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Development Info Prototype Info Prerelease Info Revisional DifferencesThere's a lot of them.

Debug Mode#

Entered by passing the parameter "-devparm" when starting the game, Doom's debug mode is pretty bare-boned. You can take screenshots (in PCX format) by pressing F1 (which replaces its original function of bringing up the help screen), and a series of dots appears in the bottom left that roughly indicate the frame rate. One dot indicates the full 35FPS, while more dots indicate a frame rate of 35/(number of dots). In earlier versions, the -devparm parameter is also required to use several other parameters, but the requirement was dropped in 1.4.

Unused Graphics#

Menu heading and option for a display options menu. These are left over from the 0.5 alpha.

Headings for the load and save game menus. These menus just reuse their option graphics for their headings.

The "ouch" face was meant to occur if the player lost 20 or more health in a single attack. A mistake in the game's coding makes it visible only if you gain 20 or more health while taking damage, rendering the face unseen outside of uncommon situations, like getting hurt while standing on a medikit. Like most of Doom's status bar faces, the ouch face has five different sprites depending on how much health the player has remaining.

The SW1STARG texture was only used on a single wall of E1M3 in v1.0. When the raising floor it triggered was redesigned in v1.1, the switch texture was removed from the wall, and it goes unused in all future versions.

Two unused frames for the pistol. Why they're not used is unknown.

An unused frame for the BFG. Again, why it's unused is a mystery.

Used	Unused

A gray variant of the stalagmite decoration, lacking the spikes and smaller stalagmites around the sides. No corresponding thing exists for it.

Removed Graphics#

A few unused graphics can be found in earlier versions of Doom, but these graphics were removed from later versions.

Alternate status bar panels left over from the press release pre-beta. The score and weapons panel were used instead of the normal bar on the automap; the large blank divided panel replaced the entire right side of the status bar whenever text was displayed or being typed. These were removed in v1.2.

Red variations on the small gray and yellow numbers used on the status bar. These were also removed in v1.2.

These small weapon icons were used on the weapons panel of the pre-beta automap status bar. And like the panel, they were removed in v1.2.

Bonus and score graphics intended for the intermission screen. Another set that was removed in v1.2.

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These are spent shell and bullet casings that would have come out of a gun. However, the spent casings never pop up since the coding required doesn't appear to be there. They were removed in v1.666.

These are obviously projectiles and their corresponding impact animations, but none of these are used in the final version. The yellow and green sphere projectile was thrown by the Baron of Hell in the press release pre-beta. Likewise, the green ball and explosion are leftovers from the pre-beta plasma gun and BFG. The purple and pink sphere and blue ball were never used in any known version. They were removed in v1.666.

A frame of the yellow and green projectile was used as a part of the Arachnotron plasma's impact animation in Doom II.

Added Graphics#

The Arachnotron plasma and Mancubus fireball from Doom II were mistakenly added to the Doom IWAD in v1.666...

...as was the final boss' spawn cube.

Doom v1.666	Doom II

The burning barrel decoration is also present, but with earlier spritework that lacks some refinements on the fire and the shading on the left side of the barrel. The second and third frames also have incorrect offsets that make it shift to the right.

This multiplayer menu option graphic is present in the Doom 3 BFG Edition IWAD. It's used in the console versions, but the PC version doesn't have multiplayer support.

Unused Messages#

Unused Medikit Message#

If the player gets a medikit with less than 25 health, this should be displayed:

Picked up a medikit that you REALLY need!

However, health is added before the check is made, so the player's health is always greater than 26 when it checks which message to use. The 3rd September update for the Unity-wrapped 2019 re-release restores this behavior.

inVuln or Inviso?#

This might be stretching the definition of unused, but when entering the idbehold cheat, the following message is displayed:

inVuln, Str, Inviso, Rad, Allmap, or Lite-amp

The capital letters indicate which key to press for that powerup, but since the final version of the game no longer makes a distinction between capital and lowercase letters in the message font, pressing V to get the invulnerability artifact is completely unintuitive.

Unused Quit Messages#

There are several unused quit messages defined in the source code:

The first seven messages are under a comment saying "FinalDOOM?", but this was added by Bernd Kreimeier when he was cleaning the source for release to the public. These messages were never intended for Final Doom - they were "development mode only" messages written by John Romero. "Ron" referred to Ron Chaimowitz, CEO of GT Interactive, publisher of The Ultimate Doom, Doom II, and Final Doom.

Unused Sounds#

There is a single sound included in both Doom and Doom II, called DSSKLDTH, which due to its position within both WAD files, seems to have originally been intended to serve as the Lost Soul's death sound. However, it's simply a duplicate of the DSOOF sound the player makes when bumping into a wall, due to Lost Souls simply reusing the fireball explosion sound (DSFIRXPL). The sound file's name, possibly coming from "Skull Death" was probably a leftover from the Doom Press Release Beta's version of the lost soul, whose death animation consisted in breaking apart and falling into pieces. This file is also present in the Final Doom IWADs.

Automap Asteroids#

There are some references in the source code release for an Easter egg that would turn the automap into a game of Asteroids. The code was later found by John Romero, but as it turns out, very little of the egg was actually completed - just some data structures and basic collision detection. Oh, well.