Do we know which Ultimate DooM map was made first?

[Womp the Cat]

We know, E1M1 was the last map made for the first episose, as a "best foot forward" so the question remains which was the first made? or do we think it was something that never made the episode?

[out_of_service]

I think it was E2M7: Spawning Vats? I'm pretty sure Tom Hall and Sandy Petersen developed it.

[Shepardus]

The Doom alpha versions have early versions of many of the levels that would appear in Doom (or, in the case of Refueling Base, Doom II). The earliest known alpha version, v0.2, has a small test level that does not appear in the final game.

[Womp the Cat]

10 hours ago, Shepardus said:

The Doom alpha versions have early versions of many of the levels that would appear in Doom (or, in the case of Refueling Base, Doom II). The earliest known alpha version, v0.2, has a small test level that does not appear in the final game.

Excellent, thank you. do we know what the first map for the released version was as well?

PSXDoomer reckons E2M7, is this more or less confirmed to be true?

 

Edited May 31, 2021 by Womp the Cat

[spineapple tea]

I think I remember seeing something about an early version of e2m2 being in one of the Doom alphas in a Romero and Tom Hall GDC talk. Most of episode 2 seems old as hell and seems to use the most alpha-styled designs and concepts out of any episode.

[continuum.mid]

Going by the wiki: alpha 0.2 was just a test level that doesn't reflect anything in the final game. Alpha 0.3 contained early versions of E2M7, E2M2, E2M3, and E1M2, with E2M7 being the first to be started.

[Gez]

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_v0.3

The maps that would become E2M2 and E2M3 are those that look the biggest, most detailed and closest to finished (and also, that have changed the least compared to their final versions), so I'd say it's possible those two were the oldest. The maps that would become E2M7 and E1M2 are a lot smaller and less complete-looking.

 

Of course that's a weak signal at most. It's perfectly possible they worked on E2M7 first, then hit a creative block, and moved on to other maps; this kind of things is quite frequent. It's not really possible to know for sure. But those four maps are definitely the oldest in the game.