Early Alpha/Beta/demo versions

Pisarz

@Encrypted said:

So, the last unique demo is destroyed?...

Maybe not. But we need to suppose the "worst case" scenario...

But... wow, that's impressive! You've got a lot of things referring to Machines!

I did my best. We should try to contact both the game producer (Howard Perlman) and the original animator (Stuart Hogton).

And, also, you can use this application (Bink 2) to play every animated sequence in Machines (but I think everyone knew that already).

Actually, I didn't. What do you mean by sequence? The cutscenes or the "unit" animations?

Pisarz

@M123 said:

@Encrypted said:

I know! It's an earlier demo version of Machines! It looks a bit... weird, I know. But, it certainly IS that game!

Hmm, the wheels in the release version of the game might have looked a bit like that if they'd used the WL_RM.bmp texture for the tread - I wonder why they went with solid black instead?

The texture for the treads looked a bit odd. Sometimes it's better to hide those details if they don't look realistic enough. Just like mechanical joints in videogames and movies in general.
Maybe this will help (I know, it's not the same thing, but... you know...):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggyg6zlxwN8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2yoTMUzBLY

The production process is quite interesting. I would like to implement an organizational structure similar to real companies here. That might help us for setting goals and getting things done :)

AvionAris

@Pisarz You can use it to play cutscenes. It's a powerful tool!

Pisarz

This post is deleted!

Aquarillis

That was some promotional material I discovered when I was a kid. I scanned that YEARS ago.

Pisarz

@Aquarillis
That was you!? AWESOME!
Well, it seems that the case is solved. Now we know its origin. Yet, I know that this might be too much to ask but, do you still have it?

Aquarillis

Yes I still have it; I can dig it up next time I'm in town. It's part of a pamphlet that has other games advertised in it.

Pisarz

@Aquarillis said:

Yes I still have it; I can dig it up next time I'm in town. It's part of a pamphlet that has other games advertised in it.

Thank you! It would be nice to recover a piece of this game's history. We could even make a Wiki!

Mad Reaper

i think i still have the demo on my old pc i deletet it sure but i can recover them them back ! ^^
i allrady recoverd so much datas thats is no problem is see what i can do guys.

lew

Hi,

I came here looking for a game from my childhood

I believe that:
a) It was an early demo I was playing as a child
b) I still have that disc at my parent's house

I'm not really sure why the f- it was even a thing but I came into possession of it sometime around 2003 by buing a brand-new copy of a niche Polish gaming magazine, or so I thought...

After I removed the foil I noticed some things:

The thick "magazine" was two-pages long with a cardboard inside
Inside of the cardboard there were 8 (!) CDs
All of them were from some german gaming magazine dated back to '97-'99
None of them, including those metioned on the cover were full versions

Other than the Machines i remember playing Half Life 1 (also a demo of a beta version, I think).

I'm worried that ~20-year old disc can be hard if not impossible to read but even if so - I'm gonna keep you updated.
And of course I won't be able to - I can send it by post to anyone willing to perform data recovery on their own.

EDIT: I've just found the post Pisarz was talking about:
https://www.gry-online.pl/S043.asp?ID=11665448
Yeah, it is the same demo, the person who wrote it also had it from this shady "gaming magazine". :'D

BTW. I think this topic should be renamed to "Early Alpha/Beta/demo versions" ^^

Pisarz

@lew

BTW. I think this topic should be renamed to "Early Alpha/Beta/demo versions" ^^

Done!

We currently have no information about this material, except @Aquarillis who said that still has some promotional material that was scanned a long time ago. The rest is scattered in this forum.

The forum is not dead, but its activity is irregular.

I don`t have the knowledge to manipulate the data from your disk, but some of us might be able to (@Judas @bilal @M123 @Hayden).

lew

A quick update.

The good news is I haven't forgot about this thing. ;)
The bad news is - I haven't found (yed) the disc I was talking about.

Buuut, I stumbled upon other disc from the same issue of this gaming "magaine":

I think (and hope!) that the disc with the demo is still somewhere at my parent's house. I'm gonna keep looking. :)

According to the PCGames website Machines demo was present on the disc of the 05/1999 issue:
http://www.pcgamesdatabase.de/pcgames.php?mag=pcgames&vol=05/1999#pcgames

http://www.kultcds.com/index.php?id=pcgames&lang=en

lew

Another update.

I asked Moritz, the administrator of the Kult Cover Disks and he not only answered, but to my amazment - attached not one but three (!) versions of the demo! :D

"I happen to have a few copies of PC Games 05/99 on my shelf. I quickly checked and found that is particular demo is also featured on PC Player 06/99 B and GameStar 06/99 Bonus CD. Its cab file is dated to 1999-02-23. A more common demo dated to 1999-01-14 can be found on the following CDs:
PC Fun CD 49_2
PC Action 04/99
CDA (35) 04/99
Gambler (28) 04/99A
Generation 4 CD 121
Generation 4 CD 139_1
The Games Machine #060
Reset #24 04/99
Excalibur 69
GameStar CZ 04/99 CD1
Level 03/99
Online Today 07/99
Computer Games Strategy Plus #102

Additionally, there's a very rare version from 1999-02-19 that can be found on PC Gamer (Italian) CD #041 B.

Moritz"

For download go to Demo versions (contains early / beta stuff) topic.

:D

Pisarz

@lew This is excellent! Great news indeed! As soon as I can I'll see if it works. Thank you :)

M123

@lew Nice, thanks lew (and Moritz!).

If the demo installers behave similarly to the one for the released game, they might only work reliably on Windows XP / earlier.

lew

@M123 They are but you can always use UniExtract unpack the archives without using the installer. :)
https://www.legroom.net/software/uniextract (older version - 1.6.1) or https://github.com/Bioruebe/UniExtract2 (new version 2.0)

Pisarz

Not lucky :(
My PC had to be repaired, so I probably have to start from zero installing certain things that I had installed for the final game.

lew

@Pisarz any luck? :)

Pisarz

@lew Hi!
I recently had many issues to handle (moved to another apartment, etc.). Yet, I managed to recover all the files from my PC, and the game (final product, not the demos) works OK :)

I'll see what I can do. Sorry for the delay.