Doom v0.3 Resurfaces

One of the most interesting aspects of Doom, besides every other part of it, is how relatively much history of the game's development has been preserved - we have alphas and betas and unused assets and even a whole friggin book devoted to the development process, which is especially amazing when you think about just how little digitized history we have from the early 1990s in general. Well, we can add another log to the pile, because a new long-rumored pre-alpha version dated February 28, 1993 has just been unearthed. It slots in between the incredibly crude v0.2 tech demo and the more fleshed out v0.4 alpha, so calling it "v0.3" seems like a no-brainer. It shows off some Tom Hall map goodness as well as some other interesting bits like a functional always-present HUD automap in the corner of the screen(!) and a crude map entitled THESTORE that... maybe looks like it could maybe have been intended to house an in-game shopkeeper(?!). Sadly the v0.3 version's level data is some slightly different funky format so there's no way to extract them yet, but I'm sure an enterprising programmer will solve that in approximately... let's see... *cranks egg timer*

Awesome, I had hoped we would start getting these other Alphas eventually.

The weird little THESTORE map (that's the lump name), which is... a store? Maybe a place where Tom Hall would "store" the different kinds of computer consoles he would paste into maps?

Pretty much all the non-monster sprites in the WAD... offhand none of these seem new or different?

From the Doom Bible

Supply Depot Two
Still used as a storage depot, but not as active as the main supply depot. Holds lots of stuff.
Graphic Description: The supply depot is UAC, in normal UAAF shape because stuff is still routed from here to the other buildings on the base. The monorail tunnels are dull and utilitarian.
Basement
Monorail Switcher: from hangar two the underground circuit's two rail system.
Storekeeper's Office: The guy who actually dispenses materiel.
Guard/Operator Desk: Controls access to monorail switcher and elevators.
Ground Floor
Storage: Huge rooms, possibly crate maze, or at least important stuff hidden behind crates. Equivalent of a motor pool is here. Health items hidden in maze. Massive freight platforms travel to second floor and basement.
Second Floor
More storage, with maze containing storage crates with weapons. Outside, part of the running track rests on the building

So the store seems that it would have been an area within Supply Depot 2, which if I remember correctly would end up being E2M2 Containment Area in Doom.

Jaws In Space said:

Awesome!

This.

Yup, awesome, thanks to those involved in getting this out!

Linguica said:

functional always-present HUD automap in the corner of the screen(!)

Amazing! Now, there's a feature they should have kept

So originally there were to be 4 types of armor..

Shieeettt, can someone make a video through Dosbox or something? Go through the existing content?

HorrorMovieGuy said:

Amazing! Now, there's a feature they should have kept

Now I really want to change the HUD to this.

So that automap wasn't just for show after all - I always wondered in those 0.3 screenshots that have been floating around for eternity now.

I think the minimalist fullscreen HUD is pretty sweet too, would like to see that implemented. Very slick an non intrusive. Odd how switching to the big helmet HUD seems to lower the center viewpoint signifigantly, feels like the doomguy is looking/aiming down.

Some of the items seems to be sunk 2 meters into the ground - wonder if that's just bad sprite offsets or something?

Would love to have "e1m8" (the early e1m2) extracted from this, could make a great base for a DM map!

Amazing stuff overall!

Doomkid said:

[...] seems to lower the center viewpoint signifigantly, feels like the doomguy is looking/aiming down.

As far as I understand, in some of these early builds id actually did make the player's view pitch slightly downward using a method similar to that later used in Heretic.

Cool to see this uncovered.

Woah. I just realized you can get a sandwich in-game. Sweet.

This is absolutely great, thanks to everyone who got involved and made this possible!

This is amazing.

Also SHAWN2 loads an early version of E1M11 from Alpha 4 that contains a crude office area:

http://i.imgur.com/D7csN7x.png

This is some pretty cool stuff.

The map format is nearly the same as the Alpha v0.4/0.5 format, but the LINES lump has 2 fewer columns. As far as I can tell, here goes:

If you interpret the lump as a 2 dimensional array of 16-bit ints, 16 per column, here's the columns:

Vertex1, Vertex2, Flags, Unknown, Row Offset1, Sector1, Tex Offset1, MidTex1, TopTex1, BotTex1, Row Offset2, Sector2, Tex Offset2, MidTex2, TopTex2, BotTex2

It's a strange format. The Alphas did some strange things with huge X and Y texture offsets, and huge patches. Some of the unknown fields have very large values which look like texture offsets for very wide textures.

Another strange thing also seen in v0.4 and v0.5 is that, for a single-sided line, the Sector2 field seems to also contain texture offsets, as well as values in all of the *2 fields. But, everywhere the 2-sided flag is used (0x04), the *2 fields are correct.

So the difference between v0.3 and v0.4/0.5 is that v0.3 is missing the Special field after the Unknown field, and the Tag field after the Special field.

I haven't done a lot of research on the Unknown/offset fields to clearly understand them. This will be needed to do a proper conversion to release format.

Hope that helps.

HorrorMovieGuy said:

Amazing! Now, there's a feature they should have kept

While it seems a little odd, I wonder if the live automap caused performance issues on the lower end systems that would have needed the smaller view screen?

This is great stuff!
What i find most fascinating it's how Tom Hall's levels are very like wolfenstein, they consist of a lot of square shaped rooms, they don't change a lot of heights and don't use lighting a lot, then you pop up what would become e1m2 and you see how Romero's aproach was very different, using lot's of weird shapes, height changes and different lighting. Really shows more than the other alpha's, how different Hall's aproach was, unlike the rest of the id crew. Funny how e2m2 and e2m3 started like this, and how different they became in the final game (especially e2m3!)
Really fascinating stuff

Although it's uncolored, seeing an official Dark Claw sprite is pretty fucking rad.
Really want to see some of this new stuff, especially the store, implemented into some mods in the future, possibly in the event that one Bible or Alpha mod does make it to the finish.

Functioning automap in the hud is pretty cool.

Video

Thanks for the video, but you really should resize it up to 720p-ish and reupload it, so it's not so compressed.

This is great news. Definitely looking forward to trying this out when I get the chance.

Thanks to everyone involved in helping get this (re)released.

Guess who got it converted...

K, I threw up a ZIP with the converted levels.

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/73998-doom-v0-3-quick-n-dirty-conversion/

Gobble, gobble.

Linguica said:

K, I threw up a ZIP with the converted levels.

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/73998-doom-v0-3-quick-n-dirty-conversion/

Are these accurate enough to use for wiki purposes?

Quasar said:

Are these accurate enough to use for wiki purposes?

Layout wise, probably. Texture wise, I dunno.