Hey everyone! We got really lucky and someone found a Dec 2003 - Jan 2004 cache on their old computer, this is the RS2 beta. They also had a revision 345 cache, from Nov 2005, you can find that one on OpenRS2.
I don't plan on doing anything more with this data - not nearly as much as I did with my 225 post here. So this is a smaller thread for visibility
They also opened the client for a second (didn't log in) in March 2004 and that got us some archives from March 17th, 2004, before the game launched on the 29th. 204 is not compatible with these maps, the definitions were reordered on March 3rd https://runewiki.org/archive/cache/204.zip
If you plan on using any 186/194 server/client that may be out there already, be careful as some of them disabled some things or reworked them. There may also differences in the player update packet compared to what you're used to.
I tried using Dane's 186 refactor and ran into 2 things that I had to fix: the map packet size was wrong (not variable length), and the client was trying to gzip-decompress maps instead of bzip2 - probably because he was loading gzipped maps from 2005 while testing.
Every definition is pretty much in a different order, that includes interfaces, models, and animations. The player's body parts will also be slightly different, check the design interface response.
This should have most of the regions if not all, see this old 2003-2004 tip.it image to compare (it doesn't show wildy or dungeons)
Spoiler for Map Screenshots:
Lumbridge in 186
Bed icon in 186
The oasis was in a different spot in 186, the duel arena didn't exist yet
As for 204... you can use the March 29 - May 27 2004 maps we have (check my 225 thread), but I don't want to include maps with the archives because I have no way to verify what maps existed as-is in the beta.
Thank you so much for all of this! This is definitely one of the coolest releases I have seen in awhile.
Below is an example of the regions included in this release for #194 (this is just a rendering of the map data and does not represent textures or objects). Edit: Updated map screenshots with color from textures.
for context, 225 is here.
Originally Posted by Pazaz
Every definition is pretty much in a different order, that includes interfaces, models, and animations.
This actually brought me back to rsps a few days ago. I had a good bit of fun with parsing the 194 maps/landscapes and repacking for 204 ids since that should be mostly compatible with modern definitions. It is kinda ironic, but one of the hardest things was accounting for scenarios when the models were no longer present in a definition used by 204 (this was mainly an issue for me in seers)/dungeon since some objects were resized/models split into different ids (there were 3)). I ended up just repacking the 194 file with objects (id/rotation/position) from 225 maps when converting it to 204+. I still need to do a final visual review on them to make sure that everything appears correct. However, once I am happy that this is complete I will be able to do a reverse conversion from newer->194 maps pretty easily.
Luckily remapping the floor maps was cake since the data didnt change and just the ordering. One cool thing is that outside of a slight rgb change for the desert between 299 and 308 they are identical through 377.