 of Ultimate Doom or in Final Doom: TNT/Plutonia. Some more monster variety wouldn't hurt - maybe if left alone for too long it would split in half and become two separate blobs? They could attack similar to Pinkies and try to suck the life out of you.

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I'm betting it was an idea for a monster type that was abandonded pretty early. This line in the released source is the only reference to it, but every object has a MF_SLIDE flag that could potentially be set / used, although it never is. We have no idea if Carmack wrote the comment for it but I'm willing to bet Bernd Kreimeimeeier wrote it while cleaning up the source, since the comments in that area have a lot of question marks. I'm not even sure where DeHackEd got the idea that it was for "sliding against walls" since to the best of my knowledge it does absolutely nothing when set, even in doom2.exe.

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RUSH said:

I wish they would have introduced that blob monster for Episode 4 of Ultimate Doom or in Final Doom: TNT/Plutonia. Some more monster variety wouldn't hurt - maybe if left alone for too long it would split in half and become two separate blobs? They could attack similar to Pinkies and try to suck the life out of you.


Or burst in your face; a kamikaze monster

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Awesome stuff! Wow, that early MAP28. It reminds me of how I typically block things out when I speedmap before making rooms inro more interesting shapes. Cool to know that Sandy apparently did the same thing for at least one of his maps :)

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Holy crap, this is amazing. It's worth pointing out that the shot of E2M2 is definitely later than the 0.5 version as it has the nukage hall leading to the southwest exit, neither of which existed in 0.5. Do any of these maps have a chance of being released?

I'm really curious about Tom's cut maps as he implied that there was a whole set that followed E1 of the Doom Bible more closely and that the alpha maps are unrelated to the first attempt. Whether they were on paper or actually put into any kind of map, I don't know. Those interest me even more than the post-overhaul maps.

Either the following was a test area or at least some of the original maps were implemented to some extent. I can't recognize them:

http://toastytech.com/dooma/SCRN2_.GIF
http://toastytech.com/dooma/SCRN2_01.GIF
http://toastytech.com/dooma/SCRN2_02.GIF
http://toastytech.com/dooma/SCRN2_03.GIF

Then again, the rest of the screenshots from that set are from the super-early version of E1M2. Maybe more than just the pillar was heavily different from the 0.4 version of the map? Romero did say that he heavily restructured the map from its early stages, maybe he meant even more than the completely different back structure that was cut between 0.5 and the press release beta.

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I find that the old sprite for the SSG looks much better than the one actually used, I wonder why they changed it, I mean it looks more realistic than the one we got.

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It's just an unfinished edit of the regular shotgun. Even the pump is retained, and there are some ugly bits.

I'm sure that someone will shove it in their wad regardless.

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Sodaholic said:

Holy crap, this is amazing. It's worth pointing out that the shot of E2M2 is definitely later than the 0.5 version as it has the nukage hall leading to the southwest exit, neither of which existed in 0.5. Do any of these maps have a chance of being released?

I'm really curious about Tom's cut maps as he implied that there was a whole set that followed E1 of the Doom Bible more closely and that the alpha maps are unrelated to the first attempt. Whether they were on paper or actually put into any kind of map, I don't know. Those interest me even more than the post-overhaul maps.

Either the following was a test area or at least some of the original maps were implemented to some extent. I can't recognize them:

http://toastytech.com/dooma/SCRN2_.GIF
http://toastytech.com/dooma/SCRN2_01.GIF
http://toastytech.com/dooma/SCRN2_02.GIF
http://toastytech.com/dooma/SCRN2_03.GIF

Then again, the rest of the screenshots from that set are from the super-early version of E1M2. Maybe more than just the pillar was heavily different from the 0.4 version of the map? Romero did say that he heavily restructured the map from its early stages, maybe he meant even more than the completely different back structure that was cut between 0.5 and the press release beta.


My guess is the first two are somewhere in E2M3 and the other two are E2M7. Also, can you elaborate more on what Tom implied about there being another set of maps?

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No doubt that console ended up in the 0.5 version of E2M7 but the reason I question which map it is is because that room was not present in the 0.4 version of E2M7.

Marnetmar said:

Also, can you elaborate more on what Tom implied about there being another set of maps?

In the GDC post-mortem on Doom, Tom said he did a whole month of work on a set of maps intended for the open world concept before he was told to start over from scratch. Romero also stated that the original intention was to trap the player in a closed space as the other level loaded, no intermission screen. There is a more recent source that said the same thing, but I cannot remember which source it is.

Going by that, it would seem that the Doom Bible implies the different floors would have been different maps and that elevators would've served as loading zones or at least ROTT style teleport elevators to the same map. The alpha versions do not have closed elevators or any kind of "layered" layouts. There is also minimal resemblance to their Doom Bible descriptions. I suspect that the alphas we have access to were meant to be a heavily simplified version of the original scenario and were in no way meant to be a literal or direct implementation of the original concept. The 0.4 maps are closer but still clearly simplified, whereas 0.5 seems to really distance itself from the design doc and that any resemblance is more left-over than the intended direction.

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This is too awesome for words. A cut new monster? Showing how a map made its way into what we know? Better shots of a lost program that created the very first Doom levels? Fantastic!

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MAP02 looks like the v1.8 version -- more monsters are stuck in walls than final, and the map isn't properly aligned to the grid. E2M2's flats are closer to final, in addition to the corridor Sodaholic pointed out and a whole bunch of other geometry changes putting it closer to final.

-edit-

MAP10 has a few added detail sectors and a lot more things than it does in the 0.5 alpha. The one corridor that was using conveyor nukeage textures was switched to normal nukage, too.

BlueFeena said:

Are there even any player starts in that version? I'm having trouble seeing the thing colors.

Yes, same place they are in the final level.

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That version of E2M2 is newer than the press release but older than 1.1. The door next to the final start location was already moved to the other corner, but the window between that room and the tall dark one (where small crate steps were added in 1.2) didn't even exist yet, and the room containing the red key was still switch activated.

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That E2M2 trips me out. It has elements that are characteristic to the final version and not to the press release, yet it also lacks a lot of stuff that was in the press release, as in the press release the geometry is a lot more fine-tuned where here it's very rough, the alcove with the berserk pack is there where here it's nonexistent, it has all three damaging light corridors and this doesn't, etc. Something that's especially weird is that the three giant piston areas are rounded 0.5 and in the press release, here they're square, and in the final release they're round again.

The early MAP28 also has me kind of ehh. It's not characteristic of Sandy to make bunch of 64-wide corridors, but it can't be a Tom Hall draft either because his maps, while boxy, were very neat and orderly while this thing is all over the place. Plus, I can't imagine either one, even with some of their less-than-desirable design tendencies, thinking a layout like that was possibly a good idea.

I was starting to wonder if this was a very well-done fake, but if that's the case, then where did the hell did the blob sprites come from?

EDIT:

The only other explanation I can come up with is that Sandy was just mucking around in DoomEd for E2M2, perhaps trying to think of ways to simplify it for the final release so as not to go over any limits, and perhaps the MAP28 variant is some kind of inside joke?

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Marnetmar said:

I was starting to wonder if this was a very well-done fake, but if that's the case, then where did the hell did the blob sprites come from?

EDIT:

The only other explanation I can come up with is that Sandy was just mucking around in DoomEd for E2M2, perhaps trying to think of ways to simplify it for the final release so as not to go over any limits, and perhaps the MAP28 variant is some kind of inside joke?

Nothing here is fake and I'm insulted by the insinuation, though I'll forgive it. As the most active administrator of the Doom Wiki, you should realize I take Doom history seriously to a degree that might frighten some people.

Either way, these files came directly from a reliable source with access to development resources. I'm not naming my contact because I don't want that person getting in any trouble. They were retrieved from a backup image of one of the NeXT development servers.

There's quite a bit of healthy debate going on over who designed the initial MAP28. I still feel it COULD be Tom, venturing outside his usual layout scheme (maybe right before they announced he was fired, for example). Or, it could easily be a fast rough out by Sandy, which he determined was too dominated by hallways and then proceeded to drag his main centerpiece rooms around at random and reconnect them with more varied architecture. Who knows. Maybe send the image to Tom and Sandy and ask them who made it.

Just don't start flinging accusations around. I sat on this stuff for two months to make sure the person who gave it to me wasn't going to get to do his/her own release of the material first. It seems that's not going to happen at this point.

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Great work recovering these! I am concerned though: is there any chance that the public may see the map files themselves in the future? And are there more maps where that came from?

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Quasar said:

Either way, these files came directly from a reliable source with access to development resources. I'm not naming my contact because I don't want that person getting in any trouble. They were retrieved from a backup image of one of the NeXT development servers.


Is it someone who could be called porous and absorbent?

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