Shadow Warrior old Betas?

[Corvin]

So Since the people(Hendricks, TerminX) that where working on bringing Duke3D Betas to public consumption failed at getting them out in a timely manner(1 year and 3 months), and there for failed(gearbox won the full rights to Duke), other than hoarding the material for themselves....

What happen to the Shadow Warrior Beta's (or other Build Game beta material)?

Did 3DRealms loose the rights as well to those games and material?

If not why don't we have that material released as promised yet?

[Robman]

A couple weeks ago I emailed Devolver and notified them that Hendricks and TX have the SW betas.

They replied (damn near immediately) and said they'd love to have the betas released and they wanted Hendricks' contact info. I gave them Hendricks' email and vice versa.

I don't know if they'e contacted each other or not.

[Corvin]

Well thanks to you I see they squeezed some of the alpha/betas from their clutches.

[Robman]

Yep, Hendricks and TX are honestly the worst people to try and deal with thanks to their "I'm God's gift to the Build Engine" mentality.

I went around them, contacted 3dr and Devolver.
A week later we get betas!

[Corvin]

That's exactly what happen!!
Someone should verify that Devolver got all the alpha/beta versions.

The only downside is you get the beta's with Shadow Warrior Classic on steam. Meaning you need steam and an account with them. But I think SW Classic is free and the alpha/betas are too. Thanks to 3DR and the guys behind Shadow Warrior Redux thats on steam as well, just not free.

[Robman]

We'll have to grab the betas when they all come out and host them somewhere free of steam.

[Corvin]

I wonder why the A/Bs have stopped coming out, I know there's more to be released. Whats he doing / holding on to them for?

There's a beta that needs decoding I think too, as mentioned in a note that was in one of the archives.

[LeoTCK]

Probably because he feels burned about the DK business or something. I have no clue.

He promised he'd at least try to compile the uncompiled stuff from the source codes etc that he has. That will at least allow the maps to be run on a very close version to the one that's there.

But obviously nothing happens and he doesn't reply to any e-mails but the acussation of the hack that he had not touched the site I talked about.

[Corvin]

Is he still holding out / hording on the rest of the files?

What about the source codes too, I'm sure there is stuff in them that may / can help other SW programmers, that material should come out aswell.

[LeoTCK]

The late 1995 beta was "hacked" and re-released by using a similar source code from nearest version (given they lacked source for the exact beta). (but obviously the original disappeared from steam afaik after this hacked/compiled version has been published there)

But yes they never released the source codes of the alpha and beta material they had. And it was often different betas/alphas than they had released, the unbuilt sources. So yes they are still hoarding....hoarding whatever they can get away with.

Because after all, it can't be on steam can it? Nobody heard of releasing source codes on steam and they want to have steam exclusivity and bla bla. Anywhere else they don't "allow" it officially. Who are they to say so? LoL

I also recommend looking up spasehead on youtube, he made several addons/fixes for the betas and alphas of shadow warrior.

Also kudos to some of the original design and levels that never ended up in the game or ended up being recycled without credit like many of Eric Reuter's levels.

edit:
Here are some converted maps into v7 when i played with them in the betas.
V795maps
v7coolie
I'd swear I did some more playing around but I guess in other stuff conversions from other people are avaiable but they can be done trivially via ken silverman's tools anyways. Just putting it out here for people to play with I don't remember what it corresponds with anymore as I forgot. Too much happened in the meantime.

EDIT2: Now I remember, the v7 conversions i did so i can play them in the versions above dece,ber 1995, I believe it didn't change until the final sw release so maybe you can load them there too but stuff will be more broken. This includes the original eric's e1l1 maps too. You can still see parts of this design/layout reused in the released game despite the map not being credited to him at all anymore and only the later maps he did were credited to him, not the stuff when he wasn't on the team for a time anymore.