Age of Empires

[MrFlibble]

You should probably also post the links to the catalog (the duplicate search is quite useful for that):
24,779,776 1997-10-03
24,786,864 1997-10-22
Expansion Demo:
21,738,576 1998-10-17

Thanks! I was a bit confused if you wanted the links to your index posted publicly or not (I remember you told me some time ago that you didn't want the link crawled, or am I making this up?).

Anyway, the demo that caught my attention was on the PCAction 12/97 CD, where it's stamped with October 6.

Ahh, now I understand that the size fields in your index don't need the commas

I was never able to find a version number anywhere in the AoE demo. If one exists, it would be interesting to see if it changed. Does anyone know how to find it?

There's the "about" page, available through the in-game menu:

I haven't checked all the versions yet but I assume it just says "Version 1.0" in all of 'em. Maybe some build number is hidden in the executable (provided that the executables in these versions differ at all). File size comparisons and date stamps should be more telling in this respect.

I think Age of Kings already shows some internal build number on the "about" page, not sure though.

[Hallfiry]

The sizes support (means ignore) commas and periods. Also, you can use k, m and g (in upper and lower case and anywhere in the sizefield) as placeholders for the corresponding number of zeroes. Or in other words: I usually set min size to 5m when searchinf for demos, to get rid of patches

You can sort by size, date, name etc. on the page, too.

What you meant that should not be crawled, was the MoeTest page
The catalog gets crawled by google and people even find it when searching for specific files (I can see that in the referrer logs).


About the executables: Have you checked the PE header? Windows XP displays it (almost) entirely in the Properties window. I think it's more restricted in Windows 7 (I remember some admin (dunno if it was here or over at BA) complaining about not seeing the info that my OS told me back then about an EXE file). Usually I use PE Explorer to check the entire PE info of files. But after comparing multiple files you will notice that it's not always as consistent and correct as one might hope (for example Blizzard's files usually have weird timestamps and such...)

[MrFlibble]

I have briefly compared the contents of the 24,779,776 byte version and the 24,785,176 byte one the number of files inside and their total size are identical, and so are the date stamps on the files (which are mostly October 3, 1997). Apparently it's something in the installer itself that accounts for the size differences.

[Litude]

The only difference between these is an updated digital signature in the installer IIRC. I think there were three different revisions of the installer for the regular demo and two for the expansion.
But there are just two different demo versions (the CGW one and the regular one).

[MrFlibble]

Thanks for the clarification!

On another note, recently I've come across a video of the regular trial campaign walkthrough. The only difference is that it is played not with the trial version executable, but with Rise of Rome. What caught my attention is the walkthrough of mission 4:
http://youtu.be/MZStv5KFcMs

The player in the video seems to be able to build up the settlement relatively comfortably, whereas in the trial version proper, the player will soon be attacked by an enemy ground force consisting of some Tool Age units and a couple of Stone Throwers, which may use any of the two land accesses into the player's territory. Here in the playthrough, the Stone Throwers are shown later into the game, still stuck in the AI camp.

Does this mean that there are some AI behaviour/script differences between the trial version and the full expansion version that cause this discrepancy? Aren't the AI scripts stored in the campaign file?

[Litude]

Sorry for such a late reply, somehow this completely eluded me.
AI scripts are only stored in the campaign files in Age of Empires 2. In the first game these are all available in separate files and they are likely shared between different scenarios. I don't have the game installed at the moment but I think they were available in the \DATA folder (\AI was AoE2 only IIRC).

Chances are that the AI files were updated between the demo and retail as even the real demo (as in not the CGW one) build was based on an earlier build of the game. Perhaps the expansion pack even tweaked these further (to use expansion pack units etc.).

[MrFlibble]

I suspected as much, thanks for the reply!

On a different note, here's another review stored by the Wayback Machine with some pre-release shots:
http://web.archive.org/web/200008162353 ... index.html

Guess there's nothing new but at least they seem to be of the original quality.

[Litude]

Yeah, those screenshots were all available on the official website, but thanks anyway.

[MrFlibble]

Here's an archived fan site with an intact screenshot gallery:
http://www.heavenweb.com/age/