This looks good, but version 1.31 does not sound unpatched.

Trying to download it now... Hopefully it wont give me a dozen viruses because, no offense to Russians but any website that's Russian and has a .ru top level domain tends to do such things without warning.

Reason I wanted strictly unpatched is because I wanted to try to figure out a bug the game had where it locks up if you use ANYTHING other than standard VGA mode when a level transition occurs.

EDIT: Wow this demo is WAY different than the one on the CD, it jumps you straight into the game and not only that it doesn't crash when loading the next stage if your video mode is not 320x200 VGA...

Good find, but I wonder where the first release demo is? I really wish this CD didn't die on me...

DracoNihil wrote:

Good find, but I wonder where the first release demo is? I really wish this CD didn't die on me...

You could try using Hallfiry's gaming magazine cover CD index. Most if not all CDs themselves are hosted by archive.org's CD archive.

I just took an interest in the game, you can get the 0.99 demo (which I think is the original one) either here or here, although neither seems to be the original distribution of this version. Sadly the official website of the developers is very badly preserved by the Wayback Machine, and I couldn't find any info on what the original file name of the demo download was (probably gundemo.zip, but not sure).

[Edit] Wait, the site navigation sure is broken and no images seem to have been preserved, but here's the coming soon page, the screenshots page, the release page and the demo download page. Apparently there was a music pack called GUNMUSIC.ZIP, and the original demo file was gunmdemo.zip.

[Edit 2] More info on the file in question here, the exact size of gunmdemo.zip is 22 720 259 bytes.

Great find, also if you have completed the full retail game already you should check my youtube channel for a hilarious method of defeating the "final boss".

I have a feeling GUNMUSIC.ZIP would of contained the original mixes of the games music. You could of found Gunmetal's soundtrack on the CBC website but the URL I have saved just 404's now. I guess they didn't care to keep the music around anymore, probably after I figured out how to directly download data off their server.

For anyone interested, I've uploaded the v1.3 demo here: gundemo2.exe. It's the official installer from Mad Genius Software.

DracoNihil wrote:

I have a feeling GUNMUSIC.ZIP would of contained the original mixes of the games music.

GUNMUSIC.ZIP sure is the music add-on for the first demo, as mentioned in the readme file:

INSTALLATION […]
Show full quote

INSTALLATION

Make a directory on your computer called GUNDEMO. Use pkzip or winzip
to extract the demo into the directory. If you have the music
zip file, unzip it into the appropriate directory. The GUNMETAL
demo does not require these files to run, but we're very proud of them
so we hope you'll get them as well.

The zipped v0.99 from Demu.org does not include music (only an empty folder for it), meaning that its contents are more or less identical to the original GUNMDEMO.ZIP, except it was repacked. Curiously, the repacked installer from the CD Action coverdisk contains the music files so apparently they downloaded both files and combined them for the users' convenience.

Demo v1.3 already has the music in it, hence it's around 10 MiB larger.

Nope, I haven't played the full version.

Oh, so that's what GUNMUSIC was for. I thought they would of had the games soundtrack up for download, as in the tracks as they were before they were put into the game proper.

In either case I have all the MP3's long since downloaded off the CBC website.

Found a review of Gunmetal at Game Over!:
http://www.game-over.net/review/august/gunmetal/index.html

I can't tell if the screenshots are official though (the note by the reviewer suggests that they most likely aren't).

I've seen these same screencaps on my GlobalStar shareware CD.

They're most likely from early in development as the "cockpit" doesn't look that sleek as it does in-game.

EDIT: I posted too quickly, now I may be biased a little but I think this review is pretty unfair... Oh well.

DracoNihil wrote:

I've seen these same screencaps on my GlobalStar shareware CD.

They're most likely from early in development as the "cockpit" doesn't look that sleek as it does in-game.

Indeed the cockpit looks different, I didn't notice that! However it might be that the reviewers got a pre-release version and took screenshots from it.

On a second thought, the cockpit appears to be in high-res as opposed to the low-res one that is in the demo version, or at least it feels more detailed. AG.RU has more screenshots with the same HUD (marked as coming from an external source) but their quality is degraded because the site folks added watermarks to what was already JPEG compressed images 🙁

DracoNihil wrote:

now I may be biased a little but I think this review is pretty unfair...

I'm actually quite surprised that the critics back then either ignored the game or panned it for not being original enough, while it actually makes an extremely good impression (I'm certainly not biased in any way as I'm saying this, considering that I discovered Gunmetal by accident and had no expectations whatsoever prior to playing it). Perhaps back in 1998 when the market was oversaturated with 3D titles it felt different?

Anyway, Computer Games Online provided a more neutral first look of the game but seemingly nothing else. There's a page mentioning the demo version with an extremely cropped and downsized screenshot that can be also found on the back of the box (judging by the MobyGames scan).

Hotgames gave Gunmetal a mildly positive review. There are some official screenshots but they are downsized. GamesDomain seems to have ignored the game altogether.

On a different note, I am unable to get the 0.99 demo to run in 3dfx modes in DOSBox (SVN Daum latest version with nGlide 2.0). As soon as the 3dfx logo plays I get a black screen, although the game is still running. I can press Esc and revert to the previously selected video mode but there's no display otherwise. The second demo runs fine with the exactly same setup. Any ideas how to fix this?

Hey thanks guys for mentioning this. Somehow I missed this back in the day. Runs great in Windows 7 with dgVoodoo2 for me, although, I suck at it.

I skipped it in the day 2 decades back because it looked unappealing in print ads (tiny screenshots of blocky levels among a generally vague propaganda-like theme with minimal to no information on the game) and I had Quake2 on the brain.

When I played the really buggy demo I was stuck with, I really wanted to see the full game because it was just such a really wonderful idea and I quite enjoyed the map design.

I'm quite glad to have a copy (despite it being just a secondhand CD already suffering from disc rot) and I did stream this game in it's entirety on Twitch once upon a time.

Quake 2 was drowned in marmalade and worse looking textures, and had that awful walking physics that I can't stand. (Quake 1 was just fine though physics-wise, so I don't get what happened?)

There's one thing about Gunmetal that becomes very obvious almost immediately once you start playing, and that is the thoughtful approach with which the entire game is designed, from the varied level layouts and themes to the tiny bits like the tongue-in-cheek texts that are shown on loading screens. Clearly the developers put a lot of effort aiming to create a consistently good, fun game, and sadly it's not something that you see in every project.

I wonder if any of the developers (or whoever holds the copyright to the game) can be tracked down, the game could be still sold these days at GOG.com.

On another note, I re-uploaded the awful quality shots from AG.ru here JIC:
https://imgur.com/a/QK16y

Mike Jackson has a deviantArt page where he has posted several concept art drawings he did during the development of the game itself.

Other than him I dunno' who else you could track down.

https://steampoweredmikej.deviantart.com/

Hiya, first post ever, been visiting these forums for a while but never got the idea of registering and posting until i found out some people here actually know of this obscure game that i think is a gem! Really glad to see more people enjoying this game out there.

Anyway, as for the 0.99 demo, i believe i still have a CD that comes with an installer of that, and i could try to find a way to get it out of the PCMag CD that it came in, if you guys are still in need of the installer, i believe it also comes with the music as well.

For the "higher-res cockpit" I think it was bought up and someone asked Mike about it, he mentioned it was an earlier design that indeed was used in pre-release versions of the game, my memory could be faulty but i do think that was something that was discussed 😀

Also, there was a facebook page created by fans where a lot of the game's developer came around to talk a bit about it, although it seems some of the questions and answers were deleted 😒

If any of you are interested in checking out the pictures and the stuff said in it here it is:
https://www.facebook.com/Gunmetal-By-Mad-Geni … 40039906068655/

Also Also! You can find the entire game's soundtrack in this link, if you're interested:
http://artists.cbcmusic.ca/artist/12040

I've already grabbed the music to Gunmetal. Also that URL just redirects to a custom 404 page. The music used to be on the CBC but it's not anymore.

Good thing I had figured out how to directly grab all the MP3's.

Teggun, thanks for sharing the stuff! Do you happen to have any of the official screenshots from Mad Genius website?

DracoNihil wrote:

Also that URL just redirects to a custom 404 page. The music used to be on the CBC but it's not anymore.

The link works for me, I just checked it.

Unfortunately, i have no idea how to get a hold of them, nor do i know if any of the currently available screenshots that you may still be able to find around the web were part of their official website, The company went under pretty much mere months after the game was released to the public and the little amount of snapshots there are appear to be all missing their pictures.

Poking around a bit i found this part of the website that lists off some patches for the game:
https://web.archive.org/web/19981205180610/ht … com:80/c00x.htm

None of the patches download for me (not even the mirrors seem to work), but the txt file was still open-able, although the info that's in it is not very useful.