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Originally Posted by MrFlibble

Temporary, thanks for the detailed and valuable info!

No problem. I am surprised someone found it of any interest.

Originally Posted by MrFibble

[...]the non-interactive demo versions. Those are not the same as preview videos that were published on some Interactive Entertainment CD, are they?

The "non-interactive demo" is the same as the media distributed in issue five of Interactive Entertainment, only packaged as a self-playing file. The two first "demos" of the game are those; the media folder, and a self-playing version of it. (Treat them as one, add the two early pre-release demos and the demo Blizzard had on their FTP and you get a grand total of four.) If you are aware of any video version of IE's distro, I would be happy to know, too. In any case, the demo was supposed to be shown at the last summer CES 1994 in Chicago (before CES became a winter-only event), but I am unaware of it being shown there. It might have been; Blizzard did not exactly have a major presence there.

I am sure you know the media is the same as this content:
http://cd.textfiles.com/ie/ie05/ARTICLES/WARC/

The images in the media folder show the game as it was intended in early 1994; no roads needed for buildings, three resources (stone being the third; this idea was revisited in Warcraft 2 Alpha), units are spawned spontaneously (perhaps in a sort of like nod to Dune II), advanced units are essentially trained peasants/peons, and so on.

Originally Posted by MrFibble

Wow, that's certainly something that was unknown to me. Cool!

You are most certainly welcome. There are some other minor differences in the demos, such as spell costs (1000 gold vs 750 gold), neither sounds or animations when casting said spells, an abominable AI, different terrain and unit graphics, different data file compression, et cetera.

Originally Posted by MrFibble

BTW, research by Litude [...] indicates that there are no less than four demo versions of Warcraft:

Indeed, and that is exactly what I mentioned.

Also, sorry about the brain f*rt in my previous post; the "Human Map 8" was dropped earlier, there is only one 'eighth map', it is "Orc Map 8" (a rather unfinished Swamp map based on Human Map 1, if I recall correctly). You can re-create the map from the game data, if you so want. Just use WarDraft and it's a cinch.

Anyways, I hope this helps.

[MrFlibble]

Temporary, since you're obviously interested in the history of Warcraft, do you know Hallfiry? He does a lot of research on Blizzard history, including of course the first Warcraft game. Here's a topic he started at the BetaArchive Forums:

Warcraft: Orcs and Humans - Alpha Screenshots

Hallfiry also visits RGB Classic Games Forums, and has his own website called Blizzard Library (there have been some malware infection issues recently so the site might be down for maintenance though).

On a somewhat unrelated note, are you familiar with the Warcraft II CD shareware release?

Thank you for your kind words, mr Flibble.

Originally Posted by MrFlibble

Temporary, since you're obviously interested in the history of Warcraft[...]

Perhaps 'interest' is a bit too hefty a word to throw about? I cannot say I am terribly interested in the history of any particular game, but suffice it to say that I am more averse to false information. Hence my post; to rectify some errors. (Oh, and to rectify another brain f*rt of mine, the first ever user-created map for Warcraft was of course not "No Rest At All", but "Never Give Up!". Both are by the same author.)

Regarding the linkage, the alpha screenshots in the first posts are not exactly correctly captioned. To wit; examine the first screenshot in the "Alpha Stage 2" section, and compare it to the screenshot captioned "Alpha Stage 3", and you can see they are in fact the same screenshot only with a different side panel, and three Warlocks plus a Knight added for good measure. In addition, the "Alpha Stage 1" screenshot is the same as the first "Alpha Stage 1.5" screenshot, only with different building graphics. Most of the screenshots in Hallfiry's post are presentation mock-ups. These mock-ups were created throughout the early phase in production for a variety of purposes; some were created for magazines, for reviewers and such, some for presentations, and some were simply for internal, in-house use. There were, in fact, no such versions as "Stage 1", or "Stage 2", or any other stage either. I have not seen a single actual screenshot with the non-isometric building graphics; they have all been mock-ups created to show the then-intended graphics.

The isometric graphics, of course, were then later created by 3D software--if I am not mistaken it was Animator by Autodesk (hence the FLC animation files), and Warcraft 2 used an early version of 3DSMax, if I recall correctly--and resampled/resized to fit the 320x200 canvas. You can see the 3D resampling at work in the screenshots in Hallfiry's post; if you take a look at the screenshot with the purple trees (the same image is on the back of every Warcraft retail box), you can see the Orcish farm's 3D model rendered from a slightly different angle. This camera repositioning can be seen in other screenshots, too, but there are relatively few screenshots available from this period in development, and none of the other ones' are in Hallfiry's post. (As an aside, the purple trees are probably due to Ron Millar's insistence on having very colorful GFX in the game. He insisted the game should be very colorful in contrast to the rather dreary, black and shadowy GFX that seemed to be all the rage back in the day.)

I think I have a 100-or-so page PDF document somewhere with a metric ton of information and code analysis of the game. It's been over 15 years since I looked at it, and I seem to recall it was mostly about retail, but there were some points about the demos in there, too. If I can dig it up, I will take a look at it. It's very, very low on my list of priorities, so I may have to bump into it by mistake.

(Yes, I am sure you know the data files with a 'war' extension--except data.war, of course--are simply FLC animation files created by the Autodesk software. Rename them with a 'flc' extension and you can view them with a standard Apple Quicktime installation. Be aware the Flic file format's compression is laughably inefficient by present standards.)

Originally Posted by MrFlibble

On a somewhat unrelated note, are you familiar with the Warcraft II CD shareware release?

Oh, regarding the WC2 "demo"? I do not know much about it. I mean, I saw it back in the day, and I even think I have had a stand-alone CD version of it once, but I've lost it. Or simply can't find it. I might have chucked it. I'm not much of a collector, I guess. Off the top of my head, I seem to recall the AI was way different in the demo; retail WC2 never used attack peasants, meaning the peasants in retail were either/or, an ordinary peasant could not become an attack peasant mid-stream. No such restrictions in the demo, if I remember correctly. Hey, it's been years.

If I come across something, I will let you know, ok?

[MrFlibble]

Originally Posted by Temporary

I think I have a 100-or-so page PDF document somewhere with a metric ton of information and code analysis of the game. It's been over 15 years since I looked at it, and I seem to recall it was mostly about retail, but there were some points about the demos in there, too. If I can dig it up, I will take a look at it.

Any chance you would share that, provided you find it and have the time for that? Would be aweseome

Originally Posted by Temporary

Oh, regarding the WC2 "demo"? I do not know much about it. I mean, I saw it back in the day, and I even think I have had a stand-alone CD version of it once, but I've lost it. Or simply can't find it. I might have chucked it. I'm not much of a collector, I guess. Off the top of my head, I seem to recall the AI was way different in the demo; retail WC2 never used attack peasants, meaning the peasants in retail were either/or, an ordinary peasant could not become an attack peasant mid-stream. No such restrictions in the demo, if I remember correctly. Hey, it's been years.

BTW, one of the downloadable versions of the demo (it's still called "Shareware" in huge letters that obscure part of the pre-release version of the title screen) has the word BETA in the version number. I didn't observe differences in AI or other game mechanics, even though there most probably are things to watch out for. Then again, the missions are rather short.

Well, well. Looka here.

While I was Googling some ancient stuff to refresh my Olde Grey Matter, all of a sudden outta left field, in rushes Pat Wyatt with his recollection of the humble Warcraft beginnings:

• Making of Warcraft - Part 1
• Making of Warcraft - Part 2
• Making of Warcraft - Part 3

He mentions a lot of the stuff I already have mentioned here. Plus he corrects me by mentioning it was actually Allen Adham who insisted the game should look like a toy box instead of Black Gothic. You have surely read the article already, but I had no idea it was out there, even. Whoda thunk?

Not to toot my own horn, but back in the day I maintained somewhat of a correspondence with mr Wyatt regarding--among other things--Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. He was, after all, effectively the sole programmer of the main game. The emails are long gone, but I recall he mentioned he would very much like the source code for the game released under a GNU license, while at the same time lamenting the fact he has no clout with his former company anymore. As an aside, I wish I could toot my own horn, but I am not limber enough.

Originally Posted by MrFlibble

Any chance you would share that[?]

Sure, if I can find it.

[The Fifth Horseman]

He also has some interesting stuff on Starcraft there.

[MrFlibble]

Originally Posted by Temporary

While I was Googling some ancient stuff to refresh my Olde Grey Matter, all of a sudden outta left field, in rushes Pat Wyatt with his recollection of the humble Warcraft beginnings:

• Making of Warcraft - Part 1
• Making of Warcraft - Part 2
• Making of Warcraft - Part 3

Right, I remember someone mentioned these articles some time ago in another forum, it's just I was kinda very busy back then and didn't have the time to properly read 'em Thanks for reminding about those, it's an excellent material!

Hallfiry reporting in.
Hello Mr. Temporary.

1. Thanks for all that info.

2. The "stages" are are just a chronological order of the screenshots (as I thought it might be fitting (and the 1.5 thing came when I found new shots and didn't want to scrap the old order)). You are obviouly right that most of them are mockups and sometimes almost identical.
It took me quite a while to find all the details that defined the order of the screenshots.
Differences between the "stages":
-1 to 1.5: hut-like orc buildings instead of castles
-1.5 to 2: Orc buttons
-2 to 3: Button order
-3 to Stones: Obviously the resources
-Stones to No Stones: Resource icons and no stones
-No Stone to Almost Final: Icon backgrounds, icons, Human interface
-Almost Final to Final: Recource icons and the things that you said


3. Please contact me, you won't regret it:
hallfiry {at} gmx {dot} de

BTW: Have you listened to the legendary Bill Roper recording from 1995? A very special gem from my archives

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGubpJxMr3s

Originally Posted by Hallfiry

Hallfiry reporting in.

Hey HF. Nice stuff you got there. Btw, amazingly I found some of the correspondence between yours truly and some of the Blizzard folks, and I don't know how much it's appropriate to post but since it's pertinent to the screenshots, so I'll just post some snippets. Patrick Wyatt mentioned this about the alpha screenies, and it seems he got W1 mixed up with W2; "I remember some units running around on the walls in the game cinematics, but there was never any support in the game engine for units walking on walls." Further down the correspondence he mentions the art team mock-ups; "We had a lot of ideas about building walls, and the art team may have mocked up something for a magazine [... yada yada cut ...] but we never had time to implement that feature."

For what it's worth.

[Talkie]

Wow,

there's been some good development in this thread recently.


If anyone finds the rare fanmade map editor as mentioned in one of the (2) Faqs for Warcraft 1 on GameFaqs, please forward it (if this site permits such thing).


Also, someone above mentioned Cd Audio tracks.
Yes! There ARE Cd Audio tracks in some (non-budget)
versions of the Cd-Rom, and it's fun to read the thread on Vogons
about people reaching Blizzard about this and they had no idea what
it was. It's just the audio tracks used for the Macintosh version,
when it came on the same CD as the PC DOS version.

I also used to scratch my head trying to understand why
the cd audio couldn't play, but it's not implemented for the DOS version.



EDIT (ADDENDUM):

In case anyone else is as lazy as me as to ask for stuff around before even trying to
look it up yourself, I gather here the links for a couple files mentioned in recent posts
on this thread:

Here you may find Warcedit, the old Warcraft map editor by BJ Pollard, along with
the War1.knw file someone here was asking for (and another thing called W1pal):

http://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames2/p...ar1/utilities/


Here you can find a version of the demo, and the final patch to Warcraft,
which is supposed to contain the Waredit Unit Editor:

http://www.triton.cc.pl/sst/polanie/...r_download.htm


Here you will find a Warcraft Trainer. Whatever it is, I guess it's the one mentioned
in the old Warcraft FAQ at GameFaqs (click "Warcraft", not "Download"):

http://megagames.com/download/259607/0


Here you will find Stratlas, mentioned by Temporary Guest, which
help you extract Warcraft maps:

http://stratlas.sourceforge.net/download.html


Here you can find a version of WarDraft, but not sure if
that works with Warcraft (I). Can't seem to find a working
link for a more recent version:

http://artho.com/warcraft/wctools.html


Here is an old webpage filled with... Warcraft maps (!),
but only 3/4 of them can still be downloaded. The author
"Melle" mentions a map editor with a dead link named "We.zip".
I'm assuming it is the same as Warcedit, since the executable
for that is called We.exe. Also, this page seems to insist that the
editor requires a bunch of DLL zipped as "we_lib.zip", but
that link is also dead.

http://web.archive.org/web/199911041.../warcraft.html



I will not re-link the 3 demos yet found for Warcraft, but look up
a couple messages before this one.


Open Library has the official strategy guide to "borrow":

http://openlibrary.org/books/OL24744172M/Warcraft





Now for an absolutely inane personal comment:

I read people in this thread constantly saying that the Orcs
are easier to play than the Humans, because they are
apparently tougher, and they have the Daemon, and all.
I think playing the Orcs is much harder because of Invisibility.
The AI never sends more than 1 or 2 Daemons at a time,
really, so if you get many conjurors to attempt always
summon a few Water Elementals ready, they're easily dealt
with. You can get fast control of any situation on both
sides by keeping training Archers or Spearmen, but the
Humans can be very sneaky and attack your peons
while you are busy elsewhere, and I find that blocking
bridges is never 100% sure that invisible enemy will not
past. Thanks.