How DOOM Looked in October 1993 (Press Release Beta)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ส.ค. 2024
- Happy 30th Birthday Doom! Doom was first released to the public on the 10th of December 1993. Because today is the 10th of December I want to celebrate by analysing how Doom looked just before release and compare the design to the final build. So in this video I play the 'Press Release Beta' of Doom, released to game journalists on the 4th of October 1993.
Download the Press Release Beta here: www.doomworld.com/idgames/his...
Doom from November 1993 (A Visit to ID Software): • A Visit to id Software...
Doomwiki page on the Press Release Beta: doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_press_...
ID Software's 01/01/93 Press Release about Doom: tcrf.net/Prerelease:Doom_(PC,...)
00:00 Intro
01:50 Playthrough - เกม
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I recall someone asking Sandy Petersen about the Berserk pack and its concept, and he said that punching an enemy so hard that they explode sounds like a John Romero idea.
on paper it does kinda sound goofy but it's actually awesome. So yep, I'd say it's most likely a Romero idea ;)
@@BeefGeeTV Sounds great even on paper; a top tier soldier at max physical strength taking weird sci-fi steroids/stimulants, and then using a steel knuckle duster (with spikes), he punches an actual demon in the face SO hard that the demon's head explodes. Then he does that many more times.
It's the exact kind of pulp/heavy metal flavor which the entire game is built on, it fits in like a badly needed long piece in Tetris, we can't go without it.
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine Exactly, and I've heard this too. I thought I'd seen that bit of trivia it in Masters of Doom, but I may be misremembering as it's been a few years since I've read it cover to cover.
I never used berserk as a kid because i played PSX doom and was far too terrified to run up to things like that (i don't even think i knew it was a berserk pack, just a weird medkit that made me pull my fist out lol)
But as an adult... Romero had the right idea. Punching something into a pile of goo is so, SO fun, even 30 years later.
When I was a little kid with an Amstrad microcomputer I used to spend evenings thinking about the perfect videogame. In my mind, it had to be something that allowed you to go everywhere, give you tons of freedom and allow you to shoot here and there. I could not see Doom until summer 1994, many years later. It was running on a computer from an expo. I remember being so shocked looking at it, and feeling that it was exactly everything I had dreamed about... I still keep that memory so fresh.
I actually prefer the black, "realistic" sky, a tleast for Phobos, not so much the others. I think it sells the horror atmosphere a lot better, since instead of looking like there's something out there, beyond the bounds of the level...the old sky gave a definitive answer. There is _nothing_ out there. You are all alone on a barren rock in space, millions of miles from home. You are stuck here, and the only way out is through the horde.
That's a cool take. I think the black sky could've worked in some maps for the exact reasons you're talking about. But I am a massive fanboy of the grey mountain sky. It just looks neat :)
Given the initial pitch wasn't even about Mars, a black sky filled with distant stars would have worked wonders.
I think if they’d just added some stars and gas clouds, it could’ve worked.
That's why I think the space skybox in Stickney Installation is so effective. It amps up that feeling of loneliness in an unfamiliar hostile environment.
@@TechnologicallyTechnical Like what, the skybox in 50 Shades of GRAYTALL?
damn, 30 years already... I remember downloading either skulltag or zdaemon back in 2006ish and thought the game was pretty old by then, now that time has more than doubled 😓
Yeah, I remember being 'weird' for still playing lots of Doom in the late 90s and 00s. But not weird in a bad way though. Even though Doom was 'old' my mates would be like "man this game is still really good!".
Hi there Doomer I’m the owner of zdaemon. We banned you for inappropriate comments made on a server hosting a terry.wad. You deserved it.
Kinda scary, isn't it?
@@BeefGeeTVyeah I played Doom back in 2003 or 2004 on the old celeron processor laptop my mom had bought me, I used to play Doom on it a lot while at work at a Chinese Restaurant
I was right there alongside you man. Lots of old memories on Skulltag.
As you played I noticed ID didn't implement sound system at all in this version, hince not all enemies in one room are alerted after you fired a gun.
yeah could be a combo of the early sound propagation code and the different 'ambush' flag.
I love seeing this sort of stuff, all the different little things that the devs ironed out for the final release. So much attention to detail in this game, it's really very close to perfection *_*
Also, glad to hear you are recovering and doing better :)
Thanks! Yeah I'm basically better now, just a slight cough but nothing else :)
I've been using ZDoom and now GZDoom for a while now, and I just noticed it has a few options that might come straight out of this beta version. Like, you can set your hitscan weapons to have vertical spread, like the shotgun here for example. Or the way the infrared / light goggles look. In GZDoom, the screen also turns green, but it sort of "highlights" enemies and other entities so they stick out more. I actually really like this look. You can even see it in its coding name, the Light Amplification Goggles can be summoned with the name "infrared".
Very correct. Even TV Tropes notes that GZDoom brought the night vision aspect of the goggles back from the press release beat, only much improved for visibility on how it renders enemies. (Ashes Afterglow has NVGs that work exactly as the beta's, and really it's only situationally good. I much prefer the lantern TBH.)
I remember like yesterday, my best friends older brother excitedly showing this on his pc when it first came out. It was like nothing else ever, and kinda scary with the lights out and sound turned up! One of those memories that stick with you forever.
Can't believe that is 30 years old now I just can't still believe it. I still remember the first time I played doom (Shareware Version) on my dad's 386dx computer and I love it even though it was slow and I had to played on a small window and coming from Wolfenstein 3D I thought it the most advanced and coolest game I ever since, so such much that I ended up getting the full version of Doom my version was the V1.2 release although my dad upgrade to a 486dx2 to get a better experience since on the 386dx was quite slow. Later I got Ultimate Doom because I wanted to play the forth episode "Thy Flesh Consumed" on my Pentium MMX computer. Now days I play doom using Crispy Doom or PrBoom+
39:05 One interesting level change is that they completely re-textured this area. It used to have the hellish wood and skin textures, instead of the techbase look in we got in the final game. I'd love to pick Sandy's brain on why this was changed. I prefer this version, but maybe they thought it's too much corruption for such an early map slot.
I think it was actually because of the common tuttie fruity effect. I think they redesigned it to avoid the glitch
could be due to the episode swap. At this stage eps 2 and 3 were the other way round (hence the order of the demo maps), so maybe when they put the 'corrupted base' levels in the episode 2 slot they decided it needed to be less corrupted looking.
Happy Birthday Doom! So amazing to see how much was similar, the same and how much was so so different.
Very cool to see this. I've asked decino if he'd consider doing an Analysis video of this version.
Did he ever respond?
They really did a hell of a lot of work between October and December if you rewatch this, comparing to the "final" game we all know now.
Fixing a lot of bugs, creating maps, rebuilding maps, removing items, adding stuff,...
So happy to see this early build.
The first FPS game I ever played was Either Doom 2 or Heretic. I do not remember which one was my first, but regardless both fine games to start on back in 1996!
I love looking at these old builds and I'm glad there's a video longer than ten minutes looking at one of them now.
Its a bit sad that theres not much that survived from the builds even older than this though. Those ones are truly fascinating!
There are a few older Alphas that are public, although the jump in time is pretty massive. I think Alpha .05 (the next one back) is from May of 93.
Yeah, if 0.9 (the likely "last beta before the press release") ever surfaces, minds will likely be blown.
@@aprildenham5376 I really want to see those hitscanning lost souls lol
Your content is awesome!! I love your videos, they are so interesting :D
This pre-release looks and feels almost-but-not-quite there in ways that are astonishing. There seem to have been so many late stage design changes, everything seems altered in some small way even though, certainly when compared to the alpha versions, this one feels a lot more like the game we got. The use of a score system and having treasure like pick-ups, as well as still having lives, all feel like design carry-overs from Womfenstein that someone at iD woke up one morning and realized they just didn't need anymore.
Wonderdul upload! Thanks for all the time you spent collecting the tidbits of history.
🎂🎂🎂🥳🎉🎉🎉
best game ever
Damn right. 😃
Happy 30th to Doom!
Had never seen that version before!! Certainly looks like all the changes that happened in the last two months were MAJOR improvements in the flow and scope of the game (esp. lives and score being omitted and the BFG being changed to have a more powerful feeling). Although the atmosphere and the gameplay are still spot on in this version as well. Thanks for sharing 🙏
Great video, Happy Doomiversery 🎉
Damn, I remember reading those hype pieces again and again back in the day.
must've been so satisfying when Doom actually delivered
its absolutely stunning how far the game was from finished 2 months prior to release, yet how good it already was. How much they changed only in these 2 months (for the better) and how well these few people must have worked together in order to pull this one off.
Such an interesting video, thanks for sharing!
I actually played the beta version of this game in the 90s on actual date accurate hardware. I remember barons throwing red projectiles instead of green at the time.
oh wow, that must've been really cool!
@@BeefGeeTV It really felt brand new
18:56 I really like this. I prefer it to the original room with the walkway even if the original made more sense as a "real" place in a tech base, whose layout was likely affected by the demon invasion to begin with.
I agree. Most of the changes to the final release were for the better.
Excellent idea for the 30th, great video BeefGee!
Thanks Doomkid! Hope you're keeping well btw :)
I remember when my dad installed this when I was really young I grew up playing this one also... Oct 4 was my day lol
Awesome video, thanks for link to the beta. I do think you play a bit weird. I always played right side of keyboard with right shift, right ctrl. Because it was closer to the < and > keys which were strafe keys and it made it easier to dodge things. But interesting to see someone play left side of keyboard. Never seen that before.
Right side here also, because I was firmly keyboard only and having everything near the arrow keys is important.
Super cool to see this!
Damn, that 2 month crunch did quite a lot to the game. I guess the developers slept through christmas.
I'm so glad to have lived through the time when Doom originally came onto the scene. Wolfenstein 3D was the first DOS game I've ever played, and coupled with the excellent SoundBlaster 16, the game just blew me away (and stopped me from bugging my parents to get me an SNES, as I became a PC gamer from then on!) When Doom was released, it took everything great about Wolfenstein and jacked it up a million percent! Can't tell you how many times I've played through that shareware episode.
A WAD comparison would be interesting. Bet there's tonnes of stuff in Beta WAD that you don't get to see playing the Beta.
There's some, but not nearly as much as you'd think. The WAD had a lot of that stripped out.
The beta BFG feels like a bunch of lower-budgeted special effects put into a blender to create the Christmas Gun or the Christmas Cannon. (36:44)
it definitely feels a little lazy at this point. It's just a hyped up version of the plasma rifle.
something about the outside background I actually really like. cant decide.. just the pure blackness of space. makes it creepy.
Earlier versions of Doom had no limit to the armor. You could pick up armor packs into the 300's.
But could only get your health to 199, which was weird.
I just had the thought that the lack of sound in all of the available Doom prototypes (but being present in behind-the-scenes content) is probably due to the licensing terms of the DMX sound engine they utilized for the game. They probably figured (or knew) that they couldn't distribute components of the audio engine's code in preview copies of the game.
ID's dissatisfaction with DMX and Paul Radek probably warranted them being very careful with what happened to copies of the game compiled with the sound code.
Doomwiki notes that the sound code was still very basic at this stage so it was probably disabled to avoid making a negative impression. Also, I don't think the sound effects themselves were done yet. In the 'visit to ID software' video from November 93 they're using wolfenstein sounds as placeholders.
The beta Lostsoul's attack is not a hitscan. It actually just takes away some of your health. When it starts its attacking state it'll hurt you unless it flinches or is killed.
true, good distinction to point out. although, because it needs line of sight to begin the attack state it ends up being very similar to hitscan.
@@BeefGeeTV You're right, it is indeed. The only gameplay difference is that it'll hit even if the play get cover after the attack state sequence has begun (but the sequence is so short it almost doesn't matter anyway).
:)
It was very cool of this Beta Version of Doom because, Gaming is Power for a FPS Genre. Here's to 30 Years of Doom!
cozy Doom archeaology/history, goated content more pls
Loved and appreciated the video....sorry to sound like a broken record.... but the next doom 2 rpg when?? Haha
haha yeah, really soon I promise. Just a combo of getting COVID and making this vid for Doom's 30th b'day meant the regular series had to go on hold for a couple of weeks.
Impressive research.
Amazing
they added so much polish in only a few months
the running with right shift is correct because the strafe keys were *"."* and *","* thus your finger would reach there easily,
unless you remapped them actions, it was weird seeing you play with the left side of the keyboard
yeah true, I remember seeing video of Shawn Green playing with his fingers all bunched up. Still, great decision to allow the left shift to run as well, because it's way more comfortable to play with hands spread apart.
Everybody playing original doom for it's 30th birthday but ain't nobody playing it keys only, no mouselook, until I saw this. Nicely done 🤟🏻
Keyboard only is the number one thing this channel is all about :)
It was common to play keyboard only. It's easier for me. Mouse wasn't really a big thing until Quake and even that I played mostly keyboard at first. When I install Quake on a new machine, I have to change the mouse look setup.
I remember dad buying me this game for my 5th birthday :) ... when it released..
*shakes cane*
But seriously, growing up with Doom, Doom 2 and Duke Nukem has shaped the way I appreciate games. No matter how far games come, they'll never make me appreciate playing a game the way Doom did when I was growing up. A true classic definition game :)
8:00 = Also the backpack doesn't give the same ammo. Believe its 50 bullets, 8 shells, 2 rockets and 20 cells in launch build.
YAYYYYYY DOOMS STILL STANDING
The old timey keyboard controls were designed for left hand over right (not left) ctrl, and right hand over arrow keys. Strafe keys on < and >. Games with inventory used all of the keys above right shift. Hexen used / for jump. Look and flying controls on the block above the arrow keys. Don't like reaching that far to switch weapons? Too freaking bad.
Trackball was a decent option for DM, but "pointing devices" have come a long way since then.
I'm glad they allowed left shift in the final release anyway, because that's how I learned way back in the day. Just didn't even know about the dedicated < > strafe buttons until decades later lol
I also meant to comment on the changes. All of them were for the better I think in the final version, *except the removed "occult item" pickups.* Having to collect them as treasure for score/points like Wolf3D would've been just as tedious and out of place as the lives system, absolutely, and I'm glad was ditched. But I would've loved if they'd remained in game as _usable items._ For example have the Demonic Dagger give you a time-limited damage increase, and the Skull Chest could be temp inf ammo. Or even make some of them "powerdowns", for example picking up an Unholy Bible could make you lose a health point every few seconds or warp your vision: Perfect for the Lovecraftian influences.
I'm thinking of the many unusual pickup items in *Rise of the Triad* (another of my all time most beloved fps) and how some of them were powerups, some were powerdowns, and some just neutral/weird like "shrooms". Most had pros and cons you had to decide if it was worth grabbing or not, but in some maps the outright powerdown items would be placed almost like traps you had to be careful not to accidentally pick up -- and it added some depth and strategy to what would otherwise be very basic fps formula of shooting everything that moved, hitting switches and grabbing keys. I mean Doom already utilized the Megsphere, Soulsphere, invisibility, etc as conventional usable items.... But given the dark tone and supernatural/occult/demonic themes of Doom I think it was a mistake to remove the various "occult items" entirely when they fit in so well and had so much potential as modifiers!
I don't think it's a coincidence that Doom removed those kind of things after Tom Hall left, and then he went and helped make ROTT which did have them, like you say.
@@BeefGeeTV Fair point, and I hadn't considered that. ROTT was actually very unique with many "firsts" and innovations in this genre. Not to get too off topic but I'm still convinced if ROTT wasn't stuck with archaic 90-degree-angle map architecture and extremely limited sprite memory (Wolf engine), it would've blown every other fps away at the time. Including Doom. Even then it's incredible what they achieved within the limitations of the engine.
17:30 = To be fair, Right Shift was used to sprint in Wolf3D, as it used the arrow keys to move. So it wasn't so awkward if you came off wolf3d to play it.
Glad your hands and keyboard were in the video 😅
I do all my regular playthrough videos keyboard only, may as well leave it all on even for this kind of video :)
Cool video bro, nice job
I love the beta bfg tbh
18:01 = To be fair, that was how wolf3d also controlled with the mouse. Super haphazard, ultra fast and difficult to control... so it makes sense early doom had the same issue.
Unholy Cathedral seems like such a bizarre inclusion in a press release beta. Of all the levels to show off your game, why that one? Then again, two months out from release I doubt anyone could have predicted it would become one of the least-loved levels in the game, and it does show off a lot of the engine's shiny new features nicely.
I think you nailed it with that last part. Also, mazey puzzley stuff was kinda the style of the time.
you know, the skybox just looks like it's not finished rather than they made a design change. All it woulda taken is a peppering of white pixels with varying brightness or twinkling to be a nice starry sky, and something even that easy wasn't done. Looks more like "ah shit we still just have the default blank sky... kevin do you have that mountain texture you can drop in quick?"
I notice that the light amp goggles do remove all shadows, they just tint the view green on top of it in this version. I think all they really did was remove the green palette swap; the shadow-eliminating effects are just a little hidden with the hue shift.
I think the mountains in this beta sky formed the based of episode 2s sky. At least in concept.
DooM is easily top 5 game of all time , first game to scare me when i heard an imp snarl the first time , pretty much invented online co-op and deathmatch.
i was 6 when it came out, my older brother got it for christmas and we played on our 386 33, computer was too slow we had to play in a very small square, 30 years later i got it back, old 386 with trident 1024, sb2 and doom!
nice, I remember having to play it in a reduced window sometimes. Then I pressed the 'turbo' button on the front of the computer and all was good ;)
DEMONIC dagger, EVIL scepter, UNHOLY bible! Those guys were just too edgy we weren't ready for that yet.
hahaha yeah they couldn't wait to chuck that kind of thing back into the game with level names and text screens and so on. Look at the map names of Sigil and Sigil II lol.
by the way does anyone know where to find all those super super ancient usenet posts about Doom that had posts before during and after Dooms release? Always wanted to read them but cant find them
I'd be interested to know too. I wouldn't know where to start other than googling. Maybe there's a discord server that archives them?
They're on Google Groups these days! Alt.gaming.doom and several others (there were 4 main Doomy Usenet groups iirc)
Alt (dot) games (dot) doom, going back to January 1994, is available via Google Groups. The Doom Wiki has an article on Usenet groups and lists several others.
11:18 = Lives were poorly implemented you mean. In Doom Eternal, extra lives meant you'd resurrect where you died in the level, rather than restart checkpoints. If they had done lives like this, it would have worked a lot better. Plus have different items worth different amounts, so that you'd get an extra life sooner.
Doesn't the shotgun in the release version have an even, four-shot spread? It looks like the spread is randomised in the beta.
The release shotgun has 7 pellets with vertical spread only. I feel like the beta one is also 7 pellets with vertical spread, but with a tighter range of potential angles. Could be totally wrong about that tho. Unfortunately no way to check unless we get access to the press release beta's source code.
Huh I never really questioned the 3 health packs at near the end of that first level, though why there are 3 of them if they all still full heal.... I am not sure.
medikits heal you by 25 in this, same as the final game
@@BeefGeeTV Oh wait yeah, I thought they did 100 each, it's been quite a while since I played Doom.
Mandeller effect. Never heard of it.
Glad i was a 90s kid
Last moment changes are not always the better ones, but in the case of Doom, it was just final touch game needed to achieve its perfection ;)
Especially in comparison with Doom 64 where they made everything worse IMHO
Really shows how great ID were at design, all their final tweaks were in excellent taste.
So crazy to think lost souls could have been even more annoying! xD Love doom!
based MX518 enthusiast
hell yeah, excellent mouse
Honestly I prefer this version than final product
I used to play mods what changes what was changed in final release leaving untoutched what wasn't there
There was also delta doom focused purely on gameplay with doom squad or delta squad or delta doom squad...however you wanna call them
It's class system with option of wolfensteine like items and futuristic helmet ui with map, secret count and al...with inmaker from some reason but also oldschool weapons and monsters with some of them even customizable deppanding on with version of lost soul let's say you preffer
Why they ge ridded sprites of shell?
You cheated AND used the mouse? Unsubbed! :)
Great video as always!
Why no mouse?
I talk about controls and use the mouse for a brief moment at 17:02
but generally speaking I use keyboard only because that's how I learned to play Doom in the 90s and it's nostalgic for me :)
dehacked
Wolfenstein3d had sliding doors (within a cell), why are they gone? Swing doors like in DukeNukem3d?
It's extremely hard to have doors which move vertically in the Doom engine because of the way level data is coded (e.g. BSP trees). Doors are just sectors which change height, same as lifts, and height data can easily be manipulated on the fly. However, the vertical coordinates of sectors are precalculated to allow for Doom's incredible rendering speed. Manipulating them on the fly would be outrageously slow, especially on 90s hardware.
@@BeefGeeTV you precalculate the static level and maybe start with the walls which surround the door sector. The door only has 4 walls which need to be split into the BSP.
But then again I like how Doom only does necessary stuff. Other games have much more lines of code.
Also note that Hexen, all of two years later and based on the Doom engine, can do both swinging and sliding doors (polyobjects are a wonderful thing).
@@aprildenham5376 yeah, it was a heavily modified doom engine at that point and that was an amazing programming feat. Carmack himself had trouble trying to code moving sectors in the original Doom engine.
>playing it on a modern PC
should have played it on a 486 DX50
I mean, yeah that'd be cool and all. I used to play Doom on something like that back in 1995. Dosbox is quite faithful to that experience tho IMO.
I wish they would have changed it to magazine instead of clip for the remaster instead of changing the stupid red cross to green. You can't copyright a red plus sign, sorry. Every medpack in America has a red cross on it, every medicine cabinet.
Some custom wads change it to a red heart symbol which I think works pretty well. But yeah, the red cross is best for sure.
10:00 This room will also look familiar to anybody who remembers seeing Bill Gates in Doom.
"These games are getting very realistic." He's wanted Doom for decades and, now that Microsoft owns Zenimax, which owns Bethesda, which owns ID, which owns Doom, he finally has it.
The idle state jogging animation was and still is really odd and unfinished looking though. Surely all the undead chars could have stood still in place in the commercial release, it might have even enhanced the horror aspect of the game 🤔 demonic enemies could have had a variation on a standing frame to give them a pulse 🤔 But no, jogging in place 😆
yeah jogging does also look weird, although IMO slightly less weird. If they had more time, or maybe even space, they could have made a secondary idle frame for each monster to swap between.
The original BFG is way cooler IMO
Lol
You wasnt there bro
well I technically was, just too young to really know what was going on
4:15 Would like to correct you there and say instead "Sent to a few game journalists back when they were relevant and could actually play games"
I find it ironic that Romero claims to have spent time during these so called tight decisions in development, but when you take a look at his current design choices for SIGIL 1 and 2 there's non that were carried over and it just becomes a vertical mess that wasn't there to begin with. It's mostly just a sloppy way of designing maps that don't remotely resemble what the original game was going for while enforcing an overused and tiresome gimmick.
I guess a couple of decades doing other stuff changes a man. But yeah, his techbase maps for E1M4b and E1M8b were good IMO. Even the techbase parts of Sigil II suggest to me he could still make those kind of maps if he wanted to.
@@BeefGeeTV yeah I think if he stuck to the techbase aesthetic it could benefit way more for his design choice, as long as there's no eye switches or FIREBLU secrets (seriously, what was he thinking with this one?)
22:47 Ah, yes. Nothing gets people more hyped for Doom than the worst level in the game.
haha yeah its funny to think they might've thought that was one of the best. It is a relative visual spectacle for it's time, given how big some of the rooms are.
you don't strafe and that is a sin!
...I strafe all the time...
Ah, I remember the old days when Wolf3D was out and Doom was mind-blowing. Yes, I'm _old...._ I still say the era of c1992 to c2012 was the golden age of PC gaming though, and it's mostly gone downhill ever since -- especially since the current megastudio/AAA era. The cancer of lootboxes, pay-to-win, endless DLC, releasing buggy unfinished alpha/beta content as "full version", the cancer of microtransactions; and now the even more godawful cancer of leftist "woke" nonsense being forced on us through DEI investment firms like Blackrock & Vanguard (F YOU LARRY FINK!) and companies like Sweet Baby. Ugh. It's all so tiresome. I miss the old days.
46 minutes of real knowledge 💪