In October 1993, Speaker-To-Animals <astrange@ithinksw.com> posted the following to the Story forum.

PID shape cataloging

I think it would be funny if pid.bungie.org still had stuff to update with, even after Halo PC's release (actually, it would be even better if it was updated at the same time as the Mac release). So.... who wants to catalog the interesting things in the PID Shapes?

I'd recommend you use Loren Petrich's shapes dumper; it's much less buggy than the program I used to dump the shapes out originally (mine made the walls come out wrong). It's at http://homepage.mac.com/lpetrich/PIDCode.sit. If you don't have a copy of Pathways, then you shouldn't try to do this ( ;) ), but you can do it anyway with the stuff in http://astrange.ithinksw.net/pathways/.

David Coufal's website with the A1 Demo has been lost to the mists of time. It might be on www.archive.org, or I might have the shapes file, or Hamish almost certainly does. I remember the only interesting thing being the items collection, which is in http://astrange.ithinksw.net/pathways/A1DemoShapes/.

As for me, I'm too busy to do it, but I'm not too busy to tell someone else to do it :)

You can get the PID 2.0 Shapes Dump here and the PID A1 Demo Shapes Dump here (both .zip format)

Mark Levin <haveblue@mac.com> did have the time to go through the shapes and provided the following commentary, reprinted below:

Well, let's see... ;)

This is based on the original TIFF collection posted here, I didn't use the new dumper.

The first unusual thing to notice is that the potions do not use pallette shifts. Collection 128 bitmaps 16 through 19 (the potions) could have been stored in much less space. The two rings, however, and the two keys, are *not* identical images, so they could not have been stored as pallette shifts. Upon further inspection, the "style" field seems to indicate a pallette shift; this is used for the monsters and scenery but, as above, mysteriously not for the potions or crystals.

There are a number of images that are very rarely seen because you have to do something unusual to see them in the game, like the Colt .45, M16, and Map images (you're never given a reason to drop these items, and you can't find them lying around either...). Also, as I recall, these images are much higher quality than they appear to be when viewed in the Examine Item dialog. What's going on here?

There is a "lost" style of Headless which is bright green and shoots purple spit. Major Headless?

The Phantasm has a mouth, which I'd never noticed in the game. Its presence adds nothing to the monster's menace, I'm glad it's hard to see.

The Big Blue Meanie has a "flinch" sequence (well, frame) with one hand over its face and a rather disconcerted expression. Has anyone ever seen this in the game? I don't think there's anything that does enough damage in one blow to make him notice.

The gray Ooze, or Stalker, from the PiD demo 2.0, is nowhere to be found. Why did they create a whole new monster for the demo?

There is a third style of "greek" column, like the type found in the Pyramid, that I don't think I've ever seen (see collection 153, style 2, bitmap 0).

The bone scenery items are available in two colors, although the difference is so subtle I doubt it's visible in the game at all.

There are 4 seperate copies of the purple crystal ladder sprites, differing only in their backgrounds. My new theory on this (writing this stream-of-consciousness style) is that each is meant for a level with a different unique color table, so the transparent color can be moved around as needed to accomodate everything else on the level. This would also explain why the monsters need differently colored backgrounds. There aren't any unnecessary copies of the ladders for the levels in the Pit, since those all use the same wall textures (and stop using ladders once you get to the Hole).

There are 7 dead Nazi images, shared among the 18 dead Germans. There are 5 dead American images for the 7 dead team members. There are 3 dead Cuban images for the 4 dead Cubans you find.

Without the fade to white, the climactic explosion doesn't look all that great :) There also seems to be a bug (in the exporter?) where pure white is replaced with pure black, giving the vapor clouds a rather strange appearance.

What's more interesting is comparing the demo items to the final game. Unfortunately the demo shapes dump did not include the monster sprites.

The watch has been changed. It looks more analog now (the face is round, and completely blank).

A number of slots contain what appears to be a "dummy" sprite, of a cardboard box. These correspond to shapes not present in the demo but found in the full Shapes file; possibly altered so that hackers would not discover the secrets of the full game from the demo. Too bad this wasn't even noticed for over seven years...

Some of the replaced shapes are tiny splotches that I can only assume represent slots that are not used but replaced with very tiny images to save space in lieu of deleting them (One wonders why they weren't simply deleted... Maybe Pathways was made with an Anvil pre-alpha? :P) Other, more recognizable shapes explicitly removed from the demo are: The easter egg, the Red Cloak, the nuclear device, the two rings, the ruby, the Alien Gemstone, the diamond necklace, the M-16 (but strangely not the Colt 45), the AK-47 and its ammo, and the M-79 and its ammo. Curiously, a large number of "spoiler" shapes were not removed from the demo (casting doubt on whether that was the reason at all), including the glass vial, the gas mask, the gold ingot, and the radio transmitter. Another thing to note is that all the cardboard boxes are *not* identical.

The mysterious backpack is present, in PID_C128_S0_B10.

The MP-41 is present, but for some reason it's completely white, as is its ammo, in the shapes dump. Bug in the exporter?

All the crystals are present, except that the black crystal is not found in the same place as in the normal game (it's in slot 58 instead of 57) and instead of the green crystal image there is a hybrid yellow/blue crystal. Maybe it let you talk to frozen people? :)

Regarding Mark's comment about the Big Blue Meanie. This YouTube movie by MrM12LRV appears to show the Big Blue Movie covering his face with his hand on several occasions.