Doom Level History

By Lee Killough

These are some questions John Romero answered for me about the original Doom levels.


E1M3 (Toxin Refinery):

There's a round pit outside, which looks like this (ascii approximation):

                                          _____
                                         |  ___ ...
                    nukage               | |
                ______________        _  | | 
               /   _________  \      |*|_| |   * = switch in older version
    __________/   /         \  \_____|  _  |
   |   _______   |   HERE    |  _____  | | |
   |   \      \   \_________/  /     | |_| |
   |    \      \______________/      |  _  |
   |_    \          nukage           |_| |_|
     |    |
     |    |        _________
                  |   imp   |
                  | rockets |
                  |_________|
                  | elevator|
                  |_________|
              ____|         |
              ______________|  <- secret exit switch
The pit's elevator has changed over many versions of Doom.

I see that in an alpha version, before there were skies, that this part of the map was blocked off, and that you could walk around it on either side.

In doom1_0.zip, the first shareware release, there is a switch on a wall on the opposite side of where the player comes from, which raises the pit. But walking across the lines around the pit also raises it. Only one of these is supposed to happen, and happen once.

But somewhere I heard this: In a beta version of Doom, the secret exit to E1M9 was actually reachable somehow by this elevator, and when raised, it allowed the player to walk across to where the imp and box of rockets is.

What's the real history behind it? I already have some screenshots, and a v0.99/1.0 savegame of the elevator running into the sky.

Romero:

E1M3 -- there was never any way to jump off the center platform onto the imp & rocket area. The platform going up forever was a bug i had because there were two ways to make the platform go up and it was possible to trigger both. So, i put the switch down in the hole and made that the only way to raise the platform. The secret elevator area was added much later.


E3M6 (Mt. Erebus):

       _________
      | _______ |
      ||   ^   ||    <- secret exit switch
      ||       ||
      ||       ||
      ||       ||
      ||_______||
      |_________|

     ____________
   / ____________|   <- ledge
   ||
   ||  
Which method of reaching the secret level exit was originally intended:

  1. propelling oneself off of the ledge with a rocket
  2. running and jumping off of it?

Note that in the earliest versions of Doom, you could actually reach the secret exit by activating the skull switch, from the wrong side!!!

Romero:

E3M6 -- the only way you are supposed to reach the secret switch was by (1) getting the invincibility, (2) blasting a rocket into the wall so you would fly backwards into the box. We found out early on that it was possible to flip the switch from outside, so Sandy made the walls thicker. The advanced techniques of strafe-running, et al, did not come about for almost a year after DOOM's release so there was no way we could anticipate someone getting into the secret area any other way. Much like the way we never anticipated Quake's rocket-jumping.


E2M8 (Tower of Babel):

            __           
       ____|__|____
      /            \
     /              \
    |      ----      |
  __|     |    |     |__
 |__|     |    |     |__|
    |      ----      |
     \              /
      \____________/
           |__|

Was using the switch in the starting room as a shield against the Cyberdemon's rockets, an intentional part of the level's design? If so, who's idea was it? Petersen's?

Romero:

E2M8 -- The switches were NOT placed there to block the Cyberdemon's rockets. Sandy did this level.


E3M9 (Warrens):

Why was E3M9 chosen to be built on top of E3M1? Was it supposed to trick the player -- give a sense of deja vu, and then surprise them at the end?

Romero:

E3M9 -- Exactly. You were supposed to wonder what was going on; you had already been on that level. At the end, you got a big surprise and had to go all the way back to the beginning.