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.

The press release beta is similar in features to the final release of Doom. Some differences are:


 * Messages are displayed inside the status bar. When an object is picked up, the status bar changes briefly to display the message, before switching back.
 * The chaingun appears different.
 * The rocket launcher fires much slower.
 * The plasma rifle appears slightly different and fires the same kind of plasma as the BFG 2704.
 * The BFG 2704 is included (instead of the BFG 9000).
 * The lost soul has different graphics and attacks differently.
 * Lifts move much slower.
 * The map displays pictures of the weapons owned and a score (scoring was eventually removed before the final release).
 * The ouch face appears whenever the player walks through slime.
 * The player had a limited amount of lives (the amount of lives the player had is displayed at the bottom right of the status bar face), with additional lives given by the Soul Sphere.
 * The player cannot gib monsters.

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. These eventually became E1M2, E2M2 and E3M5.

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).