Proto:Daikatana (PC)/MPlayer Demo

The Daikatana MPlayer Demo is a demo of Daikatana released on March 1999, a year and two months before the game came out. It was designed to promote Daikatana and a multiplayer Daikatana tournament that was being held on the now-defunct MPlayer.com service. It was originally designed to be used only over the MPlayer.com service, but a LAN hack exists that allows you to play without it. This hack was made for a tournament, but got leaked into the internet. ION Storm allowed the hack to stay, which is why it can still be found.

Gameplay-wise, the Demo is pretty damn close to the final, the only real difference being the physics. There are quite a few graphical differences with the weapons, but it's basically the same Daikatana that shipped out one year later.

The most interesting parts of the demo are hidden in the game's files. There are many, many textures that didn't appear in either the Mplayer demo or the final game scattered throughout the demo's files. There are Shotcycler texture variants for trying out different looks for it, sprites for a HUD never seen in any preview screenshots, and even a few leftovers from when Daikatana was on the Quake engine!

General
Stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else.

Load Times
The MPlayer Demo has much faster load times when compared to the final.

PAK files
The MPlayer Demo .PAK files can be read in any program that can read standard Quake/Quake 2/Half-Life 1 .PAK files, such as PAK Explorer and GCFScape. The final uses a strange version of .PAK that can be read successfully with one program; daipack. Why they would change the structure of something that worked fine and dandy will never be known.

Animated Skyboxes
The MPlayer Demo lacks the final's animated skyboxes.

Hiro, Superfly and Mikiko
Hiro, Superfly and Mikiko have different sounding voice clips in the MPlayer Demo.

Shockwave Cannon Ammo Pickup Sound
An unused sound for picking up Shockwave Cannon ammo can be found in sounds\items.

Unused Ammo Pickup Sounds
Ammo pickup sounds for the Discus of Daedalus and the Venomous can be found in the sounds\items folder. In the final, there are no unique sounds for picking up Discus and Venomous ammo. Instead, they use the generic “ammo pickup” sound. Why they were cut is unknown.

Disruptor Glove Ammo
A sound called “dgloveammo.wav” can be found in sounds\items. It seems that the Distuptor Glove could use ammo at one time.

Old Menu Sounds
A folder containing the Pre-Alpha menu sounds can be found in the folder sounds\menu\old.

Text
This text is extracted from the world.dll file when viewed in a text editor.

Pulse Rifle weapon_ripgun

This text confirms that the Pre-Alpha's Pulse Rifle transformed into the Slugger (the Ripgun is the Slugger's prototype name that was eventually given to the minigun in E4).

the Daikatana Daikatana the Daikatana Banish the Daikatana Barrier the Daikatana Dancing Blade the Daikatana Melee the Daikatana Possession the Daikatana

These weapon listings show that the Daikatana was going to have alternate powers instead of just being a melee weapon that leveled up.

sucked it down

Could be either a suicide or generic death message.

got the rot

A death message that fits with unused HUD images in the final that show each member of the team as a Buboid-style zombie.

Difficulty:White Belt Blue Belt Black Belt

Alternate difficulty names not seen in the final game.

monster_siren

A listing for the Siren enemy that was briefly mentioned in the Pre-Alpha's world.dll file. It shows she was developed farther than the Pre-Alpha before being scrapped.

10 Ammo for Midas Golden Grasp. ammo_pyrite

The Midas Golden Grasp was developed enough that it had it's own ammo; Pyrite.