MAP15: Spawning Vats (Console Doom)

MAP15: Spawning Vats is the fifteenth level of console versions of Doom, based on the original E2M7: Spawning Vats with modifications made to adapt to the consoles' limitations. The conversion was performed by American McGee, and the original authors of the map are Tom Hall and Sandy Petersen. The map first appeared in the Atari Jaguar version, and was later used in the 3DO, Sega 32X, Game Boy Advance, Sony PlayStation, and Sega Saturn versions.

In the 32X version, which is missing all of the levels from Inferno, Spawning Vats serves as the penultimate level. In the PlayStation and Saturn versions, it contains an added secret exit to.

Normal exit
Go through the door in front of you and turn right and then right again. Go through the door on your left, then turn left and follow the corridor. Go up a lift and continue following the path until you reach a ledge holding the yellow keycard.

Drop off the ledge and go straight forward through the doorway in front of you, then turn left and you will see the yellow door in front of you. Go through it and open the door ahead of you on the right-hand side. Go round the platform holding the red keycard and through a small passage to a room with a switch. Press it and return to the previous room, where the platform has lowered so you can take the keycard.

Backtrack through the yellow door, turn left and then left again into a long hallway. Go forward and open the door at the end, then open the red door on your right. Press the switch behind it (which opens a nearby alcove with a cacodemon) and then the switch behind that, which will raise a bridge over the nearby nukage to the exit door. Cross the bridge, open the door and press the switch behind it to go to the next level (MAP16: Tower of Babel on Jaguar, 3DO and GBA, MAP23: Dis on 32X and MAP16: Hell Gate on PlayStation and Saturn).

Secret exit
The PlayStation and Saturn releases add a secret exit to MAP55: Fortress of Mystery, which can be reached after getting the red keycard. After getting the keycard, follow the guide above to the exit area, but instead of opening the red door go straight ahead, then turn right, left and left again. You will enter a room with a number of square nukage alcoves. Step into the central alcove to be teleported to a small room containing lava and one or two demons. Behind them is a gargoyle switch with megaarmor behind it, which requires the red key to open.

As you walk up to the gargoyle switch, you will hear another door opening nearby. Use the teleporter here to return to the previous room, then turn around and you will see a skull switch in the alcove on your left. Press it before the wall shuts again to reach the secret level.

Other points of interest
The second door you find in the level has a staircase behind it going south and north. Go north and you will find a chaingun at the top.

The rectangular hallway near the center of the hallway has an invulnerability powerup at its south end. The item is protected by a baron of Hell on all skill levels.

From this hallway, you will see an opening in the west wall between the windows. Go through here to a tall room with wooden pillars. This room has a box of shotgun shells by its south wall, and armor by the northern pillar.

Secrets

 * 1) Follow the directions above to find the secret exit. The alcove behind the gargoyle switch containing the megaarmor counts as a secret. (sector 3)

Bugs
There is a corridor in the north west of the map, which connects the north tunnel, lava pool room and the tall room to the west altogether. The corridor has four windows, of which the two to the south are geometrically invalid: the sector that connects the "sky sector" and the two inlet sectors lacks a one-sided wall making the middle sector unclosed. This does not cause rendering distortions though, and was fixed in the PlayStation port by leaving only two windows in total.

Two hanging legs (one being in the starting room and the second being in the southern nukage pools room) have no flags set for any skill setting, so they are never spawned in the level. In Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn ports they have been both removed.

Comparison of versions
Spawning Vats is one of the most radically altered levels on console releases, with over half of the playable area removed. Texture changes throughout the level give the impression of an entirely hellish environment, rather than a UAC structure with hellish influences.

Removed areas

 * The hallway with the "entrance door" and a secret area have been removed from the starting room.
 * At the start of the level on PC, there are two hallways leading east and west. The hallway leading east and all the rooms it leads to have been removed, including the crate storage room in the north-east and the outdoor area in the south-east. The blue keycard in the south-east room is also removed as it is redundant.
 * The blue door is no longer locked. On PC, behind this door there is a staircase going south which leads to a room with nukage; this staircase and the rooms it leads to have been removed from console releases.
 * The room with the teleporter leading to the blood-filled room in the south-west corner of the map is removed. On console releases, the blood room can be reached by stepping into the central nukage alcove in the room west of the exit area.
 * On PC, the hallway behind the yellow door has two rooms on its east side and two rooms on its west side. The two rooms on the east side have been removed from console releases.
 * The room east of the chamber containing the yellow keycard is removed.

Room design

 * All switches use a skull switch on metal wall texture.
 * Blood pools are changed to lava.
 * The sky is visible in several areas. These include the room with square nukage columns and the hallway outside it, the area before the exit door, the long hallways around the yellow door and the room holding the red keycard.
 * The starting room has no pillars or monsters. Instead, you will see a wooden door flanked by red torches when the level starts.
 * The northern-most corridor has a marble face instead of a series of lit sectors.
 * The next corridor (containing an invulnerability powerup) has windows on its west side instead of silver "tanks" along the walls. On Jaguar there are four windows, while on PlayStation there are only two.
 * The area west of this corridor is brighter and is no longer an outdoor area, while the hallway leading to it is wider and not flagged as a secret. The door on the north side, which conceals the level's only secret, is also wider.
 * The southern room with square nukage alcoves is now an outdoor area. The PlayStation and Saturn releases added a secret exit to the south-eastern alcove (described above).
 * Megaarmor is placed behind the red door in the blood-filled room in the south-west corner of the map. On PC, this door conceals a switch that opened a secret alcove in the starting room.

Monster placement

 * The demons that appear in the starting area on Ultra Violence skill level (UV) are removed; instead, a demon is placed behind the door leading out of the starting area on that skill level.
 * The PlayStation and Saturn releases added mancubi to the level on UV in the following locations:
 * One in the area leading to secret #1 in the north-west of the level.
 * One in the hallway connecting the exit area and the room with nukage alcoves.
 * One in the hallway behind the yellow door.

Music
The map uses the following music tracks:

Player spawns
This level contains six spawn points:
 * 1) facing south. (thing 80)
 * 2) facing west. (thing 81)
 * 3) facing south. (thing 112)
 * 4) facing south. (thing 113)
 * 5) facing east. (thing 114)
 * 6) facing north. (thing 115)

Things
This level contains the following numbers of things per skill level:

Technical information
This map is one of several in the Jaguar level set which relies on a modification made to the Doom rendering engine that fills in any missing textures with the first texture specified in the texture directory. In the case of the Jaguar, 32X, 3DO, and Game Boy Advance ports that is the texture, which happens to match the texture theme of this level. If the level is extracted from any of these ports and played with the PC version of Doom, hall of mirrors effects and bleeding flats can be observed in various locations as a result.

The Sony PlayStation's rendering engine changes this again, in a way which makes any visible unspecified textures on sidedefs cause, so the PlayStation and Saturn versions of this map repair all of the missing textures by explicitly specifying them as (which is a redrawn equivalent of ).