Development of Half-Life 2

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Half-Life 2's development began almost immediately after the release of Half-Life, spanning from 1999 to the release of Half-Life 2 in 2004. During that elongated process, many things were outlined, created and cut before the game's final release.

Within the Half-Life community, this period is referred to under several names, though often incorrect if taken literally. They include development stages names, such as "Half-Life 2 Alpha", "Half-Life 2 Beta" (or simply "Alpha" or "Beta"), while no information about the different development stages on the terms referred to is known, or the "Half-Life 2 leak" (or simply "the leak"), when the referring to the material leak in 2003 by German hacker Axel Gembe (who himself referred to it as "Chosen 9").

Contents 1 Original plot 2 Style 3 Source code leak 4 Leaked files 4.1 Playable game 4.1.1 Features from the playable game 4.1.2 NPC differences 4.2 WC mappack 5 Development timeline 5.1 1999 5.2 2000 5.3 2001 5.4 2002 5.5 Sometime between 2002 and E3 2003 5.6 2003 5.7 2004 6 Changes 6.1 Gameplay changes 6.1.1 Weapons 6.1.2 Mapping 6.1.3 Friendly fire 6.2 Weapons 6.3 Characters 6.3.1 Combine 6.3.2 Monsters 6.3.3 Citizens 6.3.4 Major Characters 6.4 Locations 6.4.1 City 17 6.4.2 Wasteland 6.4.3 Depot 6.4.4 Air Exchange 6.4.5 Borealis 6.4.6 Kraken Base 6.4.7 Weather Control 6.4.8 Skyscraper/Vertigo 6.4.9 Street Wars 6.4.10 Citadel 6.4.11 Final Confrontation 6.5 Vehicles 7 Fate of the cut material 7.1 Half-Life 2 7.2 Lost Coast 7.3 Episode One 7.4 Episode Two 7.5 Episode Three 8 Mods 9 E3 demonstrations 9.1 E3 2002 9.2 E3 2003 9.2.1 List of demonstrations 9.2.2 E3 demonstrations cut from the final game 10 Menu gallery 11 References 12 See also 13 External links 13.1 Misc. 13.2 Beta footage 13.3 Mods based on the Beta

[edit] Original plot

Main article: Half-Life 2 original storyline

The book Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar and the numerous leaked files revealed many of the game's original settings and action that were either cut down or removed entirely from the final game. Half-Life 2 was originally intended to be a far darker game based on far grittier artwork where the Combine were more obviously draining the oceans for minerals and replacing the atmosphere with noxious, murky gases.

Half-Life 2 was also originally intended to be much more diverse in settings, and the original journey was extremely long (to the extent that the game felt almost overblown, with little time being spent on developing existing characters; one of the key reasons for it being cut). Several City 17 levels at the start of the game and complete chapters from the second half of the game were completely removed and sometimes re-introduced in the subsequent Half-Life 2 episodes.

Parts of the book Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar and the leaked files detail how Gordon would fight alongside characters such as Odell in the Borealis, as well as fighting together with Captain Vance and Vance's forces, the Conscripts, in the Air Exchange, the Weather Control and the rooftops of City 17. Originally, Eli and Alyx Vance had no relation, and Eli's lab was located in a cave in a scrapyard and was much rougher than the better equipped laboratory within a hydroelectric power station in the retail version (the scrapyard area where the Gravity Gun tutorial takes place, being an auxiliary area as opposed to the bulk of the lab, is reminiscent of the original concept). The Citadel also looked very different, it was more round than the bulky Citadel from the final version.

[edit] Style

While the playable game leaked in 2003 is quite similar to the retail product and already heavily trimmed, this earlier period of development of the game shows a quite different style. At this point, City 17 was an American East Coast-like city based on Washington, D.C.,^[1] with many huge skyscrapers, and had a very basic, blocky FPS design.^[2] It was more faithful to the concept art seen in Raising the Bar: darker, gothic, sinister, rainy, foggy, gritty, with a lot of brick, metal and glass, getting along well with the cut concept of the Combine replacing the air with poisonous gas and draining the oceans. It was therefore a much more dystopian, Orwellian universe (even though the final product is still quite Orwellian) even with touches of cyberpunk/steampunk style, in the vein of the book/film 1984 or other films such as Dark City, City of Lost Children or Avalon. It was also more faithful to Viktor Antonov's early concept art and work on the game.

The Combine was rather using and recycling the existent human materials and buildings, instead of adding their own technology to them. This is why, for instance, the early Citadel had its walls covered with tiles.

During the timespan leading to the 2003 leak, the team added more periods, such as the 30's, the 40's and the 70's, to finally get to a more Eastern post-Communist style we see in the retail version of the game, with older and smaller buildings, and a bright universe instead of a dark one, which is more in the vein of the original Half-Life. The Ravenholm levels are a reminiscence to the original style, even though the American East Coast-style skyscrapers were all removed.

Note that not all the concepts were not present in the development process at the same time, since the game had still a very rough, work-in-progress state.

[edit] Source code leak

Half-Life 2 was merely a rumor until a strong impression at E3 in May 2003 launched it into high levels of hype, where it won several awards for best in show. It had a release date of September 2003, but was delayed. This pushing back of Half-Life 2's release date came in the wake of the cracking of Valve's internal network,^[3] through a null session connection to Tangis which was hosted in Valve's network and a subsequent upload of an ASP shell, resulting in the leak of the game's source code on the Internet in early September 2003.^[4] The hacker was also able to guess Gabe Newell's password, which was simply "gaben" - which inspired the name of the Beta-based mod Half-Life 2 (GabeN). On October 2, 2003, Valve CEO Gabe Newell publicly explained in the HalfLife2.net forums the events that Valve experienced around the time of the leak, and requested users to track down the perpetrators if possible:

Ever have one of those weeks? This has just not been the best couple of days for me or for Valve.

Yes, the source code that has been posted is the HL-2 source code.

Here is what we know:

1) Starting around 9/11 of this year, someone other than me was accessing my email account. This has been determined by looking at traffic on our email server versus my travel schedule.

2) Shortly afterwards my machine started acting weird (right-clicking on executables would crash explorer). I was unable to find a virus or trojan on my machine, I reformatted my hard drive, and reinstalled.

3) For the next week, there appears to have been suspicious activity on my webmail account.

4) Around 9/19 someone made a copy of the HL-2 source tree.

5) At some point, keystroke recorders got installed on several machines at Valve. Our speculation is that these were done via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview pane. This recorder is apparently a customized version of RemoteAnywhere created to infect Valve (at least it hasn't been seen anywhere else, and isn't detected by normal virus scanning tools).

6) Periodically for the last year we've been the subject of a variety of denial of service attacks targetted at our webservers and at Steam. We don't know if these are related or independent.
Well, this sucks.

What I'd appreciate is the assistance of the community in tracking this down. I have a special email address for people to send information to, helpvalve@valvesoftware.com. If you have information about the denial of service attacks or the infiltration of our network, please send the details. There are some pretty obvious places to start with the posts and records in IRC, so if you can point us in the right direction, that would be great.

We at Valve have always thought of ourselves as being part of a community, and I can't imagine a better group of people to help us take care of these problems than this community.

Gabe

In June 2004, Valve announced in a press release that the FBI had arrested several people suspected of involvement in the source code leak.^[5] Valve claimed the game had been leaked by a German black-hat hacker named Axel Gembe, aka 'Ago',^[6] born c. 1982. Gembe later contacted Newell through e-mail (also providing an unreleased document planning the E3 events). Gembe was led into believing that Valve wanted to employ him as an in-house security auditor. He was to be offered a flight to the USA and was to be arrested on arrival by the FBI. When the German government became aware of the plan, Gembe was arrested in Germany instead, and put on trial for the leak as well as other computer crimes in November 2006, such as the creation of Agobot, a highly successful trojan which harvested users' data.^[7][8][9]

At the trial in November 2006 in Germany, Gembe was sentenced to two years' probation. In imposing the sentence, the judge took into account such factors as Gembe's difficult childhood and the fact that he was taking steps to improve his situation.^[10]

Although Valve has never made any official statement about how the leaked files should be considered and used by the community, no actions have been taken against websites or people using and hosting leak-related content, and Valve sanctioned websites such as Garry's Mod host many leak related material and discussing it is not forbidden on the website's Facepunch forums (which was forbidden in the past). The general consensus would then be that Valve is not preoccupied anymore by the use of these leaked files and their use and distribution is not forbidden although not blessed, as long as they are used for free; when asked to Valve by e-mail on July 20, 2009 about the status of the Beta-based mod Missing Information, the answer was that "the mod is not illegal to download and play as long as it is just a mod."

[edit] Leaked files

[edit] Playable game

The files leaked in 2003 consist in a playable game available in two versions, the "anon-hl2" leak and the "Russian" leak, which are slightly different. The "Russian" copy of the leak is, of course, based upon the original 100 part leak "anon-hl2". One of the few notable differences between the two is the presence of an installer, while the "anon-hl2" leak consists of 100 rar files. The "anon-hl2" beta contains at its root a .txt file last edited in October 2003, with these words:

Just create a server to play.
in the console, use "noclip" when it's stuck.
Really full of bugs, sure that valve won't release it before a while.
Have fun !!!

The work-in-progress nature of the game makes it obviously very incomplete and quite unstable, and some maps won't load. At this time, chapters like the Air Exchange, the Borealis, or the Skyscraper were already cut, and City 17 already had its Central/Eastern European style, making this game very similar to the retail product and representing what Half-Life 2 looked like in 2003. Therefore, the cuts were not made because of the leak, but for other reasons, and much earlier in the development process.

[edit] Features from the playable game

• The interface appears to be based off of the Steam version of the first Half-Life. For example, it has "Software", "OpenGL", and "DirectX" listed as usable renders in the "Video" tab, but the Source engine used DirectX only when it was released.
• There is extremely basic multiplayer support. It can support very few players. Interestingly, one of the tabs in the "Create a server" option is named "CPU Players".
• The game treats each single-player session like multiplayer; there is a scoreboard that can be brought up with TAB, and the player can type messages. If the player wants to follow the storyline, they have to access the map through the console, otherwise the next map will not load. It is however quite difficult to follow the incomplete storyline, and several maps won't load and crash the game.
• There is basic DirectX6 support, which consists of a few low-poly character models and a DirectX6 version of one of the Coast maps.
• The engine is of course less optimized than the one used by the final game.
• There is no built-in anti-aliasing. It can however be achieved with most recent graphic cards that override the games settings.
• The source code contains a folder called 'ivp' (IVP stands for Ipion Virtual Physics, a physics engine from Ipion Software that was bought out and brought into Havok 1) which contains Source's original physics engine from early 2001 containing IVP code (dating from 1999–2000) incorporated into the Havok code. The VPhysics engine based off Havok 2 is also present in a separate folder and is the final version retained in the Source engine.
• The game uses a unique ammo system not seen in the final version. Ammo is broken up into three types; small, medium, and heavy. The SMG2 uses small; the Pistol, SMG1, AR1 and OICW use medium; the HMG uses heavy.
• The Colt Python and Resistance Crossbow were not implemented in the game at the time of the leak, and as a result, do not exist in the playable prototype.
• Several sound files from chapters already cut in the playable version can still be found in the sound folders, such as early Breencast clips by the Consul, Conscripts dialog involving an Overwatch Sniper, Overwatch Soldiers chatting in the Skyscraper, a scripted sequence involving three homeless Citizens (nicknamed "hobos", one of them named "Regis") talking about Vienna sausages (one of the them has the same voice as Odell) in a City 17 underground prototype (in the maps "vienna_talk" and "vienna3", last edited in 2003),^[2] a scene involving Alyx (voiced by another woman) and a Strider chase, and dialogues and music from the film Aliens, to be used for lip sync tests in the maps "aliens_test" and "testroom_ripley" (the dialogues) and the surreal map "ickypop" (the music).^[2][11]

[edit] NPC differences

• The Combine Soldiers use the SMG1, the shotgun, and the OICW.
• The Gunship will freely use the laser on its stomach, but it is very difficult for it to actually hit the player.
• The Gunship and the Strider are invulnerable.
• The Dropship uses a trash can as a placeholder for its cargo holder.
• Citizens have a different outfit.
• Stalkers are much more aggressive and inflict much more damage than the ones encountered in Episode One, can run away to dodge attacks, and will actively pursue the player.
• Citizens are weaker, can barely kill anything on their own, and can only use the SMG1 and Pistol correctly.

[edit] WC mappack

Other files consisted in a group of several zip files nicknamed "WC mappack" (WC stands for Worldcraft, the early name for Hammer, the level editor), containing around 1300 incomplete VMF maps (VMF stands for "Valve Map File") of the very early chapters already cut in the playable game mentioned above (most of them are repeated and almost identical), demo/prototype maps and the maps from the playable version, spread in around 60 folders named by the developers who worked on them, and making up around 3 gigabytes. These maps can be opened in Hammer and can be run in any Half-Life game after texture fixing (since several textures can be missing, especially the original Combine metal variations) and compiling into BSP maps (using the option "Create a Mod" in the SDK and putting the textures from the playable Beta in its folder will do most of the preliminary work, as most of the textures will be missing if the compiled map is played on a released game). The maps still have the date they were last modified, which can give other clues about the game development. Most of the maps are very old and were last edited/created in 2001 or 2002.

The leaked files available on the Internet are obviously only parts of the original files used in the development of Half-Life 2, since many more maps, models, sounds, scripts, and textures exist, as well as more than 50,000 reference photos taken in USA and Europe used for design inspiration.^[1] Despite the final game's release, these files are still illegal to redistribute.

[edit] Development timeline

[edit] 1999

• June 1999: Development of Half-Life 2 begins.

• Early plot ideas are discussed and one of these ideas is this: Gordon Freeman is to travel to other planets and destroy the Xen forces on them.

• Viktor Antonov, Valve's art director, suggests that the game take place in an Eastern European city. The team likes this idea.

• Development of the Source engine begins. The main focuses are creating a physics system and a system capable of showing realistic facial expressions.

[edit] 2000

• Plot begins to solidify. It takes place in a world dominated by an evil empire called the Combine. Many enemy and ally designs and a few WC mappack maps are made.

[edit] 2001

• Sometime in 2001: Gabe Newell begins to focus on Steam and allows the Half-Life 2 team to design the game without his guidance.

• Before Summer 2001: Physics are integrated into the Source engine.

• Summer 2001: Advances in technology convince the developers to create a test map that features a battle between rioting Citizens and Metrocops.

• Summer 2001: Creation of first test map, Get Your Free TVs!. While basic and extremely blocky, this gives the team a major morale boost and convinces them to start working on a trailer for E3 2002.

[edit] 2002

• Sometime in Winter 2002, the trailer is finished. The team wishes to show it to Newell, who, as an outsider to what's been going on in the project, would give the team honest feedback.

• March 2002: Steam is announced at the 2002 Game Developers Conference.

• March 2002; After returning from the conference, the trailer is shown to Newell; he is unimpressed and believes that it needs more time to be developed. Morale takes a hit, but recovers.

• Summer 2002: The team begins to improve the trailer and sees that Newell was right.

• September 2002: Improved trailer is shown to Jay Stelly; he is unimpressed. As a result, the team works overnight to improve it. The next day, the new trailer is shown and impresses both Stelly and Newell.

• October 2002: Newell tells the team that they should get a new trailer ready for E3 2003 and expect the game to be shipped out by the end of 2003.

[edit] Sometime between 2002 and E3 2003

• The Wasteland and the Combine Factories section of City 17 are scrapped. Maps for their appearances at E3 2003 in the WC mappack indicate this.

[edit] 2003

• February 2003: Newell announces that Half-Life 2 should be done by September 30, 2003. They still plan on making an E3 demonstration.

• May 2003: Half-Life 2 is shown at E3 to much acclaim. Some wonder why there was no playable demo at E3, but are ignored by both Valve and a majority of the fans.

• Soon after E3 2003: the team begins to see that Half-Life 2 will not be ready on September 30. Newell tries to stay optimistic, but even he begins to see that its impossible.

• July 29: Vivendi Interactive, Valve's publisher back then, announces that the game has been held back to "holidays 2003". Newell reaffirms the September 30th release date when asked about it, even though the team knows the date is impossible to reach.

• July 29 to September 23: Valve continues to reassert that the game will ship on September 30, even though everybody on the team knows that is impossible. Fans start to become skeptical the closer it gets to September 30.

• September 23: Newell announces that the game is being held back. Many fans, notably Fragmaster, head of Planet Half-Life, become enraged at Valve for lying to them about the release date. Some claim that they'll never buy anything from Valve again.

• October 4: The Source source code is leaked onto the Internet.

• October 7: The state of the game, as of October 4, 2003, is leaked onto the Internet. In addition, the WC mappack, a collection of every map made by Valve up to that point (in .vmf format), a port of Half-Life to the Source engine, an extremely early version of Counter-Strike: Source, Counter Strike: Condition Zero, and two player models from Team Fortress 2 are leaked as well. Those that play it see that the game was nowhere near done and that quite a few E3 demos were scripted, when Newell himself said they weren't. Morale at Valve takes an extreme hit.

[edit] 2004

• Early 2004: Morale begins to recover. Fans await the release of Half-Life 2, despite earlier outrage.

• Early March: The game can be played from start to finish. Play-testing begins.

• Late July: Game content is locked down. Testing is focused on fixing the physics system, getting rid of bugs and making levels more fun to play.

• October 13: The last release candidate is sent to Vivendi. Vivendi approves of it. Half-Life 2 can now be released.

• October 14: Newell destroys a Scanner-shaped piñata in celebration of the game being done.

• November 16: Half-Life 2 is released in retail and on Steam. Response is overwhelmingly positive.

[edit] Changes

[edit] Gameplay changes

[edit] Weapons

• Earlier versions of the game had a much larger armory. See the weapons cut from Half-Life 2 for more details.

• Originally, the player could only hold a limited number of weapons. They could drop a weapon any time by taking the gun out, then hitting a key to drop it. By the time the leak was made, the ability to drop weapons seems to have been removed, as the G key is bound to a function called "DropPrimary", but it does nothing.

• At one point, the player could fire their weapon while zoomed in. This was dropped for balance reasons (however, vehicle mounted weapons can be fired while zoomed in; in addition, the zoom can be used as a makeshift scope by holding down the fire button and zoom button, then releasing zoom).

• Some of the earliest weapons in the game were the AR1 and MP5K, both of which were dropped in the final version. Their early textures can be found in "materials\Models\Weapons\Obsolete" in the Beta.

• One of the earliest attempts at physics-enhanced gameplay was a weapon called the Brickbat. It would allow players to pick of objects from the ground and throw them at enemies. Due to how many view models they would have to model for it to feel natural, it was cut. The Gravity Gun performs the same function as Brickbat did, but in a much easier way (at least for the art team).

[edit] Mapping

• Early Half-Life 2 maps were built similarly to Half-Life maps; most of the objects in levels were made out of brushes.

• In some of the earliest maps, Half-Life entities, such as "monster_generic", are used to represent characters such as Barney and citizens.

• In later early maps the player would be able to place "prop_objects" in front of doors, barricading them so that enemy NPC would have to kick the door down in order to gain entry (shown in the early Ravenholm or "trap_town" maps).

[edit] Friendly fire

Half-Life 2 originally featured friendly fire, as with Half-Life. Valve found this to be annoying to playtesters, as they would often accidentally kill their teammates, so it was changed so the weapons do no damage to friendlies.

[edit] Weapons

Throughout the development of Half-Life 2, its impressive arsenal of weaponry varied considerably, and it contained several different weapons than when the game was first made public, weapons that were later cut before the final release.

It has been suggested that the bulk of the weapons were cut due to the fact that they were too similar to one another, as the AK-47 served a very similar role to the AR2, and the OICW the same to the SMG1, and that it would not be very believable to hold more than 25 weapons, even though a limited weapons system was implemented at some point, having the player throw a weapon before picking up a new one.^[12]

Most, if not all of these weapons are usable in the playable Beta and the mod Missing Information, although sometimes with some changes.

• Complete list

[edit] Characters

[edit] Combine

• Early drafts of the Combine soldiers were to make them look distinctively alien, but this was dropped when Valve wanted "a more transparent enemy".

• Originally, the Combine were to recycle human building materials for their own purposes. This resulted in somewhat odd designs, such as the Citadel's interior being made out of ceramic tiles.

• One of the sound files for two Metrocops walking through the Skyscraper (sound\vo\sky in the Beta) indicates that Combine-developed weaponry could only be used by those with "a messed up nervous system" and that non-standard issue weapons for Metrocops (such as Rocket Launchers) would be confiscated if not approved by Dr. Breen (at this point of development the Consul).

[edit] Monsters

• There were to be many more monsters than there was in the final version. Some classics, like the Houndeye and Bullsquid, were to return, but there were a few other new monsters, such as the Tripod Hopper.

• One of the least-known cut enemies is a creature known as the Particle Storm. The only proof of its existence is a folder named "Particle_storm" (sound\npc\particle_storm) and what remains of Eli's early dialogue as Eli Maxwell (sound/temp/eli). Apparently, it would suddenly appear, cause an extreme amount of damage to anything in its path, then disappear. Eli believed that Particle Storms were intelligent and originally lost his leg to a Particle Storm.

• The Combine Assassin. A female soldier, she is the successor to the Half-Life Black Ops.^[1] She is included in Half-Life 2: Survivor.

• The Alien Assassin, a humanoid creature dressed in black that would behave like a stereotypical ninja. It is known that by animations it was to drop smoke grenades and throw Hopwire Grenades. Parts of the AI was reused for the Fast Zombie.^[1]

• The Bullsquid. It behaves exactly like the one from the original Half-Life, but has reddish skin. One of the leaked maps set in the City 17 canals has a section designed around swimming Bullsquids, but they will never enter the water.

• The Houndeye. It was to behave similarly to the one in the original Half-Life, but there was to be more emphasis on the Houndeyes behaving like a pack of wolves. Its leaked model is corrupt, but its textures are still viewable.

• The Cremator. It would clean the streets of bodies after a skirmish with a massive acid gun called the Immolator, which would double as an offensive weapon when the Cremator would become an enemy. It has no AI in the leak.

• The Hydra. The Hydra is a long, blue tentacle with a long needle on the end. While impressive to view, the Hydra was much less interesting when actually fighting it. Its an interesting NPC in the way that it isn't animated at all, all movement is handled by the code. However when it was showcased at E3 2003 the model was animated specifically for that event.

• The Combine Guard. The Combine Guard is a giant transhuman soldier that wields a weapon called the Combine Guard Gun. The gun is essentially a portable version of the Strider's laser. The Combine Guard only appears in "e3_terminal", but it can be spawned anywhere. It is invulnerable.

[edit] Citizens

• Originally, citizens were supposed to wear gas masks because of the Air Exchange making the air poisonous. This was dropped at the same time as the AirEx.

• There were to be child and adult workers at the factory section of City 17.

• During the Street War, there was to be a special type of Citizen that would give the player ammo. The only proof of his existence is a texture sheet in the 2003 leak.

[edit] Major Characters

• Alyx's father was originally a white man named Captain Vance. He was the head of security in the AirEx, and was to start the fighting that would ultimately destroy it.

• Eli used to have no relation with Alyx, though they were to be very close. Instead, he was an eccentric old man living in a scrapyard. Depending on the concept art, he can either be seen giving Gordon his HEV Suit or the Gravity Gun.

• In early drafts, Eli lost his leg while trying to examine a Particle Storm.

• Captain Vance and Eli were merged to create the Eli seen in the final version.

• Alyx originally wore a futuristic jumpsuit and a green jacket, but this was scrapped a short time before the E3 demos were shown.

[edit] Locations

[edit] City 17

• The earliest drafts of the plot called City 17 "New City".

• The trip through City 17 was originally going to be much more expansive; the player would visit the Manhack Arcade, go through alley-filled parts of City 17, a factory, a generic arcade/computer station, and a dark street that had a giant structure with multiple Breencast monitors on it.

• City 17 was going to be a lot darker, both figuratively and literally. Most of the C17 maps were to take place in the evening or at night, and there was to be a larger sense of hopelessness.

• Large skyscrapers were to be in C17, but were removed to put more emphasis on the Citadel.

• The Factory was one of the major areas of City 17. It featured children manufacturing Cremators, along with various adult workers performing other tasks. It was cut when it was realized that there would be no children after the Combine took over. The Cremator was cut along with it.

[edit] Wasteland

• The Wasteland is essentially a dried up ocean and was to be evidence that the Combine was tampering with the environment. Unlike the Coast, there was absolutely no water whatsoever. Many Combine bases were set up in the Wasteland. Antlions roamed the area.

• A demonstration of the Wasteland was developed for E3 2002 and 2003, but both were scrapped. The maps for them can be found in the Wc mappack.

• The Depot was originally in the Wasteland and stayed with it when it turned into the Coast.

• The Wasteland was to have its own skin for the citizens, but this never got past a temporary texture.

• A special type of Scanner was created to scan the area for any non-Combine humans.

• The Wasteland evolved into the Coast as the game was developed.

[edit] Depot

• Originally, the Depot was a checkpoint during Gordon's trip to the Air Exchange. When the AirEx was cut, its purpose in the plot was given to the Depot.

[edit] Air Exchange

See also: Air Exchange

• The Air Exchange was to play a major part in the plot. Its destruction would be taken as a sign to begin the rebellion against the Combine.

• Captain Vance would begin attacking the AirEx after Gordon arrived.

[edit] Borealis

See also: Borealis (cut location)

• In the first draft, the player would start on the Borealis as it was heading to City 17.

• Later drafts re-purposed the Borealis as a stranded ice-breaker that Gordon would have to travel to.

• On the Borealis was a character named Odell. His purpose on the Borealis isn't clear from his voice clips, but apparently he knew the ship's captain and is allied with the rebels.

• The Borealis had boxes from a company named "Arbeit Laboratories" in it. Whether this was the basis for the Borealis being owned by Aperture Science in Episode 2 is unknown.

• By the time Gordon arrived, the Borealis was infested with Stalkers and Zombies.

• Props from the Borealis still exist in the final game and the Episodes (for example, there is still a model folder called "props_borealis", and contains items such as a water barrel).

• Dead workers were supposed to litter the Borealis.

[edit] Kraken Base

See also: Kraken Base

• The Kraken base maps in the WC mappack are extremely incomplete, suggesting that the concept was dropped early.

[edit] Weather Control

See also: Weather Control

• This facility was to come after Kraken Base. It was never scripted.

• An early script in Raising the Bar suggests that the Weather Control was to host a major battle at one time.

• The Weather Control would have a plane that Gordon and Alyx would use to get back to City 17.

[edit] Skyscraper/Vertigo

See also: Skyscraper

• The plane mentioned earlier would crash into a skyscraper named Vertigo. Metrocops would converge on the area and capture Alyx, but not Gordon. Gordon would then have to escape and get on the rooftops of nearby buildings to get to the war between the Combine and the Citizens.

[edit] Street Wars

• The battle in C17 was to be provoked by the destruction of the AirEx, but when it was deleted, the impetus was moved to the destruction of the Depot.

• The Rebels were to have commandeered enemy vehicles during the rebellion, as seen in the sniper series of maps in the WC mappack.

• The player was to travel through the rooftops and battle enemies such as Stalkers, but this was removed for more ground-based fighting.

• Most of the fighting was to be spearheaded by rebelling Conscripts, not citizens.

• In early versions of the Street War, one of the player's goals was to meet Captain Vance at his temporary HQ, which was a bombed out building with a few APCs parked outside of it.

[edit] Citadel

• The Citadel went through multiple changes. The earliest Citadel design was a gigantic organic spire, as seen in concept art in Raising the Bar. However, the earliest in-game version was nothing more than a gigantic, blocky metal tower, mostly because it was made out of brushes. Later brush-based Citadels became much rounder and had large sheets of steel surrounding the bottom of the Citadel. When the team was able to put models into the game, the Citadel became a round spire. This was then changed to the Citadel as seen in the final version.

• Early versions of the Citadel's interior were made out of ceramic tiles to show that the Combine was recycling man-made building materials for their own projects.

• The rows of pods inside the Citadel were originally just cages with prisoners inside them.

• Of note is that the journey though the Citadel would feature areas that were never used or reused for Episode 1. Both the Core and the Advisor areas, which were prominently featured in Episode One, were being developed long before the final game came out. Interestingly, the Advisor room is made out of ceramic tiles, which dates the Advisors back to the time when the Combine were using recycled human building materials instead of their own metal for creating buildings.

[edit] Final Confrontation

• The confrontation with Breen in early versions of the story was extremely similar to the final one. Concept art from RtB shows Mossman holding Alyx (who was captured at the Skyscraper) at gunpoint while Gordon holds a gun to Breen. Some dialogue from an early version of the scene, found in the leak (sound/temp/alyx/citadel1-3.wav) shows that Alyx talked to Breen.

[edit] Vehicles

• AirEx Truck (as a static prop)
• Digger
• Jet Ski
• Isreali Merkava (used by the conscripts)
• VAB APC (also used by the conscripts)

[edit] Fate of the cut material

Many of the cut concepts will never be reused. There are some exceptions, however, and some elements finally made their way into the canon.

[edit] Half-Life 2

• The Overwatch Elite gathering all of the elite units concepts, notably the Combine Super Soldier and the Combine Assassin.
• The Alien Assassin was recycled into the Fast Zombie.
• Ravenholm being originally located at the end of the canals and before Eli's lab, it featured a lake at its foot, with at least one Ichthyosaur. This lake and the small docks were somehow kept for Black Mesa East when the chapter orders was reversed, and for the only Ichthyosaur appearance during the teleportation failure at the start of Half-Life 2.

[edit] Lost Coast

Lost Coast was based on a chapter cut from Half-Life 2 and finally released as an HDR technology demo. However none of its material is in the leaked files.

[edit] Episode One

• The Air Exchange train wreck^[1] was reused at the start of the chapter Lowlife.
• The huge destroyed concrete level at the start of Vertigo seem to have been re-used in the City 17 Underground in the chapter Lowlife, where Gordon and Alyx are fighting Antlions and Gordon must find cars to block the Antlion holes.
• The Stalkers, originally to be fought in Half-Life 2, are at last directly confronted in Episode One.
• The Citadel Core was to appear in Half-Life 2, since a prototype map exists in the WC mappack.
• The Advisor room. The tube used by Advisor Pods to leave exists in a very old WC mappack map.

[edit] Episode Two

• The Air Exchange train wreck^[1] was reused at the very start of the game, while at some point wrecked train cars in a valley were to be seen at the end of the Canals before Ravenholm, somehow recycled for the start of Episode Two.^[2]
• The Antlion caves.
  • The Antlion Grubs, that were to be met in those caves.
  • The Antlion King, that was also to be met in those caves, recycled into the Antlion Guardian.
• Some mining themes cut from Ravenholm, such as carts, were reused for the Victory Mine area.
• The Combine Guard AI was recycled for the Hunter.

[edit] Episode Three

• The Borealis will most likely be seen or visited, as the Aperture Science ship.
• Kraken Base, the Arctic base where Judith Mossman probably sent her message from, might also be visited, possibly under a different name. Helena Mossman was indeed stationed in Kraken Base in the early storyline.
• A battle similar to the Weather Control might take place as a final showdown to the series.
• The chopper flight originally for Vertigo might be reused at the start of the game, ending with a similar crash.

[edit] Mods

Since the release of the retail game in 2004, many attempts have been made to restore the original storyline by making mods based on the leaked files. Some mods never went further than rough development stages and some fixes, some are still in development. Also, some players fixed several maps without including them in a full game. These can be found across the web.

One of the most famous mods based on the Beta, and actually the only to have ever been released, though in an incomplete stage, is Missing Information. Though originally considered "illegal content' by Valve. The mod has since been considered legal as long as it is distributed for free as a mod, and does not use the original source code. The mod's current version includes the E3 2003 and the Borealis chapter, though quite incomplete, and another release is expected soon. Other unreleased mods include Half-Life 2 (GabeN), Half-Life 2: BetaSource, Dark Atmosphere, and Project-9 (see Mods based on the Beta).

[edit] E3 demonstrations

[edit] E3 2002

This section is empty or incomplete. You can help by expanding it.

[edit] E3 2003

Several demos of work-in-progress levels were shown at E3 2003.

[edit] List of demonstrations

• A trailer (featuring very early footage)
• "G-Man" (facial animations)
• "Docks" (featuring early docks near Ravenholm)
• "Kleiner's Lab" (featuring an early Kleiner's Lab sequence)
• "Tunnels" (featuring sewer areas partially recycled for the late chapters of Half-Life 2)
• "Bugbait" (featuring a daytime Nova Prospekt)
• "Barricade" (featuring a street battle against Metrocops, with Barney and Rebels)
• "Coastline" (featuring an early Dock 137 sequence)
• "Psyche" (a dreamy sequence featuring the G-Man and other pictures)
• "Striders" (featuring a Rebel battle against Striders)

The original demos, .cfg files used to record the demos and .bat files (demoloop.bat) used to start the demos played at E3, are included in the 2003 leak, but there are so many differences between the engine used at E3 and the leak's that it is impossible to play them.

Of note is that all the 2003 leaked Beta demonstrations are broken in one way or another. Most stem from missing models and incorrect usage of props (ex. the game uses a prop_physics for a model, when the engine only thinks that prop can be prop_static, so it deletes it). Almost all the presentations have been fixed and included in the mod Missing Information.

• The G-Man emotions demo will not work, as the Half-Life G-Man model produces an error, thus preventing the movie from even starting.

• The Source engine demos are greatly affected by certain models being the wrong version; most of the revolving slabs at the start will turn into error signs. The camera is broken, as it faces only one direction. The G-Man immediately dies when spawned, and the camera will not change direction when the Headcrab knocks it over. The ground eruption at the start of the physics demo never works, but that demo is otherwise the same.

• Kleiner's Lab is also extremely broken; Alyx and Kleiner do not walk around and their lips do not move. In addition, most of the dialog is not in the game, generating a great amount of errors. However, the player can still watch the Strider blow up the wall and get the SMG from Alyx, even though she lacks the "give the player the SMG" animation.

• Traptown is extremely broken as well. The metal bars that are supposed to hit the soldiers around halfway through the demo are released as soon as the map begins because the game deletes the objects restraining it. The "Troop forcing open the door" scripted sequence only works about half of the time, the soldier on the third floor of the building never appears, the player can hear distorted music in the building, the radiator constraint is broken, tossing a grenade under the trash can will crash the game, and the blade trap at the end does not work.

• Coastline is the only demo that is still in good shape, but it lacks a sound effect (a soldier saying "Stop!" as the player get near the back of the harbor). Otherwise, it works.

• The Psyche demo works except for the non-precached G-Man voice and obsolete "env_fov" entity that replaced with "env_zoom" in retail and playable Beta.

[edit] E3 demonstrations cut from the final game

Many E3 2003 demonstrations never made the cut, either. The most popular among users, found in the 2003 leak as unfinished maps, are:

• Terminal, whose remnants can still be found today on the Half-Life 2 box art. It was also used in the Half-Life 2 teaser trailer. The column mounted by a horse statue however made the final cut in the map preceding Gordon's first travel into the Citadel.

• Industrial, which featured an extremely early concept, the Combine Factories, featuring children.

• Depot, a map showing parts of the Wasteland area surrounding the Depot and a lighthouse. The Depot was kept for the Nova Prospekt level, while the lighthouse is featured in the rebel base Lighthouse Point.

Some other maps, which are very incomplete, are:

• Strider, which was actually almost complete, with the exception of missing scripts which made it unplayable. Some parts of it were later recycled to use in the Hydra demo. One of the earliest official Half-Life 2 screenshots shows the working map. It is one of the only pictures which shows a group of citizens with gas masks, when the Air Exchange was still in the storyline, intoxicating the air. It was also used in the teaser trailer. Its design was based of the very first Half-Life 2 demo, Get Your Free TVs!.

• Sniper, which started as a player running through a ruin-covered street to kill a sniper. This is also the earliest leaked map using the sniper.

The E3 preview of Gordon visiting Kleiner's Lab after first meeting Alyx contains different dialog between Alyx and Kleiner than in the version viewable online: it shows a slightly different design for Alyx and ends with the lab being attacked by Striders, an event that does not occur in the final game.

[edit] Menu gallery

• 

  Very first Half-Life 2 menu background, dated 1998, when Half-Life 2 was still on GoldSrc. Of note are the American skyscrapers skyline in the back.

• 

  Ditto.

• 

  Loading screen from the same era.

• 

  More recent menu background, featuring Gordon Freeman (based on that image).

• 

  The Half-Life 2 menu as of 2003.

• 

  Ditto, background only.

• 

  Other menu background, left out in the Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (a non-Valve game using the Source engine) texture files.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

See these related articles for more information on the early Half-Life 2.

• Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar
• Half-Life 2 original storyline
• Get Your Free TVs!

• Category:Cut content
  • Category:Cut weapons
  • Category:Cut characters
  • Category:Cut enemies
  • Category:Cut allies
  • Category:Cut locations
  • Category:Cut vehicles
  • Category:Cut items

[edit] External links

[edit] Misc.

• "I need the assistance of the community" - the original thread created by Gabe Newell on the Halflife2.net forums on October 3, 2003
• The Boy Who Stole Half-Life 2 - article about Axel Gembe on Eurogamer
• The Truth Behind The Half-Life 2 Robbery on Rock, Paper, Shotgun

[edit] Beta footage

• Half-Life 2 E3 2003 Trailer on YouTube
• First sight of the Source engine at E3 2003, part 1 on YouTube
• First sight of the Source engine at E3 2003, part 2 on YouTube
• Gameplay in various maps on YouTube
• Video of the original Kleiner's Lab sequence (test) for the Beta-based mod Dark Atmosphere on RuTube

[edit] Mods based on the Beta

• Team GabeN (part of Gabe's Love Tub, released but some works in progress left)
• The Axel Project (a rebuild of the Source Engine leaked in 2003)
• Beta Project (Russian website providing several mini mods and single maps released from time to time)
• CλSTE (unreleased)
• Half-Life 2: The Origin (unreleased)
• Dark Interval (unreleased)
• Missing Information (released, regularly updated)
• The Origin (unreleased)
• Project-9 (unreleased)

Real world subjects
Half-Life game series	Half-Life story arc: Half-Life: Day One · Half-Life · Half-Life: Uplink · Half-Life: Opposing Force · Half-Life: Blue Shift · Half-Life: Decay · Half-Life: Source Half-Life 2 story arc: Half-Life 2 · Half-Life 2: Episode One · Half-Life 2: Episode Two · Future of the Half-Life series
Portal game series	Portal story arc: Portal: First Slice · Portal · Portal: Still Alive Portal 2 story arc: Portal 2 · Peer Review · Perpetual Testing Initiative · Portal 2 Sixense MotionPack DLC
Technology demos	Zentraedi Tactical Battle Pod · Get Your Free TVs! · Half-Life 2: Lost Coast · Source Particle Benchmark · Directed Design Experiments
Cut content	Prospero · Development of Half-Life 2 · Return to Ravenholm
Other official games	Deathmatch Classic · Half-Life Deathmatch: Source · Half-Life 2: Deathmatch · Half-Life 2: Survivor
Compilations (to be completed)	Half-Life: Further Data · Half-Life: Generation · Half-Life: Initial Encounter · The Orange Box
ARGs	Portal ARG · PotatoFoolsDay ARG
Related third-party games	Codename: Gordon · Garry's Mod · Mods · Narbacular Drop · Portal: The Flash Version · Tag: The Power of Paint
Game soundtracks	Half-Life soundtrack · Half-Life: Opposing Force soundtrack · Half-Life: Blue Shift soundtrack · Half-Life 2 soundtrack · Half-Life 2: Episode One soundtrack · Half-Life 2: Episode Two soundtrack · Portal soundtrack · Portal 2 soundtrack
Songs	"Exile Vilify" · "Cara Mia (Turret Opera)" · "Still Alive" · "Want You Gone"
Game engines	GoldSrc · Source
Modding software	Half-Life SDK · Perpetual Testing Initiative · Source SDK · Valve Hammer Editor
Game developer companies	Gearbox Software · Valve Corporation
Production staff	Writers: Matthew Armstrong · Stephen Bahl · Chet Faliszek · Rob Heironimus · Brian Hess · Kristy Junio · Ted Kosmatka · Marc Laidlaw · David Mertz · Jay Pinkerton · Randy Pitchford · Erik Wolpaw Composers: Stephen Bahl · Kelly Bailey · Jonathan Coulton · Ben Houge · Chris Jensen · Mike Morasky (a.k.a. "Aperture Science Psychoacoustics Laboratory") · The National Artists: Viktor Antonov · Ted Backman · Stephen Bahl · Kelly Bailey · Jeremy Bennett · Laura Dubuk · Dhabih Eng · Moby Francke · Chuck Jones · Eric Kirchmer · Scott Klintworth · Karen Laur · Realm Lovejoy · Randy Lundeen · Yatsze Mark · Tri Nguyen · Michael Avon Oeming · Tristan Reidford · Andrea Wicklund Other: Aaron Barber · Jeep Barnett · Ken Birdwell · John Guthrie · Mike Harrington · Damarcus Holbrook · Brett Johnson · Doug Lombardi · Gabe Newell · Randy Pitchford · Dave Riller · David Speyrer · Jay Stelly · Kim Swift · Douglas R. Wood · Bill Van Buren
Voice actors	John Aylward · Dee Bradley Baker · Adam Baldwin · Robert Culp · Merle Dandridge · Michelle Forbes · Jim French · Louis Gossett Jr. · Robert Guillaume · Mary Kae Irvin · Kathy Levin · John Patrick Lowrie · Ellen McLain · Stephen Merchant · Joe Romersa · Lani Minella · Nolan North · Mike Patton · Harry S. Robins · Michael Shapiro · J.K. Simmons · Jon St. John · Tony Todd
Character models	Ted Backman · Kelly Bailey · Alésia Glidewell · Eric Kirchmer · Jamil Mullen
Books and comics	Development books: The Art of Portal 2 · The Final Hours of Portal 2 · Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar Comics: Portal 2: Lab Rat · Randolph the Red-Nosed Turret · Turret Lullaby · Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman (unofficial)
Films	Half-Life: Uplink (film) Fan films: Half-Life: Beyond Black Mesa · Half-Life: Escape from City 17 · Half-Life: Singularity Collapse Portal: Aperture: A Triumph of Science · Outside Aperture
Mods (to be completed)	GoldSrc: Absolute Redemption · Sven Co-op · Sweet Half-Life · The Specialists · They Hunger · USS Darkstar Source: Black Mesa · City 17: Episode One · Combine Destiny · Dystopia · FakeFactory's Cinematic Mod · MINERVA · Missing Information · Mistake of Pythagoras · NeoTokyo · Obsidian Conflict · Operation Black Mesa · Opposing Force 2 · Portal: Prelude · Portal: The Flash Version MapPack · SMOD · Synergy · The Citizen · Weekday Warrior · Zombie Panic! Source
Other	ApertureScience.com · Canon · Developer commentary · Half-Life and Portal universe · Half-Life High Definition Pack · Half-Life Preliminary Findings · Mr. Valve · The Orange Box Achievements · Portal 2 Achievements and Trophies · Retcons · Super 8 Interactive Teaser