Romero's unreleased Doom assets

Since id told Romero not to release any more of his personal archive of Doom development assets a while ago, I've always wondered how much stuff there is still locked away that we won't get to see.

From Romero himself:

"I have tons of unreleased assets for Doom. I only picked a few things when I released those many years ago, but yeah I have tons of stuff that's not released. I can't release them because id told me not to."

Hmm. That's a shame, I really hope they can find a way to share all that stuff in the future - there's a lot of us that would love to see more.

I also just read Life in First Person, and he mentions still owning Adrian Carmack sketches and early hand-drawn mockups of the renderer.

Something like the id vault in Quake II remaster would be ideal. Put that content back in the game, even if it's just in a gallery instead of a playable form.

Sometimes less is more, too much of a good thing is never good... I don't even like Doom II

marsguy ur also the first to mention doom 2 in this thread

I can say that he has some more early levels. There are Doom Builder screenshots floating around from an "anonymous source" of early levels not available to the public. Realistically that "anonymous source" is Romero though I'm not sure how they were released in the first place.

I wasn't optimistic about them being released but the id Vault proved me wrong, it does seem that id Software is genuinely interested in preserving and releasing their past. Hope Romero and id Software find a way to release the remaining stuff in a future remaster, though I'm not sure where it would fit unless they decide to replace Unity Doom in the future. I hope if there are any early executables/.WADs or anything else that can't really be shown in a gallery format they find some way to release those too, for the sake of preservation.

It really would be nice getting some more unused data. Not just doom, obviously. For example when Romero released map source files for quake, it took the quake world by storm, and is still an amazing learning resource for new and aspiring mappers so many years later. 

I'm sure there's still plenty interesting things i hope we'll get to see and play around with. 

I know the complete Mancubus rotations has been speculated to be amongst the things he hasn’t released yet. I am of course most intrigued by unreleased maps (as evidenced by my community project haha) but I’ve always been intrigued by any kind of lost/cut content for things like this.

343 Industries is currently collaborating with community members to polish up and release unused Halo assets, and then there was the id vault in Quake II as previously mentioned, so helpful developer attitudes towards this kind of content is shifting. (Are you reading this, @sponge? I would pay money for any kind of official asset dump!)

Super frustrating, all I want is more unused content, I can't even think of another game that comes close. It's funny that a game and a game series as popular and as well documented as Doom is still giving us new things to discover...

On 9/1/2023 at 2:16 PM, Lila Feuer said:

Super frustrating, all I want is more unused content, I can't even think of another game that comes close. It's funny that a game and a game series as popular and as well documented as Doom is still giving us new things to discover...

I'm honestly glad that people are giving pre-release Doom stuff more attention now. It felt like people didn't really care too much about it before.

I don’t understand why these companies like Id, Apogee, etc. are so weird about releasing their prototypes. With any luck, everything will leak eventually though, with or without their so called consent. 
 

I imagine what is missing is more of the late alpha builds and later stage betas for Doom and Doom II. Likely all the real early stuff is already out there and has been so for a while now, though there’s likely some gaps. 

3 hours ago, Faceman2000 said:

I know the complete Mancubus rotations has been speculated to be amongst the things he hasn’t released yet.

I've not heard of this... doesn't the mancubus already have a complete set of rotation sprites? What's missing?

Besides its pain frames, everything is mirrored. It’s not as big a deal as it it with the zombies and such, but I believe it was @Revenant100 who listed them as one of his dreamed-of unreleased assets.

Yeah, it's a shame Romero can't release anymore unreleased content. We'll just have to make use of what we've got.

I'm the one who asked him that question :) And i am really pissed we can't see those textures hahaha

10 hours ago, Geniraul said:

It's awesome to know Sigil 2 is going to be the episode 6 for the original Doom. 30 years later, and still new episodes coming out, I'm not sure if any other video game can boast of this.

Age of Empires 2, I believe.

He's got nudes of Tom Hall

Very likely we'll see something come December 10th. Can't think of a better time to release that stuff than a 3 decade anniversary...

Romero has already expressly stated that nothing more will be published because ID Software has not given him permission. And they are the rights holders of the game.

4 minutes ago, Marsguy said:

Romero has already expressly stated that nothing more will be published because ID Software has not given him permission. And they are the rights holders of the game.

No shit we're aware, it's right there in the third paragraph of the original post. Again, why are you bothering posting in this thread if you have nothing to add?

Maybe Marsguy is a incognito ID employee spying on us  

On 9/1/2023 at 7:45 AM, gibfrag said:

I don’t understand why these companies like Id, Apogee, etc. are so weird about releasing their prototypes. With any luck, everything will leak eventually though, with or without their so called consent. 
 

I imagine what is missing is more of the late alpha builds and later stage betas for Doom and Doom II. Likely all the real early stuff is already out there and has been so for a while now, though there’s likely some gaps. 

yeah, it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense as to why they're not allowing it. it was 30 years ago and the source code is out anyways, so who gives a shit?

i suppose that it's the principle of the matter, with id being the copyright holders and not romero, so it's not really his decision in releasing unused stuff. but still, it sucks.

27 minutes ago, natashanightmare said:

Maybe Marsguy is a incognito ID employee spying on us  

No

2 hours ago, Marsguy said:

 

No

yes

3 hours ago, roadworx said:

yeah, it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense as to why they're not allowing it. it was 30 years ago and the source code is out anyways, so who gives a shit?

 

i suppose that it's the principle of the matter, with id being the copyright holders and not romero, so it's not really his decision in releasing unused stuff. but still, it sucks.

Romero applying licences to stuff he doesn't own the rights to probably has something to do with it.

Is it even worth to bump this given that we now have 'official' unearthed beta content?

Quote

Is it even worth to bump this given that we now have 'official' unearthed beta content?

There are still unreleased extended midis of "Donna to the Rescue", "Demons from Adrians Pen" and "Kitchen Ace", recordings of which can be heard on the Doom Music album: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_Music_(album)

But these are not included in this vault, so there may yet be even more beta content out there.

On 8/10/2024 at 7:35 PM, Doom64hunter said:

There are still unreleased extended midis of "Donna to the Rescue", "Demons from Adrians Pen" and "Kitchen Ace", recordings of which can be heard on the Doom Music album: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_Music_(album)

 

But these are not included in this vault, so there may yet be even more beta content out there.

There’s also the information on maps from that Beta Master Levels list