[admin]

Two quick things:
1- This is my first post, so I hope it works
2- This is my first upload, and again, I hope it works.

First the file, then the explanation:

http://rapidshare.com/files/105836258/War2Alpha.rar

This is a folder/file I have had floating from computer to computer for over 10 years now. It was originally located at

http://nameless.simplenet.com/alpha/

, which no longer works but is still linked to in many fansite archives if you google "Warcraft 2 Alpha".

There were only a few levels in this demo, I believe three for each race, but playing them lets you see some of the transitions the game went through before it reached the final product. One significant difference is the requirement to mine Ore, which is done by sending your peasants to harvest the "mountains"/rocks on the map. Oil is found by a combination of a kind of sonar signalling and choosing the place to put the oil platform yourself. Additionally, if you can find an old .pud extractor you can edit the maps and switch the "campaign" ones with the ones you make, letting you put in the unfinished units and buildings that you cannot build normally.

Now for the two hitches...
1- I have never gotten this to work on Windows Vista, and cannot remember if I ever managed to get it to work on windows XP. I can only assume it uses system files that predate windows XP, in which case you either need to find out what files are needed, or just unzip the folder to an old computer.
2- I don't know if the map files are the original campaign files or ones that were custom made and switched for the real ones. I have no computer to test this on to find out.


I hope by putting this file here, it will start to circulate on the internet again (since as far as I know it is the last copy anyone has) and that someone will manage to make it work on newer versions of windows and pass on instructions for the rest of us to do the same.

With that said, enjoy your alpha! If you get it to work, go back and play the final version of Warcraft2 and see if you can spot all the differences.
Link checked on Mon Mar 30, 2009 12:06 am [WBB_Linkchecker_Bot]