How to find Secret Doors in Doom/Doom II/etc.

                     By Ian Mapleson (mapleson@cee.hw.ac.uk)

                             Last Change: 28/Jun/96


There are several types of secret door in Doom and Doom II. None of them need
keys to open (at least not directly); the difficulty lies in:

  a) finding them in the first place, and
  b) discovering what it is that will make them open.

The vast majority of secret doors do not need anything special to open; once
they're found, just push against them in the usual way. However, some secrets
rely on a switch somewhere being pressed beforehand, or perhaps a lever, etc. An
example is the switch on E1M1 (Doom I) that opens the door to the area outside
where the chaingun is.

Other secrets may be activated by walking over a pressure pad nearby, in which
case you have to run to make it through the secret door before it closes again
(an example is on E1M3, the door that leads to the supercharge visible
through the window).

How difficult it is to find a secret varies depending on how they're hidden.
Most will be visible because their colour and/or shade is different from the
surrounding wall, or because the texture hasn't been aligned in the same way.
The pressure pad type may be visible either because of their colour, because
you hear a door noise whilst walking and thus know there's a secret nearby, or
perhaps there is a pool of light or something which illuminates the sensitive
floor area (an example is on E2M2).

Other secrets are harder to spot but may have clues as to where they are. One
secret (I forget which level) has some armour helmets on the floor laid out in
the shape of an arrow, pointing to the wall - which is where the secret is. I
missed this one the first time around because I was in too much of a rush
grabbing armour and other goodies! :D

There are a few secrets which are simply not visible, though these mainly tend
to be present in the add-on levels people have made. I can't think of any
secrets like this in the original levels off-hand, but I think there are one
or two.

One other way of finding secrets is to find the computer area map object (if the
level contains one).

Yet another kind of secret is less common. These are ones in which you have to
_shoot_ the wall to open it! :D (pistol shot will suffice). An example is on
E1M2 within the flashing lights area; this particular secret leeds to the
chainsaw. But note again that doors like these are quite rare.

Hope this helps!

Byeee! :)

Ian.