Official Doom FAQ

The "Official" Doom FAQ is the title of a text document by Hank Leukart, started as simply The Doom FAQ but which became "Official" with its inclusion in version 1.4 of Doom. The final version of the FAQ is 6.666, dated December 10, 1994.

Overview
The Official Doom FAQ has five major sections after its introduction, including "Preliminary Information", "Cheats and Spoilers", "Doom Add-on Software", "Troubleshooting", and "Miscellaneous". As of version 6.666 of the document, it was divided across four text files named DMFAQ66A.TXT (containing the introduction and section 1), DMFAQ66B.TXT (containing section two), DMFAQ66C.TXT (containing section three), and DMFAQ66D.TXT (containing sections four and five).

Doom Insanity, a record of various forms of enthusiasm in the online community leading up to Doom's release, started out as part of the Official Doom FAQ, but was later separated into its own independent document.

Full contents
To read the Official Doom FAQ in its original form, see Official Doom FAQ/Original text.

Posting and distribution
The Official Doom FAQ was originally posted every two weeks, or occasionally earlier in the case of a release, to several Usenet groups. In addition, it was uploaded to several of the FTP servers which were precursors to the idgames archive, and was originally supported by an automated mailing list known as the "The DOOM Mailing List," though this was discontinued at some point before the final version of the FAQ was created. It was also officially uploaded to the Software Creations, a popular destination for gaming enthusiasts.

Other contributors
The FAQ's elaborate ASCII version of the Doom logo, first added in v5.5, was designed by Frans P. de Vries.

John Romero, Dave Taylor, and Jay Wilbur are credited for answering questions and making frequent Usenet posts.

A large number of community members are credited for contributions, including the otherwise notable Barry Bloom, Matt Fell, Ian Mapleson, Tom Neff, Joe Pantuso, Elias Papavassilopoulos, Joost Schuur, and John Van Essen.

Errata
Being based partially on speculative pre-release details and user-contributed information, the Official Doom FAQ does contain some outdated (as judged by then-contemporary standards) or erroneous information. Some instances of such are listed here.
 * A reference is made to presence of "light sourcing" in the game, based on a detail from Jay Wilbur's original Doom press release, stating that it allows lamps, explosions, and strobe lights to "illuminate hallways," "light up areas," or "briefly reveal things near them." While some degree of non-dynamic light sourcing can be simulated with detailed sectoring in Doom maps, true dynamic light sourcing is not a part of the game's engine.
 * The purpose of the -wart development command-line parameter is simply listed as "Loads a PWAD named ExMy.wad".
 * Demons and spectres are described as being capable of infighting, which was no longer true after v1.5.