Text screen

In the Doom games and derivatives a text screen is a screen that presents the player with part of the game's story in text form. The text is typed out sequentially, character after character, over a background made from a repeating flat, while music plays. Pressing a key displays all remaining text at once. A text screen appears either at the end of an episode (as in Doom), or after a series of levels (as in Doom II). The text screen is followed by a full-screen picture in Doom, while in Doom II it precedes a level except in the last case, where it is followed by the cast sequence.

Doom II has text screens before Levels 7, 12, 21, and at the very end, as well as before both secret levels (which are played after Level 15). Both episodes of Final Doom operate exactly the same way, as they were originally alternate Doom II PWADs. The same music is used for all of these text screens, with the exception of those of TNT: Evilution (which uses an original, four-second track for each text screen,) and was re-used for the twenty-first level of Plutonia. Doom's story text screens were written by Sandy Petersen.

Heretic uses a similar setup as Doom, but Hexen displays a full-screen picture instead of patterning a flat.

Strife did not include any text screens at all, instead telling extended stories through slide shows with voice-overs provided by Macil and other characters. There is evidence that this was not the case at some point in development however, as and  lumps exist within the IWAD which contain text for the end of the "teaser" demo version and for a scene after the defeat of the Programmer, respectively. These lumps are unused in the commercial release version of the game. Strife: Veteran Edition added a text screen during the title screen attract loop, however, to replace the original demo which desyncs due to changes made to the maps to support rendering. This text screen shows the back story of the game previously only outlined in its instruction manual.