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Proto:Half-Life (Windows)/Build 725 (Oct 19, 1998)

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This is a sub-page of Proto:Half-Life (Windows).

Hmmm...
To do:
Document Map differences in both MP and the Campaign, there are many.

Hiddenpalace.org logo.png  This prototype is documented on Hidden Palace.

A Half-Life prototype from October 19th, 1998 marked "Beta 12" and "Net Test 2" was found and dumped by Chad Jessup. It predates the US gold release by just 17 days. It contains an unused map and a few minor differences from the final game.

This build is date limited and requires the host machine's date to be set to October 1998 to be launched, but this can be patched in a hex editor e.g. by going to offset 277285 in hl.exe and changing the hex values 750C to EB14.

Documents

The CD installer comes with multiple documents for testers on how to give feedback for the game. These documents are transcribed in the following sub-pages:

TextIcon.png
 readme
TextIcon.png
 Bugs Bugs Bugs
TextIcon.png
 Early Reactions
TextIcon.png
 Install and Setup
TextIcon.png
 Multiplayer
TextIcon.png
 Overall Summary
TextIcon.png
 Uninstall

Unused Map

c3a1c is a cut map present in this build. It starts off in the hidden elevator from Forget about Freeman! (map c3a1) containing the red triangle, now to the left of the player. After exiting the elevator, the player goes through the radiation room with two HECU soldiers. After that, however, is a dome with a satellite dish on it, similar to what's shown on the Uplink demo, albeit less finished. The objective is the same: tune the transmitter to the US NRC.

A Stukabat is seen flying over the dome. However, it is only a cycler entity, and as such, will cycle through its animations when shot at.

  • The starting elevator.

  • The radiation-filled room.

  • The satellite.

  • Ditto, now tuned in to the US NRC.

  • The Stukabat.

Unused Graphics

gfx.wad

  • XLAMBDA.bmp

  • XLAMBDA1.bmp

Lambda icons, purpose unknown.

Texture Differences

gfx.wad

Texture Prototype Final
PAUSED.bmp HL1 PAUSED net2.png HL1 PAUSED.png

The pause graphic is larger.

halflife.wad

Texture Prototype Final
PEPSI_SD.bmp HL1 PEPSI SD net2.png Hl PEPSI SD.png
PEPSI_FT.bmp HL1 PEPSI FT net2.png Hl PEPSI FT.png

The Pepsi branded vending machine textures are uncensored.

Model Differences

player.mdl

Prototype Final
HL1 player.png HL1 player net2.png

Gordon's model is similar to his Day One demo counterpart, including all the different animations. The gender bodygroup has been replaced with a helmet bodygroup, and the weapons bodygroup has been removed entirely.

p_crossbow.mdl

Prototype Final
HL1 p crossbow net2.png HL1 p crossbow.png
Texture Prototype Final
stock.bmp
HL1 p crossbow stock net2.png
HL1 p crossbow stock.png
sightcyl.bmp
HL1 p crossbow sightcyl net2.png
HL1 p crossbow sightcyl.png
recieverside.bmp
HL1 p crossbow receiverside net2.png
HL1 p crossbow receiverside.png
world_grip.bmp
HL1 p crossbow worldgrip net2.png
HL1 p crossbow worldgrip.png

The crossbow has a few different textures.

p_egon.mdl

Prototype Final
HL1 p egon net2.png HL1 p egon.png

The Gluon Gun has a very different design. The view model (w_egon2) for this version of the Gluon Gun is present in the Half-Life SDK with less detailed textures.

p_rpg.mdl

Prototype Final
Hl1 p rpg net2.png HL1 p rpg.png

The RPG has its design as seen in the Day One demo and in some pre-release screenshots.

v_crossbow.mdl

Prototype Final
HL1 v crossbow net2.png HL1 v crossbow.png

The center has a unique texture, internally named recslide.bmp.

HL1 v crossbow recslide.png

islave.mdl

Texture Prototype Final
Toes1.bmp
HL1 islave Toes1 net2.png
HL1 islave Toes1.png

Toes1.bmp is a tiny grey rectangle, while the model is otherwise the same.

Multiplayer

Hmmm...
To do:
Compare the second bodygroup for each model as well. (It is the "High res" bodygroup)

There are only four multiplayer models are in the models/player folder, each with the same animations as player.mdl.
All four DM player models are close to their final counterparts save for two major differences; their default textures feature much more saturated colors and different animations. This is most obvious with the Hgrunt, who takes on a neon color scheme.

gina.mdl

Prototype Final
HL1 gina net2.png HL1 gina multiplayer.png

Gina's HEV suit is darker.

gordon.mdl

Prototype Final
HL1 net2 gordon.png HL1 gordon multiplayer.png

Gordon's HEV suit is brighter in this build.

helmet.mdl

Prototype Final
HL1 helmet net2.png HL1 helmet multiplayer.png

The HEV suit is brighter.

hgrunt.mdl

Prototype Final
HL1 hgrunt net2.png HL1 hgrunt multiplayer.png

The human grunt has a very strange, garish color palette.

Menu Differences

  • The "3D info site" button is missing entirely. This button was seemingly added in the very last days of development, as even Build 738 doesn't have it.
  • The "Content Control" button is called the "Gore reduction" button in this build.
  • The button to view the readme has different capitalization, saying "View readme.txt" rather than "View Readme.txt"
  • The "LAN game" button has wonky capitalization and instead says "Lan game"
  • The WON logo is not present anywhere in the settings.

Player Customization

The player customization menu is unfinished; most options do not work, with only the player name and colour actually being saved:

  • The model preview is not displayed at all, although there is a box to display it.
  • The spray preview is also not displayed, although there is a box to display it and the actual spray icons are identical to the final game.
  • The UI generally has rendering issues - the player model suit color box may not completely or at all display.

Product Previews

These do not exist at all, and clicking the "Previews" button to view them causes an error as the HTML files displaying them are not present - the only HTML file packaged with the game is a list of driver websites for GPUs of the era.

Control Differences

  • There is an additional control binding in this build inherited from Quake, "messagemode2", used for team chat. It has been completely removed for the final. This may relate in some form to the scrapped cooperative multiplayer mode)
  • The "key descriptions" in the various kb_* files don't exist in this build - only the actual key names are listed.

Miscellaneous

  • p_shotgun.mdl and p_9mmar.mdl appear as they do in the Day One demo.
  • Sound settings are not set up in valve.rc
  • joystick.cfg is not run by default.
  • The German models are present in their own folders.
  • The default value of gl_zoffset on Nvidia RIVA TNT cards (rivatnt.cfg) was changed from 0 to 0.1.

3DLabs GPU support

It appears that 3Dlabs GPUs had not been thoroughly tested with Half-Life as of this build as various settings were tweaked by the final to work around buggy drivers and general poor support for 3D graphics techniques:

  • Overbright is enabled by default (in the final game, it is disabled by default )
  • Coloured lighting is enabled by default (in the final game, it is disabled by default)
  • Fullbright is always enabled by default (in the final game, it is disabled by default)
  • Paletted textures are enabled by default. According to a comment in the file, they are disabled because, although the Permedia 2 GPU advertises support for paletted textures in its OpenGL driver, they show up as white when they are actually rendered by the game.
  • "Amplitude of waves in GL (temporary)" comment removed
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