Devilution: Spawn (shareware) edition

[AJenbo]

I have been looking at what it would take to create the spawn edition, the benefit of this would be that people can run the game with out having to have the full original game. The spawn edition would also be more suitable for porting to devices with low disk space like the N64 since it is only 52mb (easily striped to about 25mb).

The spawn edition can still be downloaded here: http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/demos/diablosw.exe

At it's most basic copying spawn.mpq and renaming it to diabdat.mpq works for level 1 and should be good enough for anyone wanting to playtest/develop.

Also don't forget to update spawn to 1.09 before copying Storm.dll, diabloui.dll and STANDARD.snp.
http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/diablo/patches/pc/dshr109.exe

For a more full spawn edition we would need to:

• load spawn.mpq instead of diabdat.mpq in init.cpp
• PlaceUniques() should return immediately
• InitQuests() should immediately
• The loop in GetLevelMTypes() should be lowered from 111 to 27
• The following code needs to be added to CheckTriggers() right before the call to StartNewLvl()

        if (v9 > 4) {
            InitDiabloMsg(EMSG_NOT_IN_SHAREWARE);
            PlaySFX(PS_WARR18);
            NetSendCmdLoc(TRUE, CMD_WALKXY, plr[myplr].WorldX, plr[myplr].WorldY + 1);
        } else

This isn't necessarily exactly how the real spawn edition was made (for one thing it allows you to play the first 4 levels instead of just 2), other differences is that it keeps the same save game names and allows multiplayer with the full version (can crash the spawn player if not using warrior etc) and i haven't checked if the warp levels in MP needs a blocker or not.

[AJenbo]

Looks like the change to GetLevelMTypes() might actually have been to limit mLevel to < 6, this enables Fiend, but leaves out some other monster variants that would actually be possible with the data in the spawn.mpq file.

Variants that are left out because of the cap:

• Black Death
• Dark One (spear)
• Horror (axe)
• Dark One (sword)
• Shadow Beast
• Bone Gasher
• Burning Dead
• Horror (bow)
• Burning Dead Captain
• Horror Captain
• Blink
• Gloom
• Familiar

All except the Familar all appear on level 1-4, for the familiar the cathedral would have to be stretched down to level 6. 4 of the other monsters appear at that level so there would still be some variation (skeletons and scavengers).

The only monster that can appear on level 4, but is not in the demo, is Flesh Clan (bow and mace). Hidden can already appear on level 2-5 but is not included either.

Probably the best way to allow for level 1-4 with spawn.mpq is to skip if mMonstClass == MC_DEMON in GetLevelMTypes()

[sskras]

For first I'd like to have identical Spawned version. And only later some mods:)

[AJenbo]

You could just stop playing after the the second level ^_^

[sskras]

Well yes, but it's not much about me. It's about changing capatibilities of the intelectual property (IP) of Blizzard. If a binary lets user do more than the original Shareware/Spawn, it's a kind of hack. A very different target in comparison to staying binary exact:) from the point of view of IP law. Well, that's my .02€

[BrainSlugs83]

There was an actual Shareware Demo version of Diablo (not Spawn!) -- it had different content, a single quest IIRC, and the Butcher was on level 1. -- It had some other quirks like the menus were flipped or something ridiculous. Not sure that last bit is super important. But I wonder if you had the MPQs what would actually need to change to support it?

EDIT: Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc&t=40m30s
EDIT 2: And here's the download link! https://archive.org/details/Diablo_1020 -- Looks like it's just a 57 MB EXE file. I'm guessing the MPQ is compiled in as an embedded resource, or perhaps appended in a non-executable section / concatenated in somehow.

[ghost]

That was the pre-release demo which is significantly different than the final game. The CEL files are slightly different as there is no .CL2, and the CEL files for dungeons are not pre-shifted. Aside from that, most of the other assets were close to/same as the final game. The code is what changed drastically, which is why menus were flipped, dungeon layout is different, etc.

Supporting it wouldnt be that hard, just need to strip out all the quests and levels that aren't included in the .MPQ. I got it's DRLG code working in devilution, which contains an unused algorithm for the church.

[BrainSlugs83]

That was the pre-release demo which is significantly different than the final game.

Yes, it was pre-release, but it was a free demo version that made it onto Shareware CDs, PC Magazine, etc. -- This is the version that _anyone_ could get a copy of, even if none of their friends had bought the game yet. (and was available 3 months before the game shipped as well...)

The code is what changed drastically, which is why menus were flipped, dungeon layout is different, etc.

I understand. I didn't mean to argue anything different.

Supporting it wouldnt be that hard, just need to strip out all the quests and levels that aren't included in the .MPQ. I got it's DRLG code working in devilution, which contains an unused algorithm for the church.

I think that would be the way to go (not saying you guys shouldn't do the spawn edition also, but it would be neat to see this in action, and have it as an option for folks who don't have a legit copy of the game...)

Btw. How did you extract the mpq from the exe? -- Was there a specific tool that you used?

[mewmew]

Btw. How did you extract the mpq from the exe? -- Was there a specific tool that you used?

If you have a hex editor, just search for the MPQ header and copy anything from there to the end of the file. Note, when you search for MPQ in the pre-release then the first match will still be part of the executable, but the second match is the real one. You should see a lot of zeroes just before the MPQ part.

Bless hex editor:

MPQ Editor:

[BrainSlugs83]

I had a feeling it was just concatenated. -- Thank you! 🙂

[AJenbo]

The Spawned edition was and still is avaliable for download from blizzard so you didn't need a friend with a cd to get it.

[mewmew]

:tada: