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Old versions of Exile & Exile II


Ulf

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Abandonware sites typically host full versions, though admittedly that might be a bit hard for the Mac version of Exile. Usually they don't host games that are still sold, though. So, while the Exile demo might be obtainable somewhere on the Internet, abandonware sites are probably not the ideal place to look.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I still have both of the original Exile games with the old graphics on a CD.

If somebody can provide me with a reliable uploading location that doesn't expire after a month or something, I'll put them up for download.

 

The version of Exile I have is V1.0.3, which means it doesn't have the 1 AP system, but it still has the old graphics.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yes, of course -- that isn't what I'm saying. I'm saying there were two sets of old graphics BEFORE the Exile III style, 2.0 graphics. One was introduced fairly quickly, I think around the same time of the 4 AP update. IIRC, the oldest graphics set had fewer and cruder PC icons to choose from.

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I'm fairly sure there were two different ones, though. I don't have evidence, but I remember thinking that there was a sequel when I recommended E1 to a friend and he got a version with AP and... different looking pillars, maybe?

 

—Alorael, who would be surprised if there weren't a facelift. E1 and E2 got E3's graphics, but E1 could have gotten E2's graphics on the way, or at least some halfway version thereof.

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My very first computer RPG was Castle of the Winds. It had two parts, very primitive graphics, and a very simplistic story line. Then Exile (I) came out. The game engine was better, 6 PC's instead of 1, but the best part was the interaction with non PCs and a complex story line.

 

I still have all three Exile episodes loaded on my machine. I also have backups of them, and backups of my backups (Paranoia is a healthy attribute for DBA's).

 

The graphics for E1 were, what I considered, the basis. When E2 came out, the gray cave graphics were not as pleasing to me, since I had gotten used to the bluish/green floors of E1. Also the character icons were changed and looked cartoonish to me. Then someone mapped the E1 graphics to E2. I still have two copies of E2 on my box, one using the graphics published with the game, and one with the E1 graphics. I can share the graphics files if you want.

 

BTW in the cave A Very Peculiar Place, there is a button that says that the graphics were of Jeff and Mariann in their best SCA garb.

 

When E3 came out, it went back to the E1 graphics as its basis. BoE also uses the E1/E3 graphics for its base.

 

Then Avernum came along and everything changed...

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Originally Posted By: Harehunter
The graphics for E1 were, what I considered, the basis. When E2 came out, the gray cave graphics were not as pleasing to me, since I had gotten used to the bluish/green floors of E1. Also the character icons were changed and looked cartoonish to me. Then someone mapped the E1 graphics to E2. I still have two copies of E2 on my box, one using the graphics published with the game, and one with the E1 graphics. I can share the graphics files if you want.

When E3 came out, it went back to the E1 graphics as its basis. BoE also uses the E1/E3 graphics for its base.
Wait, what? I'm pretty sure E2 officially uses the blue-green graphics as well, while BoE uses light grey cave floor. E1 and E2 did have older graphics though; are you referring to the old E1 graphics and the old E2 graphics rather than the newer graphics apparently backported from E3?
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Oops, I did make a mistake. BoE originally came out with grey cave floors. Someone backported the E3 terrain to it.

 

But I know that the cave floors in E1 and E3 are blue/green and E2 came out originally with gray. I have the original install of E2 and I have uploaded the Windows BMP files to Harehunter's Haven. You may have to change the address to get rid of the trailing '/'.

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Here's a history of the relevant releases of all the games:

 

(#1) Exile v1.0, brief release with only 1 AP per character per round - gray cave floor - no music included

(#2) Exile v1.x, characters now have 4 AP per round and a few icons and graphics were added - still gray cave floor - still no music included

(#3) Exile II v1.0, same basic graphics set with some additions mostly for the Vahnatai - gray cave floor - (awesome) music included

(#4) Exile III, completely new graphics set - neon turquoise cave floor - no music included

(#5) Exile v2.0, original graphics set swapped out for Exile 3 graphics - neon turquoise cave floor - also adds (Bach) music included

(#6) Exile II v2.0, original graphics set swapped out for Exile 3 graphics - neon turquoise cave floor - same (awesome) music included

(#7) Blades of Exile, uses Exile 3 graphics with some additions - includes gray cave floor? - no music included

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I've hit a bit of a snag with this. I'm playing on a PPC Mac running 10.4 (playing in classic mode), and the tilesets provided are organized differently from the tilesets in the PICT resource contained within Exile. The monsters and most other graphics don't seem to be quite to much of an issue, as each PICT resource is a single graphic, but the terrain is preety vastly different. Am I going to have to manually fix this with a paint program, or is there some workaround that I'm missing?

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Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
Nobody backported floor to BoE, it always had both options.
Uh, since when? When I first found BoE, it had no green cave floor in its resource files and there was no option to switch to green cave floor. From where do you get the idea that there was an option?
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I've never seen that option that I recall - I just changed my personal graphics sheets to use the E3 graphics.

 

As a long-time fan of the blue graphics set, I would be all for including a toggle for graphics in the new versions of BoE, (even if it means I need to convert all the old scenarios' graphics from grey cave for it to happen,) if anyone's willing to program the thing. :-)

 

 

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I have uploaded the BoE_Graphics sets that I have for BoE. I will have to dig through my archives to see who initially posted the blue graphics set, but I will post it to my site when I do.

 

The way to install it is to simply unzip the files into the BLADEXIL\BLSCENED directory. This creates two new subdirectories; blue_bmp and grey_bmp. To change the graphics, simply copy the files from the desired graphics set to the BLADEXIL\BLADSCEN directory and voila!

 

I don't have a set for the Mac. If anyone knows of a good converter, if they have one and want to publish a set, let me know.

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Originally Posted By: Mistb0rn
As a long-time fan of the blue graphics set, I would be all for including a toggle for graphics in the new versions of BoE, (even if it means I need to convert all the old scenarios' graphics from grey cave for it to happen,) if anyone's willing to program the thing. :-)
I guess I'll consider it. No promises though.

Originally Posted By: Harehunter
I don't have a set for the Mac. If anyone knows of a good converter, if they have one and want to publish a set, let me know.
I believe I made a set for Mac. Maybe I'll upload that later. A Windows-Mac conversion of what you have would not be straightforward, since Mac refers to the images by numbers while Windows gives each one a unique name. (Though I think it still refers to them by numbers internally.)
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Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES
Here's a history of the relevant releases of all the games:

(#1) Exile v1.0, brief release with only 1 AP per character per round - gray cave floor - no music included
(#2) Exile v1.x, characters now have 4 AP per round and a few icons and graphics were added - still gray cave floor - still no music included
(#3) Exile II v1.0, same basic graphics set with some additions mostly for the Vahnatai - gray cave floor - (awesome) music included
(#4) Exile III, completely new graphics set - neon turquoise cave floor - no music included
(#5) Exile v2.0, original graphics set swapped out for Exile 3 graphics - neon turquoise cave floor - also adds (Bach) music included
(#6) Exile II v2.0, original graphics set swapped out for Exile 3 graphics - neon turquoise cave floor - same (awesome) music included
(#7) Blades of Exile, uses Exile 3 graphics with some additions - includes gray cave floor? - no music included


I've got three versions of Exile for the Mac. Two old ones with different graphics but neither has the AP stuff yet. The later version (2.0) which came on my Trilogy CD-ROM has the even-newer-still E3 graphics set and the AP stuff added in. There are a couple of cute bugs in the game where special encounters say stuff like "There is a pool in the middle of the red tiled floor" even though the tiles are white in the new graphics set.

It's a shame that Jeff didn't backport the dialog mechanism from E3 to the earlier games, it always felt far more elegant than the E1/2 system of 'name', 'job' 'type pertinent word' a few times, guess one wrong, forget what you were saying and go back to 'job' and start over.

I'd love for someone to upload the earlier Mac versions of E1 and E2. The shareware demos should be free to distribute and I can drop in the registration keys from my Trilogy CD-ROM. If I can find the original Macworld cover CDs, I'll try and upload 'em myself somewhere.
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It would be interesting to know the actual release dates of each version. That would include separate dates for Mac and PC. I suppose that the 'modified' date of the executable would be a reliable marker.

 

For the PC versions I have:

Jul 10, 1995 - Exile V1.0.3

Apr 26, 1996 - Exile 2 V1.0.2

Jan 17, 1997 - Exile V2.0

Mar 11, 1997 - Exile 2 V2.0.1

Apr 17, 1997 - Exile 3 V1.0

Mar 01, 1998 - BoE V1.0

 

Obviously I am missing Exile 1 V1.

I found the first version of Exile 1 on Gizmo's site True Site for Blades. And yep it does have the original gray terrain.

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  • 4 months later...
  • 1 month later...

Trenton, the problem Bleedinbob is pointing out is inability to download. That's much more likely to be on the side of the server.

 

Harehunter, pay attention to the thread. This is someone trying to download the old version.

 

—Alorael, who could download something from the site. He's not at all sure it was the right thing, and he suspects that the original upload expired. Can anyone upload yet another copy of the original E1 and E2?

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That's the difference between 1.x and 2.0. I know the earliest version of E1 didn't have an action point system, so you got one movement or attack per turn, twice that for haste, and actions only on every other round for being slowed.

 

[Edit: Slarty said it already here:]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S
Here's a history of the relevant releases of all the games:

 

(#1) Exile v1.0, brief release with only 1 AP per character per round - gray cave floor - no music included

(#2) Exile v1.x, characters now have 4 AP per round and a few icons and graphics were added - still gray cave floor - still no music included

(#3) Exile II v1.0, same basic graphics set with some additions mostly for the Vahnatai - gray cave floor - (awesome) music included

(#4) Exile III, completely new graphics set - neon turquoise cave floor - no music included

(#5) Exile v2.0, original graphics set swapped out for Exile 3 graphics - neon turquoise cave floor - also adds (Bach) music included

(#6) Exile II v2.0, original graphics set swapped out for Exile 3 graphics - neon turquoise cave floor - same (awesome) music included

(#7) Blades of Exile, uses Exile 3 graphics with some additions - includes gray cave floor? - no music included

 

—Alorael, who was actually taken aback when AP first appeared. Ranged attacks, especially spells, are very powerful when it takes so long to close with enemies.

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I have uploaded a zip file for each of them on my website.

 

 

Harehunter's Exile 1 page.

Click on the download link.

 

Harehunter's Exile 2 page.

Click on the download link.

 

These are un-registered copies. If you have a registered copy of Ver.1, you can copy the MISC.DAT file into the unzipped folder, or you can contact Spiderweb Software.

Another option is to just copy the bitmaps into folder with the Ver.2 engine and play it that way.

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