“HAPPY 21ST BIRTHDAY, DOOM!” John Romero tweeted yesterday. “In honor of this legal drinking age birthday, I’m about to release some never-before-seen DOOM game art!”
I know what you’re thinking – “21 years old! The US drinking age is barbaric.” Then you pause and realise “Wait, never-before-seen Doom art? Ooh!” And yes, it is splendid. Since then, the id co-founder has shared treasures including scans of the clay models id turned into monster sprites, and all sorts of abilities, textures, and gore that never made it into Doom. It’s a joyous Doomdump.
Now, I might simply point you to Romero’s timeline, but Twitter’s ephemeral nature means all these things will soon scroll down out of sight. So let’s embed them and have a nice big colourful post. You can download high-res versions of many from his Dropbox too. I think I might’ve seen a few of these before, or maybe similar pieces, but it’s still a tweet-o-treat-a-rama. Tweets, go!
Let’s start out with the scans. Lots of Doom’s sprites were based on scanned objects, some items they found and some clay models sculpted by Adrian Carmack (no relation to John).
Gregor Punchatz was behind other models, including Doom II’s new enemies.
Well, most of Doom II’s new enemies.
Several weapons were based on scans.
Some objects were scanned to use in level textures too.
And some artwork started out as sketches on paper.
Now onto unused stuff, much of which the Doom community is already busy converting to finally bring to Doom. Getting new id stuff for Doom after all these years is pretty weird and cool.
He’s shared early and test versions of things too.
And back to those fine models.
Bless ’em.
11/12/2014 at 18:08 djbriandamage says:
I love Doom to tiny giblets and this treasure trove of old assets is like Christmas in December. My favourites were Adrian Carmack’s concept sketches. Kudos to John Romero for keeping and sharing these amazing artifacts.
11/12/2014 at 18:26 chiablo says:
If anyone grew up with Doom, I highly recommend reading the book Masters of Doom, which is a written history of iD Software and showcases how revolutionary Doom was.
11/12/2014 at 19:30 djbriandamage says:
I loved this book like crazy. It’s an exciting and descriptive history of Carmack and Romero and the rise of id Software. I own it on paper, in ebook format, and also as an audiobook which is narrated by Wil Wheaton!
11/12/2014 at 18:51 Hex says:
RPS — ALERT! SATELLITE REIGN IS PLAYABLE TO BACKERS LATER TODAY!
You heard it here first, folks.
12/12/2014 at 00:49 AXAXAXAS MLO II: MLO HARDER says:
But backers already know it, and non-backers won’t be able to play! Why are you telling me this ;_;
12/12/2014 at 04:07 DelrueOfDetroit says:
Is this spam? What is this?
11/12/2014 at 18:57 LionsPhil says:
Nice. Well done to iD for keeping some of this stuff.
11/12/2014 at 19:01 DantronLesotho says:
ah, I love it! As someone who pored through the assets as a teenager for countless hours, this is great. So much of my time was taken to studying the images and imagining what else could be. Great info dump 10/10 would read again.
11/12/2014 at 19:27 pepperfez says:
I love Bell’s mastiff-cyberdemon.
11/12/2014 at 20:35 b0rsuk says:
People underestimate the amount of effort that went into DooM visuals. This is why its peers, especially enemy designs looked like crap by comparison (Marathon, Heretic, Blake Stone, Wolfenstein 3D, Rise of the Triad, Duke Nukem 3D…). Even if many of them weren’t 100% made by id Software.
11/12/2014 at 21:07 Kaeoschassis says:
I’d challenge you on a couple of those, I think. Duke’s enemies definitely looked great in a purely technical sense, even if some of the designs were pretty awful.
Blake Stone I feel is sort of the opposite – technically inferior, but the designs were great in a very cheesy sort of way.
11/12/2014 at 21:18 Turkey says:
I think Blood used some of the same methods with the clay models and stuff. At least it looks that way.
12/12/2014 at 00:49 Bugamn says:
Wolfenstein 3D was an older game from the same company. That’s why it has simpler graphics.
11/12/2014 at 20:38 Barberetti says:
Fighting back the urge to crack out my trusty old copy of DCK after this page of superb dumpiness.
11/12/2014 at 20:42 GameCat says:
Why “doomdump” and why not “doomp”? :(
11/12/2014 at 20:52 JiminyJickers says:
That was great. I greatly enjoy seeing the old school way, haha. Read “Masters of Doom” book a while ago, great read.
11/12/2014 at 21:06 Shardz says:
Adrian was the best game artist in the world with his amazing use of Deluxe Paint II. I still believe he’s the best in his class. Best game ever…they don’t make them like this anymore.
11/12/2014 at 21:08 Kaeoschassis says:
21 years on and still a truly incredible game with an extremely active community. I’ll be eager to see if any of the newly released stuff actually makes its way into maps or mods.
I wonder if the original firing animation for the BFG would be workable on modern tech…?
11/12/2014 at 22:54 Distec says:
I loudly snickered when I saw the bushes. Amidst all the demons and gore, there sits a shrubbery.
Make me a fanmod with nothing but bushes, and have them explode like barrels.
12/12/2014 at 09:12 Wowbagger says:
There must be a lot of under age drinking in America – other wise how do you explain Shia Lebeouf?
12/12/2014 at 10:29 Casimir's Blake says:
Doomworld have also posted their latest round of Cacowards:
link to doomworld.com
Tons of maps and mods to play through from this year, as usual. Hopefully someone – if they haven’t already – will put a WAD together with the new unused iD textures for modders to use. Very nice gesture from Romero and co.
Between this and Blood’s Deathwish mod (which I only recently discovered) who needs new FPSs when they can’t be bothered to innovate?
12/12/2014 at 21:48 Kaeoschassis says:
They have, infact, you can find it on the doomworld forums although I’m far too cold and tired to track it down when someone else will just do it for me.
A little upset that Nova:The Birth didn’t even get a mention in the Cacowards, as it was easily my highlight this year, but I’ve got to say there’s some truly cracking stuff in there all the same. Would recommend Going Down to anybody, its core theme is one of the simplest,and yet cleverest things I’ve seen in a Doom megawad EVER.
16/12/2014 at 10:04 Casimir's Blake says:
Kaeos, I’ll be sure to check out Nova: The Birth, thanks for recommending it. And so far, 15 levels in, Going Down is indeed extraordinary work. And damn hard on UV -fast.