I apologize for the triple post, but I just came across something in the Shadow Warrior 0.90 beta that proves very intriguing. I was looking over BOSS2.MAP, the level with the partially functioning Lava Boss, and couldn't help but feel it resembled something I had seen elsewhere. I couldn't quite put my finger on it until I noticed one of those "DELETE ME" pickups on a raised platform. Then it became obvious.
On the left is BOSS2.MAP with the Lava Boss, and on the right is the boss lair in the 0.90 beta VOLCANO.MAP with the Serpent God that I posted about earlier:
The real damning evidence lies in the overhead 2D view of both maps:
So, clearly, 3D Realms reused BOSS2.MAP for the Serpent's boss cavern in the 0.90 beta version of VOLCANO.MAP. Of course, they ended up eventually cutting most of this anyway when they replaced the cavern with a seesaw. But I wondered, is this just another example of 3D Realms re-purposing one of their old maps, or could it hint at something more? I began wondering just exactly how the enigmatic Lava Boss was supposed to fit into Shadow Warrior, so I took a look at how he's defined in the source.
In the code, you can tell the programmers were mostly appending their new code to the ends of files, so you can see a somewhat chronological order in which things were added. As an example, for the final Zilla robot suit boss (which I pointed out earlier was added within the last month of development), virtually all references to him are at the very bottom of their respective C files (and he even takes up the very last tiles in the ART files). But I digress: In DIGI.H, the header file that defines the names of the digitized sounds, a number of enemy NPC sounds are defined near the beginning of the file, suggesting these are some of the earliest enemies added to the game (pre-Lo Wang era). Here's a trimmed down excerpt from DIGI.H:
// NPC'S //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// COOLIE
...
// COOLIE GHOST
...
// NINJA
...
// RIPPER
...
// GUARDIAN
...
// SKELETOR PRIEST
...
// ACCURSED HEAD
...
// HORNET
...
// SERPENT GOD BOSS
...
// LAVA BOSS
...
Note that these names are listed in alphabetical order after having already been separated into different tiers: Coolies, Coolie Ghosts, Ninjas, and Rippers form the low tier, Guardians and Skeletor Priests form the middle tier, Accursed Heads and Hornets form what I would consider the "non-standard" enemies tier, and the two bosses finish the list off. However, assuming that the bosses form the single highest tier together, note that the two bosses are
not in alphabetical order. This could just be a monumentally trivial matter of order, or it could signify something more interesting. Perhaps the Serpent and Lava Boss have conscientiously been separated and the Lava Boss was deliberately placed after the Serpent. Given how the enemies appear to be sorted from low to high tier (aside from the non-standard ones), could this imply that the Lava Boss had a higher supremacy over the Serpent?
Don't forget, as I pointed out in a previous post, that it was strongly implied the Serpent was going to be the original boss of Shadow Warrior before Zilla came to be as indicated by the 0.90 beta version of VOLCANO.MAP. However, that's in the
post-Lo Wang era when 3D Realms re-tooled the game to be more like Duke 3D. Looking before this, could the final boss have been different in the
pre-Lo Wang era?
There's other evidence to add here as well. The Lava Boss only appears in one level, BOSS2.MAP, while the Serpent appears in two pre-Lo Wang levels, OLDBOSS.MAP and COMBAT3.MAP. This suggests that the Serpent was going to have a boss and mini-boss version in pre-Lo Wang Shadow Warrior, which further suggests that he was
not going to be the final boss of pre-Lo Wang SW. Add to the fact that the Lava Boss's map would become the basis of the final boss encounter in the post-Lo Wang SW, I feel there's enough evidence to make another crazy hypothesis: Before Zilla and before the Serpent,
the Lava Boss was going to be the original boss of pre-Lo Wang Shadow Warrior.
Also consider the fact that apparently in all forms of Shadow Warrior, the final boss encounter is supposed to take place at a volcano or a volcano-ish area. What kind of boss would you expect to find at a volcano? A boss made of lava, of course!
However, since the Lava Boss consists of hand drawn art rather than a 3D model render, I assume that he probably originates from the earliest Shadow Warrior concept that was advertised
here and
here. As for his ultimate fate, I would surmise that the introduction of the Sumo boss made him redundant and he eventually fell by the wayside as the rest of the bosses got shifted around.
Phew, that was quite a lot to say! I hope it all makes sense.
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