Hey all, Figured I share a bit of Halo history with everyone, something you might enjoy, Sit back, grab a sandwhich, and enjoy the read and pictures.
For the past year or so I've been in possession of a beta/alpha build of Halo 2. Sadly, I lacked the ability to use the beta to the fullest of it's extent, I was pretty much only limited to browsing the main menu and not actually playing the maps due to certain restrictions. Recently I was blessed with a solution and used a really sketchy way to force the beta maps to load, It actually works, but for some odd reason it would always load up assault with no teams, lol? As long as it worked though, I was happy.
I'll fit a few of the best things I found in the beta thus far in this post, for the other 70+ pictures, check the directory I have them uploaded on, It will be at the end of this post. I'll try to setup a webpage with a built in flash gallery so you can easily browse through the pictures, I'll be sure to add commentary to all the pictures so you know what's so special about it, but for now, you can only ponder.
Onto the eyecandy ; )
The build's MainMenu, IMO, It was a lot better then the retail build's menu. This was simple, but slick looking.
My player model, It's got a cool emblem that was left out of retail, pictures of more emblems that didn't make retail are in the directory.
The problem I faced, everything was blocked except Xbox Live, and the Options menu's from the first picture.
This was my first glimpse of the beta maps, the very first time I got it to load right when I spawned, took a quick snapshot.
Network information, was pretty cool to see that it actually tracked all the info for LIVE and Local play.
The Halo 2 Flamethrower, Note the H1 HUD bitmap in the upper left hand corner. The flamethrower was mostly finished beside some hud issues, and the flame effect absolutly sucked, worse then the H1 PC flamethrower by far.
Flamethrower, as you can see, not perfect, sinking into the ground... or wheel in this case.
Can you say disintigrator? This was mostly finished too besides the fact that it lacked a texture. It acted like a Covie flamethrower in a sense, the actual effect was pretty nice. This uses the exact same arm animations as the sentinel beam did in the retail build of Halo 2.
A better view of the gun in general, whacked and took a quick picture.
Another view of it, managed to get it hanging off the edge, otherwise it would sink into the ground a bit, just like the flamethrower, so I tried to get a good shot of it as a whole.
One of the MANY glitches I found in the beta, if you walk forward and look down while facing a wall, you could see through it
.
And who can't forget the mongoose? I'll describe how it was at this build of Halo 2 a bit later on.
All the vehicles actually in the beta, or is it? You will have to wait till a later time for me to show the last one, It's never been heard of, or revealed to the public... as far as I know o_o (And I know a lot)
MEGA BOOST! These crazy big flames shot out the sides of the wraith when you boosted, was pretty funny.
Moving along to different maps then zanzibar...
Different beam rifle scope, it also had some crazy glyphs running along the side, I thought it was pretty cool, but the oval was knida dull.
Sadly the beta had a fall timer, you fall for too long, you die. As you can see, this happend to me a few times.
Halo 1 reticule anyone? The main tank shell also had a bit of an arch in the beta, wasn't completly straight as it is in retail.
Some more mongoose's because I am sure a few of you would love to see as much as you can of them.
Spartan Bino's, I thought they were kinda cool.
Floating bruteshot? No Sword? D:
The big platform was really weird, it wasn't affected by the gravlifts below, and the gravlits didn't even affect a person, they were just for looks apparently. The platform moved really slow and you could stand on one side till it tilted all the way down, then you could run up it and jump off before it barley even moved back to normal, was slow and lethargic ;p
Health packs! Saw these floating around a few maps.
Weird light in the middle of lockout turned me blue, was kinda neat.
Can you spot what's missing? ; )
I don't remember these being lighted, so I took a picture of it, thought it was a nice touch.
The fully charged plasma pistol shot had a large splash radius, it kinda makes a little mushroom cloud that lingers for a few seconds. It would drain anyone's shields within quite a distance, as you can see, it took mine out.
No more plasma pistol punch, it seemed more or less like he slapped people with the thing o_o, guess that wasn't manly enough to keep in the final. Plasma pistol seemed like the most glitchy weapon in the whole beta though, I'll detail it later.
More dinking around with the mongoose in the secret labratory o_o, it's wur secrhetz hide.
More mongoose.
And that's what happens when you have too much fun, pretty much I crashed the beta .
And that would be all the pictures I can fit in the post before it starts turning them into just links.
I may point out some more pictures later, I'm pretty tired after putting all these up, I made a quick script in photoshop so it would quickly black out the beta serial and session id to be on the safe side. That's the black bar you see on the bottom of all the screenshots.
The numbers you see in the upperleft hand corner of all the screenshots were constantly scrolling and cycling, I believe they are for the crash reports, I viewed some of the logs after I crashed the game, was cool to look through.
A quick things though, this beta is VERY VERY rare to come across, I got extremley lucky to get ahold of it, no matter how hard you search, you won't find it. It's not hosted anywhere online, Torrents, P2P, Rapidshare, for those of you who are pirates. You just won't find it, Period. The only way to get ahold of it is to find the few that actually HAVE it, and if you do, there's a very slim chance they will part with it, even with offers of money and what not. Say you do get it? Awesome, have fun browsing the menu like I did for about a year, You'll never get past it unless you actually know how the game works, note that it took me a full year and it resulted in someone deducing a simple method of forcing maps to load, that's after being in the Halo Modding scene for almost 4 years ontop of that. Say you do manage to get the game loaded? Not to add to it, but you won't find the Mongoose, Flamethrower, Disintigrator or any of the REALLY cool stuff anywhere, That's because it wasn't enabled in the beta, No modding tool's can open the maps either due to the fact that the map structure is completly different then Halo 2, if anything, it's like Halo 1. I had to personally spawn the things in using a custome tool, It's going to be impossible for anyone to do by themselves.
So yeah, It's not worth the effort, sorry to burst the bubbles.
As for the mongoose, It works, you can drive it around, shoot rockets at it, do whatever you want really. It's actually pretty cool to actually experience what it was meant to be. However it wasn't finalized like I said, that's why it wasn't enabled or set to spawn on any maps. The thing had some unfinished animations for the back suspension, so they bobble around a bit. Sometimes when you get in the mongoose, the breaks are locked and you can't even move the mongoose, you gotta get out and hop in a few times, it happens sometimes when you stop or get off it. The turning is really wide, feels like you are driving a warthog with bad turning, it's got the same sound as a low reving warthog, and it lacks a handbreak, so it's kinda hard to make a decent turn. When you are driving along and hit some bumps, the mongoose kind of jerks and slow's down a bit, obviously the collison model had a few issues along with the general workings of the vehicle.
Weapons:
BR was single shot when zoomed, 3 round burst when unzoomed.
Rockets and brute shots didn't seem to hurt yourself, was really weird.
Aiming was off for all FP weapons as the camera was misplaced, also why you can see through walls.
Carbine can hold about 300 ammo and was semi automatic, hold the trigger and it shoots about 2-3 shots a second.
The Bomb glowed red, like hardcore red, big and flashy, I'll get a picture later.
Plasma pistol, already explained above.
With the sword, if you held R, you would just keep swinging the thing, went pretty fast too.
Human Sniper scope was kinda broken, the screen displayed some random part of the level or something, still trying to figure that one out.
There are a few other things I KNOW I am missing, I'll try to add them later if I remember.
Few emblems and stuff, you can see that in the image directory, they are in the first 20 pictures or so if I recall.
Spectre had no animations and was also unfinished, was kinda dorky and I had to manually spawn that myself too.
Lot's of glitches in the beta, To tired to explain them all right now, not sure you if guys would really care for them either. You might notice that I have no radar either, that has to do with the fact that I was playing assault, the radar should be in the lower left hand corner connected to the health bar, but until I can find a way to play just slayer, that's how the HUD is going to look.
As for the one vehicle I hinted about earlier, I'll post some pictures of it in a few days I guess, Don't want to spoil it all in one go .
Click here to find a list of all the images, Feel free to poke around if you wish.
CREDITS:
Grimdoomer & Xbox7887 for their research into forcing maps to load for this to work.
And thanks most of all to Detox for a tool of his that I really should not have :/
-Doom
For the past year or so I've been in possession of a beta/alpha build of Halo 2. Sadly, I lacked the ability to use the beta to the fullest of it's extent, I was pretty much only limited to browsing the main menu and not actually playing the maps due to certain restrictions. Recently I was blessed with a solution and used a really sketchy way to force the beta maps to load, It actually works, but for some odd reason it would always load up assault with no teams, lol? As long as it worked though, I was happy.
I'll fit a few of the best things I found in the beta thus far in this post, for the other 70+ pictures, check the directory I have them uploaded on, It will be at the end of this post. I'll try to setup a webpage with a built in flash gallery so you can easily browse through the pictures, I'll be sure to add commentary to all the pictures so you know what's so special about it, but for now, you can only ponder.
Onto the eyecandy ; )
The build's MainMenu, IMO, It was a lot better then the retail build's menu. This was simple, but slick looking.
My player model, It's got a cool emblem that was left out of retail, pictures of more emblems that didn't make retail are in the directory.
The problem I faced, everything was blocked except Xbox Live, and the Options menu's from the first picture.
This was my first glimpse of the beta maps, the very first time I got it to load right when I spawned, took a quick snapshot.
Network information, was pretty cool to see that it actually tracked all the info for LIVE and Local play.
The Halo 2 Flamethrower, Note the H1 HUD bitmap in the upper left hand corner. The flamethrower was mostly finished beside some hud issues, and the flame effect absolutly sucked, worse then the H1 PC flamethrower by far.
Flamethrower, as you can see, not perfect, sinking into the ground... or wheel in this case.
Can you say disintigrator? This was mostly finished too besides the fact that it lacked a texture. It acted like a Covie flamethrower in a sense, the actual effect was pretty nice. This uses the exact same arm animations as the sentinel beam did in the retail build of Halo 2.
A better view of the gun in general, whacked and took a quick picture.
Another view of it, managed to get it hanging off the edge, otherwise it would sink into the ground a bit, just like the flamethrower, so I tried to get a good shot of it as a whole.
One of the MANY glitches I found in the beta, if you walk forward and look down while facing a wall, you could see through it
.
And who can't forget the mongoose? I'll describe how it was at this build of Halo 2 a bit later on.
All the vehicles actually in the beta, or is it? You will have to wait till a later time for me to show the last one, It's never been heard of, or revealed to the public... as far as I know o_o (And I know a lot)
MEGA BOOST! These crazy big flames shot out the sides of the wraith when you boosted, was pretty funny.
Moving along to different maps then zanzibar...
Different beam rifle scope, it also had some crazy glyphs running along the side, I thought it was pretty cool, but the oval was knida dull.
Sadly the beta had a fall timer, you fall for too long, you die. As you can see, this happend to me a few times.
Halo 1 reticule anyone? The main tank shell also had a bit of an arch in the beta, wasn't completly straight as it is in retail.
Some more mongoose's because I am sure a few of you would love to see as much as you can of them.
Spartan Bino's, I thought they were kinda cool.
Floating bruteshot? No Sword? D:
The big platform was really weird, it wasn't affected by the gravlifts below, and the gravlits didn't even affect a person, they were just for looks apparently. The platform moved really slow and you could stand on one side till it tilted all the way down, then you could run up it and jump off before it barley even moved back to normal, was slow and lethargic ;p
Health packs! Saw these floating around a few maps.
Weird light in the middle of lockout turned me blue, was kinda neat.
Can you spot what's missing? ; )
I don't remember these being lighted, so I took a picture of it, thought it was a nice touch.
The fully charged plasma pistol shot had a large splash radius, it kinda makes a little mushroom cloud that lingers for a few seconds. It would drain anyone's shields within quite a distance, as you can see, it took mine out.
No more plasma pistol punch, it seemed more or less like he slapped people with the thing o_o, guess that wasn't manly enough to keep in the final. Plasma pistol seemed like the most glitchy weapon in the whole beta though, I'll detail it later.
More dinking around with the mongoose in the secret labratory o_o, it's wur secrhetz hide.
More mongoose.
And that's what happens when you have too much fun, pretty much I crashed the beta
.And that would be all the pictures I can fit in the post before it starts turning them into just links.
I may point out some more pictures later, I'm pretty tired after putting all these up, I made a quick script in photoshop so it would quickly black out the beta serial and session id to be on the safe side. That's the black bar you see on the bottom of all the screenshots.
The numbers you see in the upperleft hand corner of all the screenshots were constantly scrolling and cycling, I believe they are for the crash reports, I viewed some of the logs after I crashed the game, was cool to look through.
A quick things though, this beta is VERY VERY rare to come across, I got extremley lucky to get ahold of it, no matter how hard you search, you won't find it. It's not hosted anywhere online, Torrents, P2P, Rapidshare, for those of you who are pirates. You just won't find it, Period. The only way to get ahold of it is to find the few that actually HAVE it, and if you do, there's a very slim chance they will part with it, even with offers of money and what not. Say you do get it? Awesome, have fun browsing the menu like I did for about a year, You'll never get past it unless you actually know how the game works, note that it took me a full year and it resulted in someone deducing a simple method of forcing maps to load, that's after being in the Halo Modding scene for almost 4 years ontop of that. Say you do manage to get the game loaded? Not to add to it, but you won't find the Mongoose, Flamethrower, Disintigrator or any of the REALLY cool stuff anywhere, That's because it wasn't enabled in the beta, No modding tool's can open the maps either due to the fact that the map structure is completly different then Halo 2, if anything, it's like Halo 1. I had to personally spawn the things in using a custome tool, It's going to be impossible for anyone to do by themselves.
So yeah, It's not worth the effort, sorry to burst the bubbles.
As for the mongoose, It works, you can drive it around, shoot rockets at it, do whatever you want really. It's actually pretty cool to actually experience what it was meant to be. However it wasn't finalized like I said, that's why it wasn't enabled or set to spawn on any maps. The thing had some unfinished animations for the back suspension, so they bobble around a bit. Sometimes when you get in the mongoose, the breaks are locked and you can't even move the mongoose, you gotta get out and hop in a few times, it happens sometimes when you stop or get off it. The turning is really wide, feels like you are driving a warthog with bad turning, it's got the same sound as a low reving warthog, and it lacks a handbreak, so it's kinda hard to make a decent turn. When you are driving along and hit some bumps, the mongoose kind of jerks and slow's down a bit, obviously the collison model had a few issues along with the general workings of the vehicle.
Weapons:
BR was single shot when zoomed, 3 round burst when unzoomed.
Rockets and brute shots didn't seem to hurt yourself, was really weird.
Aiming was off for all FP weapons as the camera was misplaced, also why you can see through walls.
Carbine can hold about 300 ammo and was semi automatic, hold the trigger and it shoots about 2-3 shots a second.
The Bomb glowed red, like hardcore red, big and flashy, I'll get a picture later.
Plasma pistol, already explained above.
With the sword, if you held R, you would just keep swinging the thing, went pretty fast too.
Human Sniper scope was kinda broken, the screen displayed some random part of the level or something, still trying to figure that one out.
There are a few other things I KNOW I am missing, I'll try to add them later if I remember.
Few emblems and stuff, you can see that in the image directory, they are in the first 20 pictures or so if I recall.
Spectre had no animations and was also unfinished, was kinda dorky and I had to manually spawn that myself too.
Lot's of glitches in the beta, To tired to explain them all right now, not sure you if guys would really care for them either. You might notice that I have no radar either, that has to do with the fact that I was playing assault, the radar should be in the lower left hand corner connected to the health bar, but until I can find a way to play just slayer, that's how the HUD is going to look.
As for the one vehicle I hinted about earlier, I'll post some pictures of it in a few days I guess, Don't want to spoil it all in one go
. Click here to find a list of all the images, Feel free to poke around if you wish.
CREDITS:
Grimdoomer & Xbox7887 for their research into forcing maps to load for this to work.
And thanks most of all to Detox for a tool of his that I really should not have :/
-Doom
