Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness

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Feel free to rate and discuss this game.

[leilei]

Best Warcraft Ever

I don't care if it's overrated!

[MrFlibble]

Best Warcraft Ever

Agreed it is also my very first RTS game, which made me fall in love with the genre the very moment I first saw it The graphics and sounds are just superb, and the story is deep and captivating. I also greatly enjoyed the soundtrack, and even copied it from my friend's CD to a tape back then

The very generous demo version is probably the first official Blizzard product to have unique levels that are not found in the full game (the "magazine preview" alpha also had four levels specifically designed for preview purposes, and, unlike the demo, the alpha has full voice-overs for briefings), a tradition they had followed until recently (I've heard Starcraft II demo contains levels from the full campaign). Another cool feature are the special "pissed" quotes of the Footman, Grunt and Peon units (that is, what they say when you click repeatedly on 'em), who ask you to buy the full game (Grunt: "You buy full version pleeease?", "You buy full version, or I sing", "*sings*" ).

Also, is it me, or does the demo title screen with the orange/fiery background look better than the blue one from the full version?

[leilei]

Lol the only thing i'm disappointed about is that some songs are redbook exclusive (no midi version)

[MrFlibble]

Yeah, the two from the original game (the Orc one is very nice), and the two new tracks from the expansion set also did not get their respective MIDI counterparts IIRC. BTW, the Battle.net Edition screwed the music up a bit: the tracks that have MIDI versions were designed to loop continuously, and the respective CD versions would loop once and then fade out after a while; and the WAV versions of those tracks included in the Battle.net Edition are identical to the MIDI versions in that the loop and fade-out parts are missing, yet the WAV tracks play one after another like the CD tracks, and as the result they sound as if they were incomplete. The tracks that did not have MIDI counterparts do not have this problem.

[MrFlibble]

Oh, and BTW, even though some CD audio tracks do not have MIDI versions, there's an enhanced MIDI version of the intro cinematic music to compensate for that.

[MrFlibble]

Oh, and BTW, even though some CD audio tracks do not have MIDI versions, there's an enhanced MIDI version of the intro cinematic music to compensate for that.

The enhanced version is included with the officially released music pack (which basically consists of MP3 versions of game MIDIs).

Interestingly enough, the MP3 file with the intro theme that is used in the reenactment of the Warcraft II intro from Warcraft III bonus credits sequence is not the same as the file in the official MP3 pack, and lacks the extended part (thus being identical to the version that plays in the actual Warcraft II intro cinematic).

[MrFlibble]

I did some research regarding the release of the Warcraft II demo. Apparently, in spite of using pre-release materials like the early version of the title screen, the demo was released after the retail version, much like other Blizzard demo releases.

Happy Puppy suggests that the demo was released on Jan 28, 1996, and there is a number of newsgroup posts to support this date:

• Aug 19, 1995: no demo was released at that point.
• Sep 12, 1995: the leaked press alpha available at wuarcivie.wustl.edu.
• Sep 18, 1995: the leaked press alpha used to be uploaded to wuarcivie.wustl.edu but it's not there anymore.
• Oct 9, 1995: no downloadable demo available yet.
• Oct 11, 1995: the shareware release is planned for Christmas 1995.
• Nov 17, 1995: Blizzard allegedly says they will release the shareware version after the retail game.
• Dec 1, 1995: mentions leaked press alpha, and it may also be understood in the way that no demo was available at that point.
• Dec 7, 1995: no demo at Blizzard.com yet.
• Jan 1, 1996: the demo will not be available until mid-Jan.
• Jan 2, 1996: the demo has not been released yet.
• Jan 5, 1996: this can be understood that there is no official demo yet.
• Jan 24, 1996: no demo yet, but rumours of impending release.
• Jan 28, 1996: a guy says he spotted the demo on Blizzard's website.
• Jan 30, 1996: suggests that the demo was released by Blizzard on Jan 28.
• Jan 31, 1996: the demo was uploaded at the Gamers Forum on CompuServe on Jan 30.
• Mar 21, 1996: the downloadable demo is already available, as well as the magazine cover CD editions.

There also seems to be an influx of messages from people who downloaded the demo and experience some problems (like this and this) from Feb, 1996 onward.

[VortiX]

On Windows 7 64-bit, whenever I try to load or save a pud in WAR2ED95, the editor closes. I could save them fine on Vista.

[MrFlibble]

Have you tried launching the editor with administrator permissions?

[VortiX]

I tried it on administration permission, compatibility mode and read-only but they didn't work. I guess the only solution is the Virtual Box which I can't even use...

[MrFlibble]

There are actually third-party PUD editors that are more advanced. I can't remember any right now but you can Google. (IIRC one is called PUDDraft but not sure.) Perhaps they do not have this issue.

[VortiX]

Ok, puddraft worked! Didn't think before that such many utilities were made over a decade ago; the Dwango, TEN and Kali days. I like the 2 humans vs 6 computers -matches.

[MrFlibble]

Cool! There are quite a few third-party utilities for Warcraft II, and all work quite well with the game