I recently found this good video that explains all of the game's beta phases: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ac6bBSYEhI Remember that Beta 1 and Beta 2's files are completely lost
Update: Joe has not responded yet, same as many Arts Technica members. I have yet to contact the BetaArchive because of other projects taking up my time. If anybody would be able and try and contact anybody who I haven't contacted yet, that would be good.
actually some progress: one of the ars technia members did infact get back to me: he said that he would try and look on old hard drives he had from around 2001-2002, however, he hasn't gotten back to me in a couple weeks
According to interviews with Shawn Patton and Jessie Schell, they have both claimed that to them those old files are completely gone, no longer on their servers at all, and that they don't know the whereabouts. They are also not on Schell Games's servers as well. Realistically the only possible way is for someone to have these files on an old hard drive from 2001-2002 that has not been used since. The ARS member that I quoted last reply has gotten back to me saying that the drives were at his parent's house, however with the stay at home orders he can not go look at them.
... the company [Disney] did not, to my knowledge, archive our development work, although Iβm sure backups of code and stuff that was developed digitally by Jesse, Joe, Mike, et. al. exist somewhere. Sketches? Not so much - thatβs how I ended up with it. They just didnβt treat it with the same kind of proprietary zeal that they approach features, TV, or other properties.
Reading this makes me wonder who "Mike" is. Sounds like someone we could contact if we can figure out exactly who it is?
HUGE drop of content today. "Pandora's box" has been released-- which includes source quality textures and much of beta's content including playgrounds. Not sure when it was compiled, though.
I saw the "pandora" release: it is a good find. However, there is no code involved with it, and only 1 of the beta playgrounds(the Brrrgh) is included with it. Still, there are tons of studio quality textures from around beta, and even before then.