[KareBear]

The tank in TREE.MAP looks amazing compared to the one in the final game.

[necroslut]

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone involved in bringing us this, even if they don't read this. It's been amazing to get a look behind the scenes of one of the best games of its kind ever made.
Even the '97 beta was new to me, as even though I've had it downloaded for ages I haven't got it to actually run. I thought it was more similar to the final release than it was. I probably prefer the beta version of Seppuku Station to the final one, flows better and has a cooler station.

[icecoldduke]

necroslut, on 21 May 2017 - 07:36 AM, said:

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone involved in bringing us this, even if they don't read this. It's been amazing to get a look behind the scenes of one of the best games of its kind ever made.
Even the '97 beta was new to me, as even though I've had it downloaded for ages I haven't got it to actually run. I thought it was more similar to the final release than it was. I probably prefer the beta version of Seppuku Station to the final one, flows better and has a cooler station.

I have to agree on all counts. I think what happened was they over fiddly fucked Seppuku Station.

[necroslut]

icecoldduke, on 21 May 2017 - 07:54 AM, said:

I have to agree on all counts. I think what happened was they over fiddly fucked Seppuku Station.

It's especially interesting as Seppuku Station already was one of my very favorite FPS levels ever. But the beta's more straightforward path is probably better as a first level, and the beta station with its room-over-room architecture is very nice and would probably have blew me away if I played it back then.

[Robman]

necroslut, on 21 May 2017 - 07:57 AM, said:

It's especially interesting as Seppuku Station already was one of my very favorite FPS levels ever. But the beta's more straightforward path is probably better as a first level, and the beta station with its room-over-room architecture is very nice and would probably have blew me away if I played it back then.

They probably wanted to show off the transparent water, which is simply a variant of RoR.

[necroslut]

Robman, on 21 May 2017 - 08:09 AM, said:

They probably wanted to show off the transparent water, which is simply a variant of RoR.

I guessed it was for performance or stability reasons - they could simply have put the pool in an adjacent rooms otherwise. Or they repurposed it as part of the expanded airport level, which has a similar room-over-room area in the final version, but not in the beta.

[TDRR]

Any chance the setup menu will be brought back? Without it, i can only set different resolutions and controls outside of Steam, and playing SW letterboxed sucks (320x240 is terribly letterboxed and 320x400 looks awesome)

[CryptKiller]

Go to Program Files/Steam/steamapps/common/Shadow Warrior Original/gameroot/beta1996 or beta 1997, open dosbox_swarrior_single.conf, after c: line add setup.exe, so it looks like this:

[ipx]
# ipx -- Enable ipx over UDP/IP emulation.

ipx=false

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
@echo off
mount C .
c:
setup.exe
crashfix.bat
cls
exit

save, and run the desired version of the game, done, you've got the setup screen. You can also easily avert this by removing the setup.exe line.

Or you can just open SW.CFG in notepad and change the resolution here.

[Hendricks266]

Working on getting everything as stable as possible in DOSBox.





Unfortunately I forgot that two of the betas are protected by AEGIS.

[Robman]

Good ol' Shadow Warrior.
Even the files have Ninja skills.

[TDRR]

Oh, thank you CryptKiller, it's been such a long time since i last fiddled with Dosbox that i completely forgot about the Autoexec line, thanks.

Damn, that proto selection menu is looking good!

[termit]

Pushed sw betas to public, thanks to Hendricks266 for doing all the magic with menus and configs!

[Lunick]

What's this all about then...

[Hendricks266]

Thanks to Joe Siegler for preserving the six newly-released builds in his archives.

[Hank]

termit, on 21 May 2017 - 11:38 PM, said:

Pushed sw betas to public, thanks to Hendricks266 for doing all the magic with menus and configs!

... and thank you guys for permitting it to happen. This is like gold.

[Hendricks266]

I now remember why I at first thought only one of the builds was protected by AEGIS. I cracked the other one in 2014. I will get the fix to Termit.

EDIT: If February 10, 1995 is playable, it's been pushed out.

[axl]

Great job ! Very interesting stuff

[Hendricks266]

Should be live now. I kept the other exe around because it's still interesting to see it run with more data present.

[Player Lin]

The 1994 and 1995 builds reminds me about Lot7P...

Thanks for released them!

[oasiz]

The 1995 build with actors.map experimented with the same procedurally generated water as duke did.
Pattern is similar to Lameduke one, but the function for ripple positions is less random.

I highly recommend playing around with the Feb95 build instead of Jan95, seems way more stable.

Also the HUD reminds me of kenbuild.

Attached File(s)

•  water.png (17.25K)
  Number of downloads: 145

[LeoTCK]

So there's more now? It's good to hear this though. I am still going through the 1996 beta maps. I'm also writing a map list and theoretical map list for episode 2 and 3, the exe still expects duke mapnames so they could be renamed I guess once I find the correct order and have it all noted down.

Wish the original timestamps/archives could be released too.

[High Treason]

@oasiz; I suspected it might. When I was doing my stream of the first 1996 build released I found a map towards the end which looked quite complete. I noted that it had what seemed to be water, but it was a gray texture with a green square of water in it located near ST1 in the tiles and wondered if that was what it once did. I can't check right now, but I'm guessing it does use that tile when used in Build?

Looking forward to playing with these when I've finished with the first '96 and '97 builds.

Edit: Figured I'd add, as much as it doesn't really matter, that the 1997 build does not require the CRASHFIX when running on my K5, but you're missing nothing as the game starts with no animations or demos and just displays the menu. It does have MIDIs but they don't play as it instead complains about no CD Audio being found.

Edit 2: sw950210 contains JSMP0207.ZIP which has two maps, a text file and some layout diagrams. I don't know how many of you can open PCX, as I see a lot of applications don't now and Windows certainly can't do it out of the box anymore, so here are those;
E1L5




E1L2





This forum has a bad habit of stabbing invisible SIZE tags into my posts when I try to add images...

[Player Lin]

My XnView-MP(normal XnView should be too) and open PCX format. Most image viewer should be able read PCX unless it's too new and the author didn't know/think its too old about PCX and not support that format I guess.


Looks like 3DR didn't use GRP format until the 960611 build and later, all 94 and 95 builds put sound and music files just in the game directory.

[PikaCommando]

Are there any references to the final bosses prior to Zilla in any of these builds?

[eisnerguy1]

I just wanted to say thanks to all involved in preserving these builds and releasing them I did have one question about "sw961128". I can't seem to get in to run. I just get stuck at this screen:


Oh and I guess this is a good place for it. So, I found the old Shadow Warrior Development Update pages (thanks to the WayBack Macine) and decided to create a local copy of all of the pages. I've attached the folder as a zip file.

Attached File(s)

•  Shadow_Warrior_Development_Updates.zip (807.41K)
  Number of downloads: 20

[oasiz]

Try dosbox LFN http://www.columbia....x-vdos-lfn.html

Some builds tend to be really unstable without it or wont start, like the one that has crashfix.bat

[Robman]

Hendricks266, on 19 May 2017 - 03:14 PM, said:

We have semi-weekly backups stretching back years.

Will there be a file dump somewhere containing all material?

[Hendricks266]

Everything goes through Devolver.

[LeoTCK]

I was surprised to see that Shadowc.map (a different version of the first map, which was $shadow.map) contains an entire small section that wasn't used in the other, with a bridge over water and rippers and at the end the stuff from monastery map. The crazy killing pillar.

Btw someone says he has problem getting the 1995 build running, one of them that is. I didnt try it yet myself. He says it complains about not finding sound.dat and something else. What's the solution for this and is it a common problem?

EDIT: It was the september '95 version.

[Robman]

Hendricks266, on 22 May 2017 - 09:15 AM, said:

Everything goes through Devolver.

Now that you're in contact with Devolver, perhaps you can ask them?
Why not release ALL of the material instead of just a bit of it?