Here's the Settlers 2 prerelease demo (more than one month before the release).
The readme says
"Dies ist die erste Demo Version!!!
Viele Dinge sind zwar schon fertig, andere aber bei weitem noch nicht!
Auch können wir keine Garantie fuer 100% Fehlerfreiheit uebernehmen."

English translation:
"This is the first Demo Version!!!
Many things are already implemented, others by far not!
Also we can't guarantee that there are 100% no bugs."

---Link Removed---

(don't be scared by the url )

Great find.

I loved the first two Settlers games when they came out.


Any notable differences to the retail version in this pre-release demo? Or are there just some elements missing from the final version?

There are some differences in the ground textures, there is a debug folder in the demo, it seems like they changed the format for the maps (from 'structureless' .dat to .wld with a nice header and stuff), they changed the BOBS somehow (whatever these bobs are oO), the sounds are somehow different (and there is a mysterious SAM folder in the sounddat folder of the demo), the bootbob list (whatever that is) of the demo is much larger than the normal version, the intro video is the same as normal, but without a narrator (so only music and sound effects).

I also compared the prerelease demo to the "normal" demo and found out, the prerelease demo is ~1mb larger and the normal demo has no intro video (that's another 16mb).

Mind if I ask where you got that demo? Was it included on a magazine cover disk? A special CD demo release maybe? As an extra bundled with some other hardware/software product? Or a as a press-release preview?

Just being curious

I guess he got it from some gaming mag cd. I got many of my old betas from very very old pc games, pcgamer, cdaction and other, hungarian gaming mags such as pc-x, pcguru, gamestar (also in germany).

BTW, here's some other demo of Settlers II, from a Polish gaming magazine cover disk archived at cd.textfiles.com:
http://cd.textfiles.com/cdaction/cdaction03/SETTLER2.DEM/

I haven't checked it out yet, but it's got the intro video which is absent from the Internet Demo distribution.

Also, Demu (a.k.a. DOS Museum) has another download of the Settlers II demo that is pretty large in size:
http://www.demu.org/pages/view.php?ref=1527

I haven't checked that one out either yet, but it is, presumably, also from a demo CD. Perhaps it's a demo of the Gold edition with an intro, hence the size.

The demo is not from a special press CD. It's from the CD-ROM Magazine 05/1995.
http://i804.photobucket.com/albums/yy322/Hellfire2079/5_1996_CD.jpg

The only "special" CDs I have are
Warcraft III Presskit (maybe from E3 2002)
Rage press kit from ECTS 1999
Acclaim press kit from ECTS 1999,
RAMA (some spacy stuff, don't really know it) press kit from 1996 (or was it 1997?)
Virgin Interactive Demo CD from 1997
Diablo 2 LoD Beta CD
and some old magazine CDs with stuff like a Pandemonium 2 PreAlpha version or the Diablo 1 prerelease demo.

Here is an other settlers 2 gold preview demo (game compiled in March 1997), it contains level editor with 15min restriction, and a a playable demo of settlers 2 gold:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=3E6UO6YC


and an other one called: Settlers 2 mission 1.51 demo (game compiled in Jan 1997)

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4YIGZ6F9

I know of two versions of the Settlers II Gold demo, one from the official BlueByte FTP, which is a self-extracting WinZip archive, and another just a ZIP file (I got it from C|NET Downloads), which has the original DOS installer routine, and the files have older date stamps. Both versions say v1.51, but the EXE file sizes are actually different. The demo missions are the same though, and both versions feature a limited preview of the mission editor.


Yup, I've seen that one on a Settlers II fan site (it was repacked in a modern self-extracting archive, and the date stamps on all files were from mid-2000s or something). AFAIK it's identical to the Gold Edition demo in terms of missions, but there's no preview of the mission editor.


Checked it out after all, this is a demo of the original Settlers II game (not Gold Edition), with the animated intro and background narration (this is why it's so large). The version number is 1.01, whereas the usual Settlers II demo (BlueByte FTP, C|NET Downloads) has the version number of 1.02. The missions are all the same in both versions.

But mine is still the oldest, being dated to March 05 1996 09:49:22, right?

Sure! Once again, thanks for sharing it!

BTW, I've just noticed the line in the demo EXE:

It occupies roughly the same place where the Internet demo v1.02 says

I guess The Romans could have been the planned English title for the second instalment in the series.

On another note, the version number you get when you run the actual demo (which is in German) is 0.16.

Post from an amiga channel on usenet:

1995/08/29
"Has anyone heard about a new game called the Romans, by Blue Byte
that is supposedly a sequel to the Settlers? I read this in a PC
magazine, so I don't suppose we'll see it on the Amiga, huh?"

I will investigate further in that direction.
Thanks for the Romans hint. Didn't check the demo myself for some reason(which is quite uncommon for me).

EDIT:
Another post from 1995/06/15
"I just read in PC-Gamer that Blue Byte will be releasing a new game
sorta like "The Settlers" but built on the notion that you are the
founder of ROME! Yep, you start out as a small community
and grow into what we know as ROME with battles, and everything.
Should be interesting...."

EDIT2:
Computer 95 in Cologne (1995/11/29):
[...]
Blue Byte:
[...]they also showed how Settler 2 (which was originally named "Die Roemer" [=The Romans]) is progressing.[...]

EDIT3:
I don't have many magazines from 1996, but I found one preview in PowerPlay 4/96:


EDIT4:
PreRelease Demo of Settlers 1 (April 5th 1994):
http://www10.zippyshare.com/v/56392581/file.html

EDIT5:
I finally found the original trailer for The Settlers 2 from 1995, which doesn't mention any name for the game:


EDIT6:
Found a preview from ECTS 1995 (Power Play 11/95):

Shameless bump with new info:

I found out that the ASM magazine special issue 27 had an article about "Die Römer" (=The Romans) and even had a video on the CD. I'll try to get scans of it and the hopefully a CD image.
http://www.kultboy.com/magazin/568/

I actually am scared of the url Whenever hacker and a different country code go into the address, im suspicious. But I trust you.

But I'll have to wait 'til I've played the proper settlers to try this out (but I shall download incase it disapears of the internets). Settlers 2 is a good game, right?

The webspace originally belongs to my brother and I think the name Hakker refers to WoW, not to a hacker

And yes, Settlers 2 is a great game ^_^

Comparing Settlers 2 and Settlers 7 is probably like comparing Warcraft 2 and Warcraft 3. Settlers 2 is very entertaining and it has solid (oldschool) graphics. I haven't played Settlers 7, but I guess it's not my taste

You should really give the Settlers 2 Gold Edition a try.

For comparison: Settlers 2 was released in 1996 and I've got a magazine CD from 10/2002 featuring it and many friends of mine have the same CD, because they wanted to have the game even 6.5 years after the release. And it was not featured as retro-game, like Arena/Daggerfall in a recent GameStar issue, instead it was meant to be a regular cover mount release.

I think there are many fans that didn't like where the series went beginning with Settlers III. I've tried the III demo some time ago and TBH I didn't like it, even though I am far from being a hardcore fan of the first two games. So even though I haven't player Settlers 7 either, I think the difference is even more noticeable than the one between Warcraft II and Warcraft III.

I'm highly interested on all versions of The Settlers II. I haven't been too active on the frontier over the years, but I've noticed that there may be some demo or update releases that have been lost to the bit sky thanks to everyone preferring the latest 1.51 version.

I've collected most of the information I'm quite certain about on my site at http://settlers2.net/the-settlers-2/ - I still need to reorganize and double check the files as some of them were compiled years ago and I didn't keep a good track of ensuring the file dates remained as in original archives and so on. And I should make all the files ZIP arhives instead of self-extracting archives.

I think I'm still missing some pre-1.51 demos/updates, but having a lack of any resources I can't confirm - I have no old gaming magazines, and a Finnish file service that I think could have had some files has been terminated sometime this year (and would have required a magazine subscription anyway that I didn't want to pay for).

This is the list of versions I guess should exist:

• Veni Vidi Vici 0.16 German pre-release
• Veni Vidi Vici 1.00 German CD
• Veni Vidi Vici 1.01 German Demo ?
• Veni Vidi Vici 1.01 English Demo
• Veni Vidi Vici 1.02 English CD
• Veni Vidi Vici 1.02 English Demo
• Veni Vidi Vici 1.02 French CD
• Veni Vidi Vici 1.50 German Update ?
• Veni Vidi Vici 1.50 English Update ?
• Veni Vidi Vici 1.51 German Update
• Veni Vidi Vici 1.51 English Update
• Mission CD 1.50 German CD
• Mission CD 1.50 German Demo ?
• Mission CD 1.50 English CD
• Mission CD 1.50 English Demo ?
• Mission CD 1.51 German Demo
• Mission CD 1.51 German Update
• Mission CD 1.51 English Demo
• Mission CD 1.51 English Update
• Gold Edition 1.51 German CD
• Gold Edition 1.51 German Demo
• Gold Edition 1.51 English CD
• Gold Edition 1.51 English Demo

Personally I'm interested on these as I'm documenting the file formats used in the game as well as doing some programming based on the findings. This far I've managed to find some unused texture IDs that can be used in the maps for more decorative... lava flows. Later on Return to the Roots might add support for them, or I might go ahead and add it myself.

Luckily I am here

MBnet >.<
If I was born 10 years earlier, I... argh!
I suffer from exactly the same problem. Also I'd love to have all old issues of Pelit together with their CDs (I already found some years of Mikrobitti as pdf).

Well, the only thing that I could find that might be interesting, is the German Patch 1.02:
http://www5.zippyshare.com/v/29909393/file.html


And if it helps, here is the file list of MBnet:
http://www5.zippyshare.com/v/2494855/file.html

I remember downloading the English Mission CD demo from some site I can't remember, but it was repackaged in a modern Win32 installer and the original date stamps on the files were lost. It was only about 3 Mb IIRC and did not include the demo of the map editor. I think it was v1.51.

What is more interesting IMO, is that there are at least two different versions of the English Gold Edition demo. One is found at the BlueByte FTP site and it's a Windows ZIP SFX archive. Another, which I got from C|NET, comes in a ZIP with a DOS installer. What is weird is that while both versions report v1.51 as their release number, the executable files are different (maybe some other files are too, I didn't check).

I've also noticed a Mission CD demo in Hallfiry's catalogue but did not get around to inspect this closer yet.

BTW, I keep forgetting to ask, I've read somewhere that the single-player mission in the original Settlers II demo is unique and not included in the full version campaign. Is that so? I know that the tutorial in the full game is basically the same but I'm not sure about the mission.

This looks awesome! Remember viewing this in a Swedish gamer magazine back in 1995