Doom history

[ZombiePhysicist]

So everyone knows that Doom was released on MSDOS on December 10, 1993.

But I vaguely remember getting a NeXT release before then. Does anyone know when the NeXT releases came out?

[ZombiePhysicist]

This talk made me think about it, and I could swear something might have been out for public viewing on NeXT even as early as 1992, but perhaps I'm misremembering?

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DR1ArULDL2u/

The reason it's relevant is if there were public releases prior to Sega Yu Suzuki Virtual Fighter/Daytona/Virtual Cop (Martin Marietta flight simulator derivatives) releases, it re-writes a bit of 3D gaming history.

[Rhetorica]

This page lists all of the DOS Doom alphas that are known to have been leaked prior to the release of 0.99 on 12/10/1993: http://toastytech.com/dooma/index.html

All of the pre-releases are very distinctive and have changes to their HUDs that would be impossible to confuse with the finished product, even in vague memories. The dates are:

Alpha 0.2 (Technology Preview): 2/4/1993 (big helmet HUD)
Alpha 0.3: 02/28/1993 (big helmet HUD)
Alpha 0.4: 04/02/1993 (HUD is empty bar with green background)
Alpha 0.5: 05/22/1993 (HUD is small bar with blue text)
Beta (Press Release Preview): 10/16/1993 (score system, lives system, text shows in bottom-right)

As far as I know the NeXT release of 0.99 was basically simultaneous with the DOS release. However the oldest files I can find are much later, from 1995.

Absolutely no binaries existed for Doom in 1992. Tom Hall's Doom Bible is dated to 11/28/1992. For those familiar with the internal history of Doom's development, his departure was in August of 1993, and led to a bunch of changes to the game in terms of scaling back the plot and lore of the setting; his original vision for game development was much more cinematic, and even Rise of the Triad (the project he went on to do at Apogee) fell short of it in its final released form.

Had the Bible been followed without changes, then FPSes would have jumped forward 5 years ahead in terms of norms and fashion; the game would have played like Half-Life or Doom 3—the player is present during a major industrial disaster involving portal technology and has to work through the process of fixing it, ultimately passing into the other world to defeat the boss of the invaders. It called for interactive NPCs and even marine bots that would accompany you through levels, which are hallmarks of Half-Life and its expansions.

John Romero's autobiography Doom Guy is really good for giving detail on the development process aside from what I've already noted here. In terms of "strange anomalies from 1993," ShadowCaster deserves mention; its engine has some of the limitations removed from Wolfenstein but isn't as powerful as Doom, and Carmack wrote it.

[ZombiePhysicist]

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.next.advocacy/c/cHm9_2qeoZc/m/2SwHF9kRrCkJ

This thread seems to talk about it not being out in January of 94. I must have been imagining it because I could swear we had an early version. I wonder if next employees might have gotten an early peek. More likely, I'm just misremembering.