Doom Shareware 1.666 beta?

Earlier today I was checking out the Doom II French install CD, and discovered something odd. The disc comes with a copy of the Doom shareware install files as a free bonus, but the install files are different to those in dm1666sw.zip found in /idgames/historic. It seems to be a "beta" or at least alternate version of v1.666.

The files in this version are dated to August 30, 1994, a couple of days before the Sep 1 1994 date in the normal version. It seems to have an older version of order.frm, and doom.exe and setup.exe are different. doom.exe is the same as doom2.exe included with Doom II v1.666. I can't see any functional difference with setup.exe except that the version shown at the top of the screen is shown as v1.5 instead of v1.666.

I've uploaded it here in case anyone finds it interesting. It has the French version of deice as it came off the French Doom II disk.

certainly odd have you noticed any other differences in terms of bugs?

I'm not noticing too much in differances. Mind listing them?

Clonehunter said:

I'm not noticing too much in differances. Mind listing them?

You probably won't. This build is early by only a couple of days.

Good find by the way!

That alternate version also appears as a set of install files on the Heretic (Registered) CD and unpacked with installer on the Heretic (Serpent Riders) CD. A quick file comparison turns up some differences in DOOM.EXE, though I'm not equipped to document them in a meaningful way.


EDIT - The Australian CD release of Doom 2 v1.666 also contains install files for the alternate version.

DOOM.EXE is different, and it seems to be the same version as shipped with Doom 2 v1.666. One thing I noticed is that the D_INTROA OPL-specific version of the title screen music isn't played; it's always D_INTRO, the "general case" version. Also, the game seems more unstable; running in DOSbox I had it crash several times, while the later-dated version seems solid. Perhaps they made some tweaks to the sound code before they shipped? (newer version of DMX?)

Interesting, as I've experienced instability with v1.666 from DOOM II, but hadn't noticed the one in the shareware is different. I guess it's a good idea to replace it with the one from the shareware, if one wants to watch a v1.666 demo or the like.