Dear Mr. Siegler,
Hello!
I have previously sent you one private message on the 3D Realms forums regarding this topic.
In 2004, you posted a screenshot of a folder containing many prerelease versions of games, most of which at some point were going to be published by Apogee or 3D Realms. My intent in this email is to persuade you to release these prototypes.
In the time that has passed since these games were in their heyday (10 to 15 years ago), they have fallen to obscurity among the public. Even moreso, even the completed products hold little prospect for monetary gain. As seen with the Blood source code release attempts, the copyrights of the majority of these archaic games are of no knowledge or interest to modern day publishers, especially when considering individual games and not intellectual property rights. Charlie Wiederhold explained this well in an email:
"[T]he people who actually *do* have the ability to do it probably don't know they have it and would look at you funny if you asked."
Any release of these beta materials would not be without precedent. You did release LameDuke. John Romero of id Software fame has released many apochryphal items, including Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement, the old in-house TED level editor, and several prototypes of Doom.
Beyond convincing you to release the betas per se, I have confidence I can crack the passwords on any betas which are password-protected. The PKZIP encryption, the only method available before 2003, was the subject of a
Using Duke Nukem II as a sample, I successfully decrypted a .zip archive (with the password 33823300c218538c92037a14970a3164) in 40 minutes on a 2004 Pentium 4 using the FILE_ID.DIZ of old as my plaintext. Many Apogee betas have the potential to be cracked using the FILE_ID.DIZ, ORDER.FRM, CATALOG.EXE, and DEICE.EXE files present on so many releases. Beyond that, the betas should be handled on an individual basis. For example, games using the BUILD engine (Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood) could be cracked based on the plaintext "Creative Voice File", a heading present in every sound file in those games. Many betas could be cracked using one of the music files depending on the development timeline, such as the Apogee fanfare. Any piece of data at least 13 consecutive bytes long that has remained unchanged for the development cycle could be used.
Even if the plaintext attack fails or no suitable plaintext is found, releasing the archives will prevent permanent loss and allow collaboration to crack them using a brute force method.
While it's fully acknowledgeable that a certain few among these are much more sensitive than others and should perhaps be omitted (namely Duke 2D and Prey), these prototypes hold a large amount of historical (and personal) interest. I also realize that some of the prototypes are outside of Apogee's or 3D Realms' jurisdiction. In these cases, handling of the betas in question should be decided individually (whether to withhold them or distribute them, and any additional measures taken to aid preservation).
Finally, if you lack the authority to release even the Apogee betas, please direct me to the individual(s) I can contact regarding permission (i.e. George and Scott).
If you have any questions, doubts, or reservations, please feel free to contact me.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration!
-Hendricks266 (contact info)