Doom press release beta

The Doom press release beta was released October 4, 1993. It was apparently released to journalists to trial the game before its release. The beta is time sensitive and will not start after October 31, 1993. A utility is bundled with the public release on /idgames to fool the beta into thinking that the system clock is set before 10/31/1993. It also has a "password" where the user must add the command line parameter -pressrelease when running the beta.

While the press release beta is in many regards similar to the completed releases of Doom, there are various differences with the finished game, including:


 * Messages are displayed on the right side of the status bar, replacing everything but the ammo for the current weapon and the armor percentage, for a couple of seconds or so.
 * The end of the chaingun muzzle is hidden by the circular plate before it.
 * The rocket launcher fires more slowly, recoiling after each shot.
 * The BFG 2704 is included instead of the BFG 9000, firing many plasma bursts with each shot.
 * The plasma rifle is slightly different and fires greenish and reddish bursts like the BFG 2704.
 * The lost soul looks grayish or metallic with energy around the head instead of flames, and attacks from afar with an invisible hitscan effect.
 * Lifts are much slower than in the finished game.
 * In automap mode the status bar displays pictures of the weapons owned and the current score in points (as in Wolfenstein 3D).
 * The ouch face appears whenever the player walks on slime or lava.
 * The player has a counter for his remaining amount of lives by the status bar face, and an additional life is added each time a Soul Sphere is picked up.
 * The light amplification visor uses a green shade imitating today's night vision goggles.
 * The partial invisibility effect uses uses the inverse black and white shade reserved for invulnerability in the finished game.
 * The player cannot gib monsters.
 * The sky is black over a low range of light brown mountains. A portion of this sky is eventually used as the F_SKY1 placeholder flat used to assign a sky texture as the ceiling to a sector during design.
 * The sound effects and music are absent.

Score giving items

 * Demonic dagger. It has a skull on its hilt, appears to be two-bladed, and seems to be driven into the ground. Its description in the Doom Bible is: Also used in sacrifices, this knife is black and red.
 * Skull chest.
 * Unholy bible.
 * Evil Sceptre.

Cheats
Several cheats were included with the documentation for the beta:


 * tst: Behaves similar to the iddqd cheat (God mode)
 * eek: Behaves similar to the iddt cheat (displays entire map)
 * amo: Behaves similar to the idkfa cheat (gives all weapons, ammo and keys)
 * nc: Behaves similar to the idspispopd</tt> cheat (no clipping mode)

Levels
Three levels are included.

Demo Map 1: E1M2. The room with the walkway over slime has been turned into a maze, the outside area lacks a Chaingun, elevators are used instead of stairs, and the secret with the Backpack in the computer maze is missing.

Demo Map 2: E3M5. There is no BFG, but is otherwise complete.

Demo Map 3: E2M2. It lacks a Berserk pack, the area past the warehouse and main hall uses hell textures instead of the techbase ones used in the final version and the room with the Chainsaw has a Box of shells instead of the Chainsaw.

Interestingly, Demo Map 2 is internally referred to as E2M5, while Demo Map 3 is E3M2.

Trivia
Remnants of the "message window" code remain in the Doom source release, although this is limited to only a few "#define" C constants (actual code is not present).