06-01-2013, 09:46 AM | #291 | |||
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Some additional tidbits
No problem. I am surprised someone found it of any interest.
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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. Quote:
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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. |
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06-01-2013, 05:34 PM | #292 | ||
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Weiherhof, Germany
Posts: 533
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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?
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06-01-2013, 07:43 PM | #293 | ||
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Thank you for your kind words, mr Flibble.
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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.) Quote:
If I come across something, I will let you know, ok? |
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07-01-2013, 07:18 PM | #294 | ||
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Weiherhof, Germany
Posts: 533
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08-01-2013, 05:23 AM | #295 | ||
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No Title
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: 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. Sure, if I can find it. |
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08-01-2013, 10:58 AM | #296 | ||
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Opole, Poland
Posts: 14,276
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He also has some interesting stuff on Starcraft there.
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08-01-2013, 12:11 PM | #297 | ||
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Weiherhof, Germany
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08-01-2013, 07:57 PM | #298 | ||
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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 |
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28-01-2013, 03:15 PM | #299 | ||
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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. |
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05-02-2013, 10:43 AM | #300 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Cascapedia, Canada
Posts: 46
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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. Last edited by Talkie; 08-02-2013 at 04:05 AM. |
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