This Doom mod is made from Id Software's abandoned and rejected ideas
Drawing from alpha versions and Tom Hall's Doom Bible
Before Doom became the lean, mean murdermachine we know and love, Id Software had far bigger plans for their seminal satanic FPS. Ideas dropped during development include a big focus on story, four playable characters, elemental shields, demonic weapons, and more. The mod Doom Delta brings to life many such ideas from sources including an old design document and leaked alpha builds, which I think makes it fanfic? A new version of Doom Delta launched last week, offering a curious vision of the many Dooms Id didn't make.
Doom Delta is not trying to recreate any particular pre-release version of Doom, more playing with the many different elements from the different games Doom could have been (and was) at different times during development. As developer DrPyspy explains, it "aims to bring together many elements from the pre-release iterations of Doom, including (but not limited to) the alpha builds, the press release beta, and Tom Hall's Doom Bible. Elements such as the helmet HUD from early alphas, enemy designs, unique characters, and unused weapon concepts return."
Tom Hall's Doom Bible, which you can read online, is a 1992 design document laying out a wildly different vision of Doom. This Doom was to be a story-heavy open-world game set on the distant moon of Tei Tenga, with an actual plot, a less abstract setting, four different named characters with different stats, a weapon made of demon bones powered by killing human enemies, points and high scores, and heaps more things that are very much not in Doom. Much of this was changed or jettisoned due to technical and design decisions, and tension over what Doom should be contributed to Hall leaving Id before the game launched.
You can grab Doom Delta from its site. To play, you'll need a copy of Doom or Doom 2 as well as the GZDoom updated engine. Ta to PCGamesN for pointing out the latest version's launch.
Doom Delta isn't the first mod to channel and intepret Hall's Doom Bible. Many modders have tried over the years, though few were released and fewer reached any state of done-ness. Another you can try is The Tei-Tenga Incident, which finished its first episode but hasn't been updated since 2019. You could give a dozen teams the same design document and end up with a dozen different games.
I'm reminded a bit of Doom The Way Id Did and its sequel. This pair of map packs was made by players attempting to mimic the styles of individual Id level designers, everything from their design philosophies to decoration preferences, and create levels which felt like they could've been from the game.
Doom wasn't the first Id Software shooter to dramatically change shape during development. Initial proposals for Wolfenstein 3D were closer to the stealth game it's ostensibly a sequel to, Castle Wolfenstein. Doom wasn't the last either. Early plans for Quake had included RPG elements, third-person melee combat, and a mighty magical hammer. When John Romero left Id to co-found Ion Storm, his design for Daikatana came closer to ideas he had for Quake for Quake.
It's only natural for games to change shape during development, so I often find mods claiming to "restore cut content" more interesting as a novelty and historical curio than any sort of 'true version'. I like that Doom Delta takes a load of different ideas from different stages as a starting point to run wild. "Cut content" is often cut for good reason. Good game design is a process of cutting as much as adding, honing a game to lean into itself, whatever that might be. Part of the craft is how this intersects with the pressures of time and money, how you cut and shape to make a game you can actually release on time. "Cut content" is often parts that didn't work out or didn't fit in what the game grew into, or fell victim to descoping under pressure because they weren't important enough to prioritise in time for release. Or sometimes because the devs kept restarting development.
Doom's 90s rival, Duke Nukem has spawned several mods attempting to recreate unreleased versions. That's more because Duke Nukem Forever was a bit rubbish. The developers, 3D Realms showed many distinct iterations across DNF's 14 years of development hell, each of which looked more fun than the game Gearbox Software helped crawl across the finish line in 2011. After DNF finally DF, fans drew elements from its E3 2001 trailer to recreate and expand inside ye olde Duke Nukem 3D with this mod. A wonky DNF build from 2001 actually leaked in 2022, leading another mod team to start polishing and reassembling the fragments into what they cheekily call Duke Nukem Forever: Director's Cut.
Doom recently celebrated its 30th birthday, and we gave the gift of a whole series of articles remembering and celebrating it. We talked with John Romero, checked out mods like Siren and MyHouse.wad, had a young'un play Doom for the first time, made you pick a favourite shotgun, and heaps more.