Development:Doom (PC, 1993)
This page details development materials of Doom (PC, 1993).
Over the years, both John Romero and more recently, id Software themselves have both released a significant amount of pre-release material from Doom.
 | To do:
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Contents
Sub-Pages
 | Notes |
 | Weapons Lots of interesting revisions. |
 | Characters Come and see how your friends and demon foes came to be! |
 | Collectables and Props Early drafts. Lots of early drafts. |
 | Images and UI Who could've guessed that Doomguy had an afro at one point in time? |
 | Textures Woo hoo, some unseen level textures! |
 | Maps A few Doom Levels, some familiar, others not... |
 | Music iD Software in "Copyright Infringement" |
 | Sounds I punch, I scream. Wait, flamethrower? |
Source Code
| Linux Source Code The source code officially released in 1997. |
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.
21st Birthday Resource 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 and music 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 sketch of the episode 1 intermission map background.
Sketches that would become the episode 2 and 3 end graphics.
Demon face sketches of the Arch-Vile and the Baron in the process of being cleaned up, to be used as wall and floor textures (for MWALL4_2 being the Arch-Vile and MWALL5_1 being the Baron specifically).
Along with the previous textures, the Icon of Sin had the most work put into to get the MWALL4_1 wall texture and the DEM1 "death teleporter" flat textures as seen in E1M8.
Photos of a motherboard that would be used as the basis for some of the TEKWALL textures.
Experimentation with the Pinkie's stretchy mouth.
Lava flat textures, which are based off the original blood/slime textures.
Earlier UAC logo and CYL1_1 wall texture.
Work-In-progress versions of both the W105 wall texture and the DOOR11_1 door.
More edited and nearly complete versions of other doors from episode 1 and 2.
Highly work-in-progress marble stair and wall textures.
Constantly changing HELL wall textures and the INTERPIC from Doom episode 4 and Doom 2, with the first being a sketch from Adrian Carmack.
Revisions of the game's logo, from the direct scan with little editing to being nearly complete to be used within the main menu.
Revisions of the WALL79_1 wall seen from episode 3.
Work-in-progress SNAK (snake) wall textures, starting from Adrian's sketch to being nearly complete.
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Several iterations of the SPINE wall textures, starting from a sketch from Adrian Carmack once more, to near completion. The 4th image shows an incomplete and goofy-looking skeleton next to Doomguy with a detailed skull, probably related to making the small skull key sprites.
Iterations of the WALL25_1 texture.
The source image for the infamous DOOR2_4 door and PLAT2_1 lift patches being worked on. 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.
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, featuring a face of the Baron instead of multiple monsters infighting.
This is the original font drawn for Doom.
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, and with other death animations of Doomguy but ripped in half, which both the legs are upper torso would be counted as two different sprites. Interestingly enough, these specific death animations were recycled for the Imp's death animation and sprites.
At one point in development, the Spider Mastermind was going to have a magic attack[1] 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.
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.
Some pipe patches intended to be used on wall textures.
A wall labeled "Don't use", so they didn't.
Window midtextures, more casual windows probably intended for Doom 2, and what appears to be gate textures. Some went unused.
Early designs of the signs along with new "BAY" signs pointing left and right. There is also new caution, building/sector, and repair signs that were not seen from the other builds. On the right there is also early voltage, and explosive signs that don't have shading. Only the red octagon sign with the "disallowed entry" icon survived development and was properly used within the final game in the Cacodemon room in E2M3.
| Graphic | Description |
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The visor HUD was planned to have more readable stats on-screen, such as an active enemy count, total enemy count, active sprite count(?), area number (probably relating to what room or what episode and map you are on), player ht(?), and degree facing (what angle the player is facing). |
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Elements that were likely to display on the HUD, such as the weapons, weapon names, general numbers, text, and some small lost soul sprites that have an unknown purpose. The Lost Soul sprites seem to have active and inactive states, along with highlighted and untouched states. The same graphics also have versions without their jaws. |
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Early UAC logos along with UAAF (United Aerospace Armed Forces) logos, which is a different agency mentioned from the Doom Bible that coexists with the UAC. The UAAF was never mentioned again after the Doom Bible was made. "Edge of window" is likely meant to be used within the HUD. |
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Same style of UI as the previous sheet, but more detailed with more of a 90's techno command-line style instead of the black and blue visor palette. Basic stats such as the current holding weapon, current ammo capacity, other ammo capacities, armor, health, keys, time, and status bar/multiplayer chat (as seen later). Some new stats are stamina, likely related to the speed or how the player is walking or running, lives and score are self-explanatory. The key card colors are pretty bland, as there is one yellow, white, and dark yellow key instead of blue, red, and yellow. A hand and red reticle icons also exist with unknown purposes. There appears to be some sort of a red radar map, and beside that is some sort of unknown vertical rectangle with a red to white gradient. Some single colored dark green digits for two different sizes are also seen on the bottom of the sheet. Some of the UI was used later. |
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Getting closer to the final release, this shows a similar UI to the visor view, but more dumbed down and more similar to the current HUD. The key cards are also more recognizable, as the blue and yellow cards do exist, but the red one appears to be green in this case. It's notable some of the UI was used for version 0.5. |
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The HUD is nearly complete, and has the stone design along with some tabs for the removed and unused score system, and the weapons which also went unused. The weapons tab seems to also have abbreviated text reading "WPNS" and "PONS" as if the weapons tab was going to be shrunken to fit onto the HUD with the other tabs. The arms tab also seems to be unnamed. There is also long unmarked tabs which have unknown purposes; probably just a placeholder. Miniature weapon sprites can be seen, to show what weapons you own and don't own, which Quake would later reuse that concept. Early less detailed large HUD number text in white, yellow, and orange can be seen that was later changed to the iconic red digits. |
Several graphics of the HUD or relating to the HUD.
Early toxic waterfall animation.
Teleporter textures with one being blue and one with the base being silver with the pentagram in gold marked as "NOT USE".
Some unused stone flat textures.
Switches, but now there is very tiny 8x8 switches with 3 different colors, green, red, and white with each of their activation states. What could have these been used for? Who knows.
Episode 3's switch, but with red veins around the eye. The second image has the eye encased in some sort of stone or metal encasing and looking around; probably used for different states or maybe it was to look at the player or around its environment. It is worth noting that the Cacodemon was recycled for making the switch, then was given a more realistic and more human-like eye.
None of the ceiling textures here were changed except for the placeholder "tom is king" ceiling that was probably meant for the v0.2 prototype that was changed to "tom is shit" as id Software employees and developers had some beef with Tom and Adrian back then.
This strange and out-of-place graphic for Doom, is a graphic from Raptor: Call of the Shadows.[2] Probably used as a placeholder for the title screen or cutscenes as the first unfinished graphic was labeled as test4_lbm.
Different variations of the TLITE flat.
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More HUD elements, but this time with several unused and never before seen item names and messages.
- Multi-Clip, perhaps early name for ammo box.
- Lots o' Shells, early name for shell box.
- Super Cell, early name for cell pack.
- Std. (standard) armor, likely the regular armor.
- Officer Armor, the early name for mega armor?
- Strength, early name for the berserk powerup?
- Speed, maybe a Sonic speed shoes-like powerup at some point?
- Vampiric? I guess you can steal enemy health similar to how Glory Kills work in the reboot? Maybe it got reused for the game? Who knows.
- Soul Jar, likely the early name for the supercharge/soul sphere.
The source cabinet sprites, but not stretched out.
Interestingly, the left wall texture on the first image was used for the W65 AKA "fireblu" texture. The texture was later replaced for the W94 wall texture, with some of the wall being colored incorrectly and clips out of the usual 128x128 resolution. Right texture was reused for the WALL63 and WALL64 textures.
A test screenshot or some sort of mockup. Some flat textures appear to clip through the player's held weapon, and the background monsters are (Pinky) demons.
Very tall versions of the AG128 wall textures.
An unused small version of the WALL25_1 texture, labeled "Don't use".
Unused variants of W96 and WALL97 textures labeled "Don't use".
2 different iterations of an unused stone wall texture. This texture is labeled as Wall61.
An unused frame of the W73 wall texture.
Several different unused iterations of the W98, W99, W101, W92 textures, and other variations. The fifth and ninth appear to have an eye looking at the player or at its environment, similar to the moving eye switch seen earlier.
