[Hendricks266]

Leo was a great help to us by putting me in touch with DK's original artist, who provided us some more data.

I agree that the release of the betas and the 20th anniversary is a great reason for DK to get some more attention.

Let's move discussion on Deadly Kiss back to the Shadow Warrior corner.

[PikaCommando]

Is anyone planning to document all the stuff from these builds on TCRF?

[Lunick]

PikaCommando, on 23 May 2017 - 01:59 AM, said:

Is anyone planning to document all the stuff from these builds on TCRF?

Have you checked TCRF?

[PikaCommando]

That was quick! Only six more builds to go :V

The spell-casting system looks cool, but the guns feel kinda out of place here in the 1994 build since everything else is so medieval. The way the enemy sprites are drawn reminds me of a certain SNES game. Coolies that don't suicide bomb feels weird.

[TerminX]

PikaCommando, on 23 May 2017 - 06:02 AM, said:

That was quick! Only six more builds to go :V

The spell-casting system looks cool, but the guns feel kinda out of place here in the 1994 build since everything else is so medieval. The way the enemy sprites are drawn reminds me of a certain SNES game. Coolies that don't suicide bomb feels weird.

At one point they wanted to remove all the guns and replace them purely with medieval stuff. I'm glad they didn't do that--the older builds of SW are "interesting" in that they're full of scrapped ideas and cut content, but extrapolating their content into a finished product leaves the final version as the more interesting result.

[Shaq Fu]

Some reason I really love the atmosphere and look of the 1994 build.



Meanwhile the January '95 build exploring Joe-4.map with its SPOOK.mid playing is absolutely horrifying.

[Lunick]

Lunick, on 23 May 2017 - 03:23 AM, said:

Have you checked TCRF?

Just to note, it is MYHOUSE.MAP that is creating the articles. I don't want to take rep for pointing out someone else's work

[LeoTCK]

TerminX, on 23 May 2017 - 10:19 AM, said:

At one point they wanted to remove all the guns and replace them purely with medieval stuff. I'm glad they didn't do that--the older builds of SW are "interesting" in that they're full of scrapped ideas and cut content, but extrapolating their content into a finished product leaves the final version as the more interesting result.

It usually ends up being that way. I released in the recent years many weapons/pawns originally from unreal beta/alpha versions but in a form fitting with the final game and I'm using those within the Unreal PSX rework project, as that had plans for custom pawns etc which either weren't made or were unfinished or the original models got lost anyway. The Implant "dart" Gun is in fully finished now instead of using the placeholder look and it's quite a game changing gun in a way like Portal gun.

Basically you take control of enemies for a limited amount of time to solve puzzles or get to places you normally can't. It worked and expanded upon the original idea of Unreal that used to have "stations" in which you could use to posses other enemies and play as them. Most of that functionality was scrapped later on but with some "hacking" it was possible to still take control of actual pawns even though in the final game it was unsupported. For the PSX port they were even modifying the engine to make it more possible again, but it turned out we can do it in a better and more compatible way.

Is there a plan btw to make some mega mod for SW using all the cool stuff in the betas? I'm still going through the 1996 build, tried all the maps, it seems floating fortress was yamato and subbase at once plus some other map as early version. Thou8gh im not sure yamato didnt have more in it as teleporters dont seem to work and neither does noclipping. I haven't run the editor to check the maps.

[LeoTCK]

I have a question about the 94 version. How do you climb ladders? Either way, only two maps? I remember screenshots with that sumo and weird dragon, do these enemies exist there?

[Lunick]

LeoTCK, on 23 May 2017 - 02:56 PM, said:

I have a question about the 94 version. How do you climb ladders? Either way, only two maps? I remember screenshots with that sumo and weird dragon, do these enemies exist there?

The ladders are not climbable in the early versions (although the enemy ninja AI is designed to climb them interestingly enough), there are only single frames for the sumo and dragon.

[LeoTCK]

The early 96 beta seems to work better in general than the one initially released and there is no sprite frame confusion. I like it a lot. Though the cheats don't work for it as in the later beta...


As for the 94 version, what could be done to place other enemies into maps? It seems the map format is rather obfuscated to me. Hope a showcase map with more can be shown.

[neznam]

God is real.

[MYHOUSE.MAP]

LeoTCK, on 23 May 2017 - 03:57 PM, said:

The early 96 beta seems to work better in general than the one initially released and there is no sprite frame confusion. I like it a lot. Though the cheats don't work for it as in the later beta...


As for the 94 version, what could be done to place other enemies into maps? It seems the map format is rather obfuscated to me. Hope a showcase map with more can be shown.

Alt + G = God mode

Alt + I = All items

Alt + W = All weapons

[Hendricks266]

Three points on continued efforts with the betas:

1. I have the original file modification timestamps for all eight of the betas. I could always `ls -R` them, but I would like to post this information in a way which can easily be reapplied to the files. I also need to do research into how time zones and DST affect the time values. I welcome any advice anyone has with this.

2. The September 1995 build is protected by the AEGIS parallel port dongle. The February one was as well, but it fell to a trivial trick that I tried on a whim and was floored to see work. No such luck on the other.

Breaking the protection on this is going to be a long and difficult process.

If one of Apogee's dongles could be recovered, I would be able to decrypt this exe (and others) using the device's encryption software, which was recovered. Unfortunately, Joe Siegler said he witnessed what he thought to be all of them getting thrown out.

3. Document what you find on TCRF! Props to MYHOUSE.MAP for getting things started, and I know he has more on the way.

[PikaCommando]

Is anyone planning to do sprite sheets as well?

[Hendricks266]

It's always better to view BUILD sprite sheets in a way that preserves the tile offsets, so animations look right.

[LeoTCK]

Hendricks266, on 23 May 2017 - 08:49 PM, said:

Three points on continued efforts with the betas:

1. I have the original file modification timestamps for all eight of the betas. I could always `ls -R` them, but I would like to post this information in a way which can easily be reapplied to the files. I also need to do research into how time zones and DST affect the time values. I welcome any advice anyone has with this.

2. The September 1995 build is protected by the AEGIS parallel port dongle. The February one was as well, but it fell to a trivial trick that I tried on a whim and was floored to see work. No such luck on the other.

Breaking the protection on this is going to be a long and difficult process.

If one of Apogee's dongles could be recovered, I would be able to decrypt this exe (and others) using the device's encryption software, which was recovered. Unfortunately, Joe Siegler said he witnessed what he thought to be all of them getting thrown out.

3. Document what you find on TCRF! Props to MYHOUSE.MAP for getting things started, and I know he has more on the way.

Alright, well for a start you could post the results of ls -R. I assume you do that through linux or some other unix derivative.

Btw so is there more material beyong this? Is the alpha with the released screenshots out there somewhere? The dragon/sumo levels and all.

[Hendricks266]

I'm fairly certain these builds cover most or all of SW pre-release screenshots.

[LeoTCK]

Hendricks266, on 24 May 2017 - 12:45 AM, said:

I'm fairly certain these builds cover most or all of SW pre-release screenshots.

Not the 1994 alpha. Too much is missing. Look at the tcrf article, with the early screenshot comparison. Also how do you run this 94 alpha without your bat in case a level modification is supplied etc? What are the arguments.

[Hendricks266]

Open the bat and read the arguments. It's just the map file name.

[LeoTCK]

Hendricks266, on 24 May 2017 - 01:02 AM, said:

Open the bat and read the arguments. It's just the map file name.

Ah well, that's straightforward! thx. Though I do wonder if any modification of the maps is actually possible, since this beta doesnt appear to have own editor..

[Hendricks266]

Mapster32 can open maps from all versions of BUILD. I don't recall if it can re-save as them.

[LeoTCK]

Alright. Well, the 94 engine looks way less than actual build though, it looks more like kens labyrinth or something.

Either way the early 1996 beta is the best version so far imo. The crossbow is packed into one of the riotgun fire modes though. The sep 95 beta probably has the true crossbow we all wait to play with.

[MetHy]

I don't know if it's the same, but with Powerslave maps which is late v6, re-saving the maps in M32 would automatically save them as the format of DN3D.

However you can use convmap and backmap to change the version after saving.

[Player Lin]

LeoTCK, on 24 May 2017 - 02:23 AM, said:

Alright. Well, the 94 engine looks way less than actual build though, it looks more like kens labyrinth or something.

If you ever played Lot7P, that's what '94 Build engine would looks like, so primeval.

Maybe Witchaven 1&2 and Tekwar would looks like similar too.

The HUD in '94 build has a mugshot looks like a dead man or something(most-left side), I wander what/who is that?

[MrFlibble]

Is it me, or does the music sound somewhat similar to the song from Ken Silverman's Build engine demo?

Also loving the sky background, awesome art!

[PikaCommando]

Oh hey, the documentation on first 1995 build's is up on TCRF.

I'm quite surprised at the massive tone change here. Did they reboot development or something? Feels very different compared to both the 1994 and final build. Could the Coolies have been simple wandering NPCs at this point?

Also, looks like the developers had a lot of fun making the weapon sprites.



Are there any design documents or plot notes for these old builds? Looks like the 1994 build might have a different story compared to the 1995 one that was covered on the old website discussed pages ago since only the Ninja Grunts and Coolies are carried over.

[icecoldduke]

LeoTCK, on 23 May 2017 - 02:56 PM, said:

Either way, only two maps?

That's probably all the content they had done at the time.

It amazes me how games shipped back in the 90's. It seems like Shadow Warrior rebooted itself to a smaller scoped project half way through development(which is good because I like the final iteration best, even if the levels in prior builds had a smoother gameplay flow).

[MrFlibble]

PikaCommando, on 24 May 2017 - 06:00 AM, said:

Also, looks like the developers had a lot of fun making the weapon sprites.

There are several sprites of hands showing different mudras (or at least mudra-like gestures as I cannot be certain these are authentic) in this build, which I presume were intended for the magic spells similar to those in the 1994 build.

On a different note, I think it would be interesting if someone made a mod/TC using only the assets from the 1994 build. I think that pro mappers can create some pretty diverse and intricate levels even with these rather limited resources. The art style is very nice, even if low-res.

[icecoldduke]

MrFlibble, on 24 May 2017 - 07:14 AM, said:

On a different note, I think it would be interesting if someone made a mod/TC using only the assets from the 1994 build. I think that pro mappers can create some pretty diverse and intricate levels even with these rather limited resources. The art style is very nice, even if low-res.

I plan on using some of the monster assets for my mod. I'm not sure if weapon assets would personally fit in my mod. If anyone else is looking to make mods, my github as the eduke32 shadow warrior integration effort in there. There are bugs with it still, but people can start prototyping out there C++ code changes right now if they want.