Proto:Rayman 2: The Great Escape/Early Demo Version

This is a sub-page of Proto:Rayman 2: The Great Escape.

This article refers to the first PC demo released from Rayman 2. It can be downloaded from here.

This demo features two levels from The Fairy Glade, but only one is normally playable due to a bug. It also doesn't have any music or sound.

A second revision of the demo was made later (with the same levels), adding sound, fixing the jail counter, fixing the crashing bug, fixing some strings, reordering the intro animation, and using the non-rechargeable fist. This second revision uses the early Rayman model (with one eye more open than the other) for some reason.

The Crashing Bug

Despite two levels being present in this demo, only one level can be played normally. After completing the first level, the game crashes.

A workaround was discovered to play the second level:

• While playing the first level, we minimize the game with Alt + Tab.
• We restore the game, now it would have untextured models.
• We finish the first level.
• Now, Level 2 will start normally with textures again.

General Differences

• The loading screen image and HUD elements have a lower resolution than in the final. Black color is used as an alpha channel making some elements like the jail in the pause menu to be incorrectly shown.
• The "J" key used for showing the HUD at anytime in the final version doesn't work in this demo version.
• Pause menu has a different background texture and it has temporary strings. Cancel is the abandon option (changed to "exit" in the second revision of the demo). Polokus masks are not collected.

Demo	Final

• Character icons on dialogues are in a colour square.
• Strings (used and unused) are slightly different from the final, and has some mistakes.

A mistake in the Spanish translation for one of Murfy's sentences makes the text get out of bounds.

• The key code translation from the strings is temporary, for example, the character of the arrows changing in this demo version is translated to the string "ALL", and the jump bottom translation is the "Q" letter while the real jumping button in this beta and final version is the "A" key.
• In this demo, Rayman has the rechargeable fist obtained in a later level. However, the color of the stars when it bounces and when it's recharged is white. The stars when collecting a yellow lum are also white.

Demo	Final

• The game over animation seems disproportionate when playing at a resolution that's not 640 x 480.
• The piranha animation starts when it starts jumping, instead of in the middle of the air. As a consequence, its animation finishes before, making it seem less realistic.
• Rayman can grab to a floor through the bars. This glitch was fixed in the final version.

Level Differences

• In this demo version, Rayman falls into the level after the pirate animation, while in the final, Rayman falls before the pirate animation. This was changed in the second demo revision.
• In this demo version, the barrels thrown by the pirate reaches the start of the tunnel through the ceiling. This was fixed in the final version.
• The Fairy Glade Lum total is 50 like in the final, but the jail total is set to 0. If a jail is broken (there are 2 in the first level), the HUD will show you 1/0 jails and 2/0 jails. This was fixed in the second demo revision.

Unused Content

Beta Strings

Despite the demo only containing two levels, the demo includes strings from the full game, including dialogues, level names, and menus.
These strings are slightly different from the final!

Download Rayman 2 BETA strings File: Rayman_2_Demo_Strings.BIN (283 KB) (info)

Inside these strings, we can also see some cut menu options, like Antialising, Sharpness and Cheat.

Final Game Textures

There are lots of textures from the final game in Textures.cnt that aren't used in this demo. However, not all the final textures are present.

Debug Charset

In the main folder, we can see a debugging character set in the file Polices.tga. This charset is used for a debug level selector.

Abilities

There are some Rayman abilities from the final game in the Demo's code, but left unused. Here are some of them:

• The thinking mode (where you can read Rayman history) is disabled in the demo. When re-enabled by cheating, you can access it by mantaining the J key. The functionality is the same as in the final game, but with the demo's different background. When you exit thinking mode the controls stop responding, but you can still pause the game, restart the level, or change the level with the level selector. Restarting or changing the level enables controls again.
  
• The golden fist powerup is limited to 2 instead of 3, and their icons are more separated than in the final game. Rayman's gloves are still white though.
  

Sound Script

While this game has no sound, there's a working sound script file in BinData/World/Sound/ folder for a different sound engine from what was used in the final version. It has the following header:

;  SND XXX
;  Sound Script Saver ( CPA Compatible)
;  (c) Ubi Sound Studio 1998

{LcbHeader:
     SetDefaultLanguage()
     VersionNumber(916)
     SetNextFreeGroupId[%lu](102)
}

VersionNumber(916)

This script tries to play BNM sound files that doesn't exist in the demo files (it doesn't play APM music files).
If we enable sound in the Snd_Cpa.ini configuration file (it's disabled by default), and then copy Bnk_0.bnm with the final game sounds to BinData/World/Sound/. Sounds will play, but almost all of them will be incorrect, as the sound file might been altered from that point of development until the final version.
Copying all the final game sound files to the demo sound folder makes the demo crash.

Debug Features

To do: Investigate. There's a lot!

Level Selector

Pressing F9 will enable a level selector which displays Change To Map : Bast_20 at the upper-left corner of the screen with the debug charset. Pressing Up/Down you can switch to Bast_22(the second part of the level) and pressing Space you can access it (you must do the previously mentioned workarround before to prevent the game from crashing). You can cancel the level selection by pressing A.
You can also reset the actual level at any moment by pressing F11.

Log Files

Running the demo generates an Error.log and test.log files. The first one logs lots of messages from the game libraries, while the second just logs

Can't change to map 'menu': not found in map list

HTML Memory Dump

There's a very complex HTML memory dump generator routine at 0x0047B030 that generates a HTML file called MemoryDump.html at the Game folder. It can be triggered at level start by setting the byte 0x00542C50 to a non-zero value.

Demo Recording

There is a debug byte at 0x00542CF0 that seems to enable some demo feature when it changes to 1. However, it actually crashes the game. Changing this byte value to 2 resets the actual level and sets the byte value again to 0.

Unused code for a demo recording feature still exists at 0x004096F0 which would print the string

RECORD

. There's also lots of demo recording related strings:

Demos.log

\Demo%03d.sav

Demos\%s\%02d

Frame = %ld : 
 
POS%ld 

ALW%ld 

SCT%ld 

ACT%ld 

CAN%ld  

Demo Images

Apart from the second level, there are 6 demo images in BinData/Vignette/ folder (3 for English, 3 for French) that can be seen when completing the second level.