Screenshots from the Doom
alpha and beta versions

The ancestor of E1M6

Doom alpha 0.4, what was to become E1M6.
The same level in Doom alpha 0.5. Note the parts that have changed.

Browsing textures

Browsing textures in Doom alpha 0.4 ...
... in Doom alpha 0.5 ...
... and in Doom beta.

The TEXnnnnn names in the browser for version 0.4 are not real. Since that version of Doom did not have texture names (textures were referred to by their numbers), Yadex generates automatic TEXnnnnn names, to make the whole thing look like a regular Doom level. The garbage on the right of the SKY2 texture is, as far as I can tell, a problem in the Doom beta iwad, not in Yadex.

Viewing things

In the top window, E1M5 from Doom alpha 0.5. In the bottom window, E3M3 from regular Doom.

Besides revealing that I use FVWM95, this screenshot shows how certain sprites, (such as the medikit you can see above), have changed between the alphas and the final release. Also note the weird things flags in the alphas. The flag 0080h represented by "F" is not a standard Doom flag. It must have meant something to the alpha versions but I don't know what.

The evolution of E1M4

Doom alpha 0.4, E1M7
Doom alpha 0.5, E1M7
Doom 1.9, E1M4

Alpha-specific things

On the screenshot from version 0.4 above, a few things are shown in cyan. That is Yadex's way of saying that they have an unknown type. Indeed, versions 0.4 and 0.5 seem to use things types 2020, 2021, 2027, 2029, 2030, 2032, 2036, 2037, 2038 and perhaps others I've missed, that are not defined in later versions of Doom. It would not be very difficult to find out what those things are and add their definitions to alpha04.ygd and alpha05.ygd. It has already been done for thing type 2027, that is a bronze-coloured barrel (sprite GBARA0) :

The corresponding entry in alpha04.ygd is :

    thing 2027 d - 10 "Bronze barrel [Alpha]" GBAR

Beta-specific things

The beta version is very similar to the released version, much more than the alpha versions. The only beta-specific things I know of are the evil sceptre (BON3A0) and the unholy bible (BON4A0). They exist in the alphas as well, though the sprites look different. The sprites shown below are, from left to right, BON3A0 from the alphas, BON3A0 from the beta, BON4A0 from the alphas and BON4A0 from the beta.

They have been added to the relevant game definition files :

    thing 2016 b - 16 "Evil sceptre [Beta]" BON3
    thing 2017 b - 16 "Unholy bible [Beta]" BON4

Notes

Thanks to Lee Killough, Frans P. de Vries, id Software and others for giving us access to the alpha and beta versions of Doom. Thanks to Jonathan Wilson for figuring out the graphic formats.

This document is copyright © André Majorel 1999. Verbatim copies are permitted but don't mess with it without getting my permission first. A lot of the material in this document is the property of id Software. All trademarks are the property of their owners.