Some missing game versions

[MrFlibble]

Well, my previous post wasn't at any rate to discredit official sources, it's just that so many things from those days are lost in obscurity, and I think it's primarily because, unlike now, the information "fog" so to speak was much denser. There were also more reasons for people to create fake versions back then - remember Lee Jackson's Hack Report?

Anyway, I wouldn't say that anyone like George Broussard or Joe Siegler "lied" to the community when providing inaccurate information - they could have been improperly informed themselves, or, like it is the case with Duke Nukem 3D, the version number itself is a kind of an "in-joke", and the official "cover-up" explanation just added to the fun I guess.

All of that makes research in this field so much more interesting

[Hallfiry]

I wanted to write my Warcraft 1 version history today and encountered a severe problem:
Quite a while ago, I had a (very rare) Warcraft 1 patch that included lots of original sound files with their mid 1994 time stamps (so, long before the actual release). Sadly, I can't find it anymore. I think it was either on one of my CDs or one of the French (from abandonware-magazines.org).
Has anyone else seen that patch somewhere?

EDIT: More info that I posted in January 2012:

Actually I don't want to spoiler too much, since I'm writing a comprehensive company history of Blizzard, but I recently found some original Warcraft 1 sound files with their old timestamps:
(all dates are 1994)
-axe sounds are dated to June 21st
-sword and catapult sounds were finished on September 23rd
-Buildings, units and some generic mission sounds are from September 27th to 29th
-Some more voice recordings and misc/unit sounds are from October 4th to 14th

I hate myself now for not sharing that stuff.

EDIT2: Found the files (the patch is just the second variant of 1.21). I will upload them to my temporary Warcraft 1 version history:

blizzardarchive döt com släsh MoeTest

(I don't want this url to be crawled, since I'll remove it in a few weeks, anyway)

[MrFlibble]

Interesting! Why did they include the sound files in the patch in the first place?

BTW, IIRC when I used WarDraft (a *.WAR archive editor/extractor, primarily for Warcraft II) to check out the contents of the first game's archives, I think that some of the sound effects were WAV files, while others were VOC files. Now I'm not sure about this at all, but it seems that there was no system behind this, it's not that, say, all speech was in WAV and all sound effects were in VOC. No idea why that was the case. IIRC, all sounds in Warcraft II are WAV files.

[Hallfiry]

Interesting! Why did they include the sound files in the patch in the first place?

BTW, IIRC when I used WarDraft (a *.WAR archive editor/extractor, primarily for Warcraft II) to check out the contents of the first game's archives, I think that some of the sound effects were WAV files, while others were VOC files. Now I'm not sure about this at all, but it seems that there was no system behind this, it's not that, say, all speech was in WAV and all sound effects were in VOC. No idea why that was the case. IIRC, all sounds in Warcraft II are WAV files.

Why they included the files: I'm not sure. The french readme that came with them, said you have to copy them to the warcraft directory.

You are right about the sounds of warcraft 1 being voc and wav files. I wrote an extractor for them 2 years ago (I'm not a fan of wardraft). If I remember correctly, the huge difference between warcraft 1 and 2 is that the warcraft 1 files don't have names, but I might be wrong. What they both atleats have in common, is that they don't preserve timestamps and that makes these sound files super special and important for warcraft 1 research.
The sound folder has 42 wavs and 38 vocs, while Warcraft 1 has 38 vocs and 49 wavs.

Some of the wavs of the SOUND folder are newer than the first demos of warcraft 1. We should compare these.

EDIT: All 4 Warcraft 1 Demos are now up. If the three older ones aren't already available here (the link doesn't work as I write this, but I reported it immediately), I'd suggest to add these

[MrFlibble]

Hmm, so the game can read sound files right from the directory? I didn't know Warcraft could do that, but that's quite normal of course

You're right that the raw files with original timestamps are important, this is certainly something one doesn't come across often if a game uses some data packaging format or other, as most of those don't preserve individual file timestamps at all (unless it's a common archive format, like what appears to have been used in Realms of Chaos).

As for the v1.17 not being mentioned anywhere, could it have been one of those bug-introducing updates that had to be hastily corrected soon after release? That could explain the reluctance to list it among other updates.

[Hallfiry]

Hmm, so the game can read sound files right from the directory? I didn't know Warcraft could do that, but that's quite normal of course

I couldn't find the filenames inside any of the exe files. Maybe they used hashes? I'll have to try if the harddrive accesses the files while playing...
EDIT: After a few minutes of testing, I can say that these files are totally useless for the game.... which is kinda funny, making their release even more odd.

As for the v1.17 not being mentioned anywhere, could it have been one of those bug-introducing updates that had to be hastily corrected soon after release? That could explain the reluctance to list it among other updates.

After comparing the files of 1.16 and 1.17, it turned out that 1.17 is a hoax. 1.16 and 1.17 are completely identical (except for the version number in the readme). Thus, I'll remove it from the page.

EDIT2: 4 Demos versions of Lost Vikings are now up.
@DOSGuy: Your Lost Vikings version "29 April 1993" is actually dated to 26 April 1993. Only the archive is slightly newer, but all content is older. The demos that I listed as Demo2 and Demo3 are missing here, it would be nice if you could add them with the next update.
As mentioned somewhere above, you are also missing some Warcraft 1 Demos (Demo1, Demo2 and the European Interplay Demo).
Your are also missing one of the Diablo PreRelease Demos and the other one is incomplete here. Dates and demos can be found on my website.
There are also patches for the shareware version of Diablo on my website, in case you want to add these.

Blackthorne coming soon...

Reminder for the temp url, that I don't want to be crawled:
blizzardarchive döt com släsh MoeTest

[Litude]

EDIT2: 4 Demos versions of Lost Vikings are now up.
@DOSGuy: Your Lost Vikings version "29 April 1993" is actually dated to 26 April 1993. Only the archive is slightly newer, but all content is older. The demos that I listed as Demo2 and Demo3 are missing here, it would be nice if you could add them with the next update.

Nice job in finding that even earlier demo version, been digging for those myself but couldn't find it. I did find another earlier version of the German demo though. Sadly I had to remove the files hosted at my space since I ran out of disc space and the files had been available for a year or so anyway. Could probably re-add just that file if you're interested.

[Hallfiry]

Nice job in finding that even earlier demo version, been digging for those myself but couldn't find it. I did find another earlier version of the German demo though. Sadly I had to remove the files hosted at my space since I ran out of disc space and the files had been available for a year or so anyway. Could probably re-add just that file if you're interested.

Sure I'm interested.

[MrFlibble]

After comparing the files of 1.16 and 1.17, it turned out that 1.17 is a hoax. 1.16 and 1.17 are completely identical (except for the version number in the readme).

Heh, this idea actually occurred to me Probably one of those fakes someone made to increase their "download points" at some BBS for uploading a software update (the kind of stuff Lee Jackson used to hunt down with his Hack Squad). However, I thought that someone making a fake patch for Warcraft wasn't very likely (usually people would fake popular programmes like PKZIP)

[Hallfiry]

Some Blackthorne stuff is now up.

EDIT:
Still now SC and BW, but Pax Imperia 2. The second demo is very common, but my variant includes a cinematic that was normally deleted from the folder to save 100mb. The other demo is ultra rare and one month older than the second demo.

[MrFlibble]

Just noticed that the old Descent page at the Interplay website (archived copy) mentions a 3-level demo of the game called Descent: Test Flight which was released on CDs, but no inof on how it was distributed:

Descent: Test Flight
This is a 3-level version of the demo on CD.

[Hallfiry]

Just noticed that the old Descent page at the Interplay website (archived copy) mentions a 3-level demo of the game called Descent: Test Flight which was released on CDs, but no info on how it was distributed:

Descent: Test Flight
This is a 3-level version of the demo on CD.

I looked through my CDs, but couldn't find

---

The websites features Diablo 2 now and I fixed the wrong link of the Diablo 1 Beta.
@DOSGuy: There are two Diablo 2 shareware versions. Yours is the newer one from 22/12/2000. On my website I have an older version from 22/11/2000. You should probably use my version of the older one and not an internet variant, since these often don't include all three Eula files, etc.

[MrFlibble]

I decided to give the thread a more appropriate title, "Game release and version history research".

[Edit] And now it's changed back to the original title.

[Litude]

I finally dug up the file I promised. Here's the earlier German Lost Vikings demo. I also had the later German demo in an installer and it gives an earlier date for the demo since the modify dates of the installer files are 18.6.1993.

Finally I also dug up a version of Blackthorne you seem to be missing. It's just a day later than the first demo so differences are probably very minimal but the files do differ. Get it here.

[Hallfiry]

I finally dug up the file I promised. Here's the earlier German Lost Vikings demo. I also had the later German demo in an installer and it gives an earlier date for the demo since the modify dates of the installer files are 18.6.1993.

Finally I also dug up a version of Blackthorne you seem to be missing. It's just a day later than the first demo so differences are probably very minimal but the files do differ. Get it here.

Thanks a lot. I'll add them later today.

EDIT: The new demos are now up. It turned out that my second LV demo was already the early German demo and I overlooked it in the first place.