Proto:Halo 2/May 3, 2003 Builds and Tools
This is a sub-page of Proto:Halo 2.
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Alongside the E3 2003 demo, a full development build of Halo 2 dated 3 May 2003 was leaked. With it, the full editing toolset and builds for PC and Xbox are included.
While supposedly having been cut in February 2003, this particular set of builds, alongside the E3 demo, seem to feature the original Halo 2 renderer, dubbed pstencil - which features, most notably, stencil-based shadow volumes as opposed to the rasterized shadow buffer used in future builds of Halo 2.
The build dates of all game builds and tools are within a few minutes of May 3 2003 23:54.
Contents
Data
This build contains a data folder, which holds many of the raw source files for game assets.
Mission Dialogue
| To do: Finish copypasting all this in |
mission_dialog.xls contains transcriptions and filenames for mission dialogue voicelines. Only the '05 ALPHAMOON' sheet contains data.
| Character | Label | Line | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intro | |||
| Prophet of Truth (radio) | 05_001_truth | Weve found the heritic base, and are commencing our attack. | |
| Prophet of Truth (radio) | 05_002_truth | You will lead the initial attack wave. | |
| Insertion | dervish dropping into combat zone | ||
| Spec-Ops Commander (radio) | 05_003_soc | Our Lords are with you today, Dervish. | Info |
| Spec-Ops Commander (radio) | 05_004_soc | No one else survived the drop. | Info |
| Spec-Ops Commander (radio) | 05_005_soc | The heretics' defenses are formidable Our attack cannot proceed until you have eliminated their heavy weapons. | objective |
| Elite (radio) | 05_006_elite1 | We are under attack! | Info |
| Elite (radio) | 05_007_elite1 | Arrrrg! | Info |
| After insertion (first encounter with heretics investigating wreckage of other insertion pods) | |||
| Spec-Ops Commander (radio) | 05_008_soc | Your stealth armor--is it operational? | Info |
| Spec-Ops Commander (radio) | 05_009_elite1 | Good. But use caution. | Info (after Dervish activates his stealth armor) |
| Spec-Ops Commander (radio) | 05_010_elite1 | The hazards on this moon will degrade its effectiveness. | Info |
| Heretic Elite | 05_011_elite1 | There are no survivors. | |
| Heretic Elite | 05_012_elite2 | Let us continue our search. | |
| First Turret | |||
Cyborg
Curiously, a new texture set for Halo 1's Master Chief model exists in data\objects\characters\cyborg\bitmaps. These textures are similar to those for Halo 2's new Master Chief design, and contains a bumpmap for the first time. In the game build, cyborg's shader type is specific to stencil, indicating it may have been for renderer testing.
The bumpmap texture was previously released by the Digsite project, making it legally safe to use in modding projects.
Diffuse texture
Bumpmap
Model with the new textures applied
Model in-game with fixed shaders
PSD files for the original Halo 1 texture set can be found in the data\objects\characters\cyborg\bitmaps\psd folder.
Windows build
This build is extremely rough, and does not include functioning lighting or sound. When opened, the game runs in a 640x480 window, with your only way to resize is using Win+Up Arrow. Despite having an extremely broken menu, it is somewhat playable. According to internal documentation from the first leak, blam.exe was intended to be a quick way for artists to check their model imports, with the xbox devkit being used for further work.
Title screen
Menus
Ingame, with console output on the screen.
Cutscene, with render model debug text on screen.
Xbox build
This build of the game requires development hardware. It will not run on a retail system unless it has the correct BIOS, 128MB of memory and an install of the XDK.
 | XBEs There are multiple different game executables included in the files, each with slightly different purposes. |
 | Menus The game menus already resemble the final product. |
Editing Kit
The full development kit for Halo 2 is included, consisting of tool.exe, sapien.exe and guerilla.exe. Tool is fully usable to add new models, textures and audio to the game. At this time, Sapien is closer to its Halo 1 counterpart, as it can not run player simulation. The toolset is able to successfully connect and transfer files (XSync) to an XDK running the game.
Map List
Campaign
For being a build from May of 2003, the vast majority of the campaign isn't here in playable form. The only two "missions" you could play are Alphamoon, later cut, and Earthcity E3, an earlier version of the famous demo. For the most part, the campaign seems to follow the same path as the retail story, only a lot longer and more in depth than Bungie had time for. They're all in varying states of "finished", with earthcity_e3 and alphamoon being the most so, with covenantship and deltaescape taking the spot for least finished. The build also contains many empty folders of potential campaign missions. Below is a quick list of every Solo map folder within the leak, with the second column holding their descriptions and full name. (empty) Denotes the folder is empty, and no assets were either built yet, or were cut. Maps like Earth Ark were later discovered by Digsite officially, before their closure. All names and descriptions can be found within the e3 demo's default_us.campaign.xml. All descriptions and names are copied straight from there, any grammatical or spelling mistakes are on Bungie.
| Tag Folder | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| spacestation (crashes by default) | Space Station | Repel the Covenant fleet attacking Earth |
| covenantship | Covenant Ship | Invade a Covenant cruiser and crashland it on Earth |
| earthcity/earthcity_e3 | Earth City (E3) | Pursue the Covenant through a human city |
| alphagasgiant | Alpha Gas Giant | Go to Alpha Halo, find the Heretics and destroy their base |
| alphamoon | Alpha Moon | Assault the occupied control room and find the oracle |
| deltatemple (crashes by default) | Delta Temple | Warp to Delta Halo and assassinate the Prophet |
| deltaescape | Delta Escape | Escape the Covenant |
| sentinelhq | Sentinel HQ | Breach the sentinel quarantine |
| sentinelfortress | Sentinel Fortress | Retrieve the sacred icon from the Flood |
| floodhive (not present) | Flood Hive | Find the Gravemind |
| highcharity | High Charity | Escape through the interior of high charity |
| deltacontrolroom (not present) | Delta Control Room | Start the revolution and recover the sacred icon |
| generators (empty) | Generators | Stop Delta Halo from detonating |
| forerunnership (empty) | Forerunner Ship | Explore the Forerunner ship at the center of High Charity |
| earthark (empty) | Earth Ark | Get to the Ark and save the galaxy (again) |
| gravemind (empty) | Unknown | Left in the Solo path, not referenced in the campaign xml. |
| icelake (empty) | Unknown | Left in the Solo path, not referenced in the campaign xml. |
| deltatrain (empty) | Unknown | Left in the Solo path, not referenced in the campaign xml. |
Multiplayer
Like Campaign, most of the fan favorite maps are not present in this build, containing only five. Names and descriptions are pulled from their respective XMLs. As an aside, the descriptions for the MP maps seem to all be written by a designer to other members of the team, instead of the usual Halo description style.
| Tag Folder | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| ascension | Ascension | Okay, everyone knows this one. This is the one with the big radar dish in the middle and two good sniper spots on two ends. |
| burialmounds (not present) | Burial Mounds | This is the big one on an island that's good for racing. Lots of mounds for Warthogs to bounce over and stuff. |
| cloudcity (not present) | Cloud City | No, this isn't where Luke gets his hand cut off and overreacts to the news of his father, but it does take place on a gas giant. |
| cyclotron | Cyclotron | The one that looks like an atrium on a human space station. |
| lockout | Lockout | This is the one on the side of a cliff with the elevator platform. It has a bunch of jump shortcuts, but it's easy to fall if you get too daring. |
| midship | Midship | It's a small arena map with 2 distinct bases and an overshield tempting you in the center |
| overboard (not present) | Overboard | Two big multilevel rooms seperated by a 'Fruit Cellar' perfect for CTF. Flipped symetry with distinct base platforms. |
| waterworks | Waterworks | The is the huge indoor cave one. This is where Banshees will have battles while dodging stalactites and stalagmites. Halo 2's sidewinder. |
| headlong | Headlong | No XML for this one... |
Test
The test folder contains a wide variety of mostly uninteresting maps, though there are some key cool ones. The folder for Box contains many developer test maps containing various tests, Jaime worked on implementing the E3 demo's Johnson briefing, for example. AI Test is a small room with fantastic lighting, used for testing the ai changes for Halo 2, according to Jaime Griesmer[1], this was one of the most worked on test maps for the game. Another is test_gravemind, which plops you in a room with three tentacles and bumpy ground. One last one of note, earthcityblocktest, being a very early work in progress version of the Earth City map that went to E3.
