SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer General

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MrFlibble
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SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer General

Post by MrFlibble »

It appears that SSI were sending out pre-release versions of some of their games to magazines for preview, and several have ended up on magazine cover disks, mistaken for legitimate demo versions of the respective games. This false impression was probably reinforced by the fact that the betas came with the same type of installer as the regular SSI demo versions.

Using Hallfiry's catalogue I have identified three such pre-release versions:

Steel Panthers Beta
The beta is dated 18 July 1995, the installer files 8 August 1995. The catalogue records four coverdisks with this version: SCORE No. 25 (January 1996), PC Power (March 1996), PC Games (March 1996) and PC Action (March 1996). The main installer file (DATA.A00) is 15 561 910 bytes.

This version appears to be not limited in any way, it contains a large number of scenarios, the campaign mode and mission builder, and several saved games, apparently intended to show gameplay to reviewers. The installer help file contains text in French which suggests that perhaps the beta was originally leaked by a French magazine, but this is not certain.

Wargame Construction Set III: Age of Rifles
The version is .48 according to the readme, but its internal designation is v.0.0072:
Image

The date on the DATA.A00 file is 15 May 1996, the file size is 17 755 090 bytes. This version is found on the CD Action No. 17 (October 1997). This is much closer to a demo as the campaign mode is disabled and there's only about nine or ten scenarios available.

Panzer General
Hallfiry's catalogue suggests an unusually large installer of a Panzer General demo (DATA.A00 file size 10 849 178 bytes, dated 13 December 1994) on the PC Player February 1995 CD. I was unable to find this CD online so I'm only guessing that this might be a beta leak. However the Interactive Entertainment Preview of Panzer General shows what is clearly a press demo with several scenarios and some differences from the public FTP demo and the final version, which at least suggests that a pre-release press demo did exist.

MrFlibble
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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer Gener

Post by MrFlibble »

There's also a suspiciously large Fantasy General demo (data file at 22 819 237 bytes) available from:
PC Fun CD 15 (French mag)
PC Team CD 12
CD Jeux CD 02
PC Games 04/96
PC Player 03/96
PC Player SH 01/97
Power Play 04/96
Power Play 13/96

There's also an odd Fantasy General installer available from Computer Gaming World CD Issue 142. The data file size is 5 571 657 bytes. For comparison, the regular Internet download demo is just 3 711 002 bytes. UPD: I quickly grabbed the files from the CGW 142 CD, this is indeed a demo, but I can't install it for whatever reason (I could extract the files from the data ARJ archive, but they won't launch). Anyway, I think it's almost certain that this is a CGW-exclusive demo of the game — the magazine was well known to request unique demos for its coverdisks back then.

MrFlibble
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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer Gener

Post by MrFlibble »

MrFlibble wrote:UPD: I quickly grabbed the files from the CGW 142 CD, this is indeed a demo, but I can't install it for whatever reason (I could extract the files from the data ARJ archive, but they won't launch). Anyway, I think it's almost certain that this is a CGW-exclusive demo of the game — the magazine was well known to request unique demos for its coverdisks back then.
Turns out that I couldn't extract DATA.A00 because Krusader apparently has a faulty ARJ extraction routine. I succeeded using 7-Zip instead.

The demo is different from the regular Internet download demo of Fantasy General, but the differences are mostly cosmetic. There are two scenario files (SCEN4.SCN and SCEN5.SCN) which are identical between the versions.

Quick executable comparison:

Code: Select all

BARENA.EXE    945 439   1996-01-04  FTP demo
BARENA.EXE  1 105 433   1996-02-09  CGW demo
The most noticeable difference so far is that, apart from more sound effects present in the CGW demo, there are fullscreen artwork images for each unit, whereas the Internet demo always shows an image of an Orc for absolutely every unit.

The title screen is different (FTP on the left):
Image Image
The main map has some hints concerning the interface in the CGW demo:
Image Image
The Wing Riders unit has graphics for a Manticore in the FTP demo, fixed in the CGW demo:
Image Image

I'm concluding that the CGW demo is an updated version of the FTP demo that was somehow not widely circulated. It appears that the demo installer is genuinely broken (and not using copy protection as I assumed), but this can be fixed by replacing INSTALL.EXE with the one found in the FTP demo.

UPD: I uploaded the zip with the fixed installer here.

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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer Gener

Post by Hallfiry »

From what I can tell, the catalog actually lists four versions of Fantasy general:

Code: Select all

barena.exe    948,275  1995-11-27
Data.a00	22,511,873  1995-11-28
   PC Gamer 2.01
   IE #21
   CGSP #73

barena.exe  954,447   1996-01-03
Data.a00  3,711,060   1996-01-08
   PC Spiel Special 03/96
   PCgo! SH 08
   TGM #015
   PC Mania #43 CD1 (unpacked)

barena.exe   954,439  1996-01-04
Data.a00   3,711,002  1996-01-11
   Multimedia PC Player 19
   PC Spiel 06/96
   Secret Service (36) 06/96
   Cyber Stratege 01 (packed and unpacked)
   SCORE 27
   Bestseller Games Gold #03
   Best of Select Games Special 5 (unpacked)

barena.exe  1,105,433   1996-02-09
Data.a00	 5,571,657   1996-02-09
   CGW (142) 05/96
EDIT: Fixed the data.a00 sizes. Firefox has a weird bug where it won't copy selected text to the clipboard, no matter how often you press copy. This happened here again and so I pasted the same text over and over and somehow missed it.
Last edited by Hallfiry on Tue Feb 19, 2019 12:52 pm, edited 2 times in total.

MrFlibble
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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer Gener

Post by MrFlibble »

Somehow you list the same DATA.A00 for all versions except the first one. The CGW version is 5,571,567 bytes.

Apparently there are two January 1996 versions (January 3 and 4), presumably some kind of last-minute fix was introduced.

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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer Gener

Post by Hallfiry »

MrFlibble wrote:Somehow you list the same DATA.A00 for all versions except the first one. The CGW version is 5,571,567 bytes.
Fixed the mistake :)

MrFlibble
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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer Gener

Post by MrFlibble »

Thanks!

BTW, do you have that PC Player CD which contains the large Panzer General demo installer?

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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer Gener

Post by Hallfiry »

MrFlibble wrote:Thanks!
BTW, do you have that PC Player CD which contains the large Panzer General demo installer?
Yup. That one seems to be the regular 1994-08-11 demo:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cW4AA ... a8lOs0o8XM

Joystick 62 has a weird small demo from 1994-09-27:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cW4AA ... a8lOs0o8XM

Regarding Age of Rifles: There seem to be at least these versions:
Data.a00 3,821,549 1996-01-22 11:25:14 (v0.0048, likely the one 0.48 from the readme of CDA's version)
Data.a00 17,755,090 1996-05-15 14:15:22 (CDA's v.0.0072 from above)
Data.a00 4,573,168 1996-08-02 16:01:26
Data.a00 4,474,596 1996-08-11 20:49:34
Data.a00 22,722,203 1996-11-01 02:00:00

Image

MrFlibble
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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer Gener

Post by MrFlibble »

Hallfiry wrote:Yup. That one seems to be the regular 1994-08-11 demo:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cW4AA ... a8lOs0o8XM

Joystick 62 has a weird small demo from 1994-09-27:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cW4AA ... a8lOs0o8XM
Thanks for the info! But I'm afraid that the links point to something unrelated (Gothic trailer from PC Joker?).
Hallfiry wrote:Regarding Age of Rifles: There seem to be at least these versions:
Yes, I also noticed that there are several releases of AoR, including at least two regular (non-beta) demo versions, but didn't investigate further yet.

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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer Gener

Post by Hallfiry »

MrFlibble wrote:Thanks for the info! But I'm afraid that the links point to something unrelated (Gothic trailer from PC Joker?).
Same bug as before. I really gotta be careful.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1M36n8 ... WWcT29ict2_

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JZvPM ... dshvRjPgMo

MrFlibble
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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer Gener

Post by MrFlibble »

Thanks for fixing the links!

The big demo from PC Player is an early, pre-release demo that does not have a lot of the menu animations and high-res fonts for turn count, but includes large inset attack animations that are lacking from the regular downloadable demo.

It seems to be roughly from the same time as the press demo that Interactive Entertainment used in their preview but only includes the first two Poland scenarios just like the later demo, whereas the press demo had eight scenarios as can be seen on one IE screenshot.

The Joystick demo is the same as the downloadable demo, except they apparently didn't use the installer and just unpacked the ARJ archive on their own. It has the same two Poland scenarios from the 1939 campaign as the pre-release demo.

Note: Since I haven't played the full release version of Panzer General I'm not sure if the inset animations (those things in circles) were cut from the later demo or removed altogether from the game. At least, they don't seem to appear in the latter 5-Star General games, including Allied General (Panzer General II in Germany; not to be confused with the "real" Panzer General II), which is the direct successor (or an updated remake) of the first PG.

MrFlibble
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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer Gener

Post by MrFlibble »

I tried to restore correct date stamps on the demo files: panzgen.zip

The creation date of DATA.A00 is displayed if you use the ARJ v command (verbose list archive contents), and the creation date of INSTALL.NFO is recorded inside that file. Usually BOOT.NFO has the same date as INSTALL.NFO with possible minor difference in time stamps (I had to enter completely random time stamps for these two though). The rest of the files have duplicates found in other SSI distributions so I got exact date and time stamps for those.

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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer Gener

Post by MrFlibble »

Hallfiry wrote:From what I can tell, the catalog actually lists four versions of Fantasy general:

Code: Select all

barena.exe    948,275  1995-11-27
Data.a00	22,511,873  1995-11-28
   PC Gamer 2.01
   IE #21
   CGSP #73
I checked out this version (from PC Gamer 2.1 CD, this is indeed the same levels yet again (but with a slightly different starting army setup for the player compared to the other demo versions) except it has a short animated intro (shorter than the final release version as far as I can tell) which runs without any sound. You cannot save or load too just like in the other demos, and the Orc Warrior image is shown on all unit stats pages (something which was fixed in the CGW demo).

Folgore_202
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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer Gener

Post by Folgore_202 »

Thanks for the links, I joined these forums for stuff like that!
By the way, I remember seeing demos for these in French magazines back in the day, I'll see if it's still stored somewhere deep in the attic at my parents' house to see which builds were used.

MrFlibble
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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer Gener

Post by MrFlibble »

Hallfiry wrote:Regarding Age of Rifles: There seem to be at least these versions:
Data.a00 3,821,549 1996-01-22 11:25:14 (v0.0048, likely the one 0.48 from the readme of CDA's version)
Data.a00 17,755,090 1996-05-15 14:15:22 (CDA's v.0.0072 from above)
Data.a00 4,573,168 1996-08-02 16:01:26
Data.a00 4,474,596 1996-08-11 20:49:34
Data.a00 22,722,203 1996-11-01 02:00:00
There's an even earlier release of the v0.0048 which can be found via the Wayback Machine: aordemo.zip. The binary executable is the same as in the 22 January 1996 version though (it's called RIFLES.EXE instead of DEMO.EXE, but otherwise identical).

The 2 August and 11 August files are the second demo, v0.0106, which has completely overhauled graphics (leaning towards a more isometric view) and UI (bottom bar as in v0.0072 as opposed to the right-hand side bar of v0.0048) and two completely different scenarios complementing the four in the first demo. This demo does not have any music unlike v0.0048.

Out of curiosity, I copied the scenarios from the earlier demo into the later one's folder. They are displayed on the scenario selection menu but if I try to run them the game says "Demo scenarios only, please", then exits. It's not implausible that they're not completely compatible even if there was no demo limitation, considering how drastically the game changed at least in appearance between the two versions.

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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer General

Post by MrFlibble »

Hallfiry's catalogue suggests there's another Age of Rifles demo on the Computer Games Strategy Plus #073 coverdisk, but I've been unable to find this disk's image online so far.

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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer General

Post by Hallfiry »

MrFlibble wrote:
Tue Jun 23, 2020 10:14 pm
Hallfiry's catalogue suggests there's another Age of Rifles demo on the Computer Games Strategy Plus #073 coverdisk, but I've been unable to find this disk's image online so far.
I actually already listed that demo above. "CGSP" stands for Computer Games Strategy Plus. You even quoted and checked it, through the copy on PC Gamer:
viewtopic.php?p=439917#p439917

It's this CD: https://archive.org/details/Computer_Ga ... able_Demos

I hope to include download links in the next version of the catalog :)

MrFlibble
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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer General

Post by MrFlibble »

Hallfiry wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 7:12 pm
MrFlibble wrote:
Tue Jun 23, 2020 10:14 pm
Hallfiry's catalogue suggests there's another Age of Rifles demo on the Computer Games Strategy Plus #073 coverdisk, but I've been unable to find this disk's image online so far.
I actually already listed that demo above. "CGSP" stands for Computer Games Strategy Plus. You even quoted and checked it, through the copy on PC Gamer:
viewtopic.php?p=439917#p439917

It's this CD: https://archive.org/details/Computer_Ga ... able_Demos
Thanks for the link!

In the post you quoted, I was talking about the large demo of Fantasy General, while this time I'm interested in Age of Rifles, and the CGSP version does not seem to be available from other places.

UPD: Alrighty, I checked out that demo. It turns out to be the most recent demo, apparently, being v0.0110 (which I assume in layman's terms means v1.1), whereas the previous latest version was v0.0106. It has the same two scenarios, but also an animated SSI logo and the animation with the 3D rendered cannon, similar to the v0.0072. The date stamp on RIFLES.EXE is 7 Aug 1996.

MrFlibble
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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer General

Post by MrFlibble »

Thanks to your catalogue I also found what seems to be the earliest demo of Age of Rifles, dated July 1995.

Unfortunately, it's incomplete and broken: WCS3.zip

The files were found in installed form on the Génération 4 Issue No. 82 coverdisk.

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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer General

Post by Hallfiry »

There's yet another version of Age of Rifles, dated to 1995-11-17 with a DATA.A00 file of 4.045.695 Bytes. It's yet again one of those 0.0048 versions.

You can find it on PC Format 27: https://archive.org/details/PCFORMAT

Edit: There's a Panzer General demo from August 1994 on PC Format 10.

MrFlibble
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Re: SSI's betas: Steel Panthers, Age of Rifles, Panzer General

Post by MrFlibble »

I think I've found the 22 meg version of the Fantasy General demo with original date stamps. It's zipped into a file called FG.ZIP located on the first CD from the PC Collector issue 1 bundle:
https://www.abandonware-magazines.org/d ... p?num=2596

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