dwtietz, could you kindly upload somewhere the two demo versions of Redneck Rampage: The Early Years and Possum Bayou, preferably in iso (or bin/cue) format, if you have them?
As far as I know they are unavailable on the internet. Trust me, I searched a lot for them and found nothing, closest thing I found was the early years pre-installed on ProAsm's website, I think requiring main REDNECK.GRP to be pasted in folder to play. Additionally, I even found somewhere an unofficial patch that converts Early Years into the full game but I'm not sure if I should share it. I find it funny how you can easily find the full game and the sequel Rides Again (and even the entire Family Reunion compilation) all for free on various sites but you can't find the demo versions at all? Why?
Seriously, they really had a nerve to release two demos of the game in stores (and milk the franchise even more for what's worth) and charge people for the supposedly free demos. Yes, I realize that the shareware versions of Wolf3D, Doom, Heretic, Quake, etc were also sold in stores but they gave you the entire first episode, while in RR case the only thing they released for free is the common early alpha demo 0.7 which doesn't even contain the first full level, instead it contains a cut down first level of the game (greedy bastards!) and it's not even the final version (there are quite a couple of differences between it and final game, giving you a look at how was game during development), which sadly worked on their favor and personally I don't really think RR deserved to sell that well but that's just my shitty opinion that some people will disagree with.
By comparison, the demo versions of Hexen and Strife were rather unique with the former giving you 4 playable levels (with an important level missing, preventing you from finishing the first hub), the latter giving you an unique campaign/mission exclusive to the demo. Yes, I realize the shareware model has started falling in favor of demos and eventually not even demos are being released anymore (with exception of rare cases) but still in case of RR, they could have at least released the first few levels or even the entire first level as demo for free.
Back to RR, although I am not a fan of the game and have ranted a few times about it in past due to how poorly I think it was designed in general (had too many issues that dragged the game down along with the few qualities it had and I speak with no exaggeration how many half-assed things are in this game), I will admit that I had some fun with it (in a So Bad It's Good kind of way) when I played it for first time back in 2017 and I especially found Rides Again somewhat fun, which was a definitive improvement over the base game. Just in past 2 months I played through the RR Alpha Demo 0.7 in DOSBox again (on fourth difficulty) to be reminded and if I should replay the original game and the addon & sequel, I suppose I will in following month/year, because I want to check out the few user maps/mods made for the game (the only user content I played so far was the awful conversion of Duke3D to RR levels, called Nukem's Redneck Invasion, that I played last year).
I never played the Redneck Deer Hunting game but I think it's pretty crappy anyway. This makes me wonder if it isn't kinda sad how RR got so many official expansions/spinoffs (by same developer) when compared to the other BUILD games, which is another thing I dislike about RR as I said above, the rather undeserved success that this rather mediocre game has achieved.
I personally think Duke Nukem 3D should have been the one who gets more official stuff from 3DRealms and even a sequel on the BUILD engine (rather than how the whole DNF fiasco turned out, though I won't talk about that here) but sadly that wasn't meant to be. But hey, if you enjoy Redneck Rampage, I'm not stopping you, I think it can be fun sometimes as long as you are making progress through the levels and survive against the mostly overpowered enemies (vixens, sheriffs and hulks), thanks to alcohol & food meters in green zone. It's a lot more fun than the other half of BUILD engine games (though it is debatable if it's better or worse than Powerslave) and some levels are actually kinda fun and even better designed (at least from a design perspective) than some of Shadow Warrior levels that are quite boring imo. I always get bored to death in many SW levels, while in RR I get bored after getting stuck for minutes wandering around or dying over and over thanks to the enemies mentioned earlier.
Anyway, I will share what I found a while ago on Archive.org
https://archive.org/...redump-id-67269
It's just the alpha 0.7 labelled as Interactive Preview. I was hopeful I found an actual demo version with more levels but was disappointed instead that it's the alpha demo again.
If anyone wonders why I want to get the demo versions of RR is because they might have some interesting differences compared to the final game that could be documented on TCRF or something. Maybe Possum Bayou at least, considering it was released a year after the main game and maybe they made some changes/updates to the main game. As far as I know, there have been no patches for the RR games (shows how much they cared about their product, unlike most games released in 90s that had patches released online for free).
So if anyone has the RR demos, please share them. Thanks.
Speaking of Powerslave, Methy, do you want me to search again on that CD and see if my Powerslave Beta Demo is actually different from the released versions? I have previously posted in this topic:
https://forums.duke4...on-differences/
But I'm still not sure if my version is actually different or the minor date differences are the result of those guys who put the CD kinda screwed the file dates. It could be yet another Powerslave Beta Demo version, who knows?
Also I'm interested in that Quake Demo version as well. From the alpha/beta versions of Quake, I know there is QTest (the earliest public alpha of the game), Beta3 (aka 0.8, which was leaked and I don't think I can link to it since it is mostly the full game with minor differences and a very different final level) and Shareware version 0.91, the latter which I actually have on one of CDs with shareware games, however this one is freely available on internet as well and if I'm not mistaken it was the first (shareware) version of Quake that was publicly released. Then the initial 1.01 version came out.
There are recent talks about some Quake alpha/beta versions that are floating around but I figured I shouldn't derail the topic with this, so I may ask somewhere else. All I want for now is to find if my Powerslave beta demo is different than what's found so far and if the RR demos can be freely distributed (if anyone has them). I know Early Years is cut down full game (the rest levels are still inside GRP file, inaccessible in game) from what I read before and the fact that Possum Bayou was supposed to be freely available on Steam back in 2017 but since then nothing was done about that.
But I still think these RR demos should be freely available, the full RR games are still available for sale on GOG.com, so I don't see any issues with that and still wonder why no one has uploaded them before.
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MetHy, on 17 November 2020 - 03:11 AM, said:
