User:Nextracer1/Sandbox

Nextracer1
Developer: Respawn Entertainment Publisher: Electronic Arts Platforms: Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 Released internationally: October 28, 2016 This game has unused animations. This game has unused code. This game has unused items. This game has unused abilities. This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden level select.

Titanfall 2 is the sequel to Titanfall, featuring new Titans and new Pilot abilities as well as first introducing the series to a single-player campaign. It is also quite infamous for having a pretty ridiculous amount of cut content.

Sub-Pages

80px	Unused Code Copious amounts of cut mechanics, sequences, gamemodes, etc.

80px	Unused Weapons, Items & Abilities Unused weapons, abilities... powerups??

80px	Level Oddities Weird things in levels that you don't normally see.

80px	Testing and Development Material Wacky developer-only startpoints, code functions and other sequences.

80px	Unused and Alternate Dialogue There is too much.

Developer Mode

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: See if it's possible to get any more of these options working.

By adding "+developer 1" and "-dev" to the launch parameters, the player can access a somewhat rudimentary "developer mode" that includes a new option next to the data center select at the bottom named "Dev Menu". This same menu is also accessible from the pause menu in-game, adding an additional "--dev" option to the end of the normal list of menu options.
The contents of the dev menu are dynamic and will differ depending on whether you are in gameplay, and whether you are in singleplayer, multiplayer or frontier defense. However, with the exception of spawning in a single grunt, very few of the options on this menu are still operable. Additionally, developer mode enables an indicator in the bottom left corner of the screen that displays what difficulty you're playing on in singleplayer.

Annoyingly, loading into the level "The Ark" while in this mode will also instantly crash the game unless you apply a manual fix in the level scripts.

SP Missions - An in-depth level select that would allow the player to load into any startpoint of any level in the entire game. The menu leads to a sub-menu listing every level in the game, followed by a menu listing that level's startpoints. Additionally, some of these levels have options that take you to developer-only startpoints, and not ones that appear in the actual level. In any map that has multiple levels take place on it (namely The Beacon hub map and the Effect and Cause campus), the menu lists both chapters as the same level, while the middle chapter is given its own submenu.

On this menu, every single mission in the game has a codename that was used during development. Each map is also given a description and an "owner", presumably the developer(s) who were working on that level.

Final name	Early name	Description	Owner
The Pilot's Gauntlet	Training	Learn the basics	Slayback / Soupy
BT-7274	Wilds	Organic wall run	Roger
Blood and Rust	Sewers	Toxic environment	Davis, Shaver
Into the Abyss	Boomtown Start	Chunks: Intro, Prop Warehouse, ThawTown, Disassembly	Shaver, Soupy, ChadG
Into the Abyss	Boomtown Middle	Chunks: Assembly, Sideways Town Climb, ReaperTown	Shaver, Soupy, ChadG, McCord
Into the Abyss	Boomtown End	Chunks: Above the Dome, Ash Fight	Shaver, McCord
Effect and Cause	Time Shift Part 1	Chunks: Lecture Halls, Overgrown Campus BT Explains It All, Pristine Campus, Reactor Meltdown	Lumberjake
Effect and Cause	Time Shift Part 2	Chunks: Wildlife Research, Human Research, Campus Return	Lumberjake
The Beacon	Beacon	Tightrope walk	McCord, Chad G.
The Beacon	Spoke 0	Powertech	McCord, Chad G.
Trial by Fire	T-Day	Promise of the premise	Chuck, Chad G.
The Ark	Ship to Ship	Ship to ship	Mo
The Fold Weapon	Skyway	High altitude	Grif

Unlock Campaign Missions - Does pretty much what it says on the tin. Selecting this option automatically unlocks the full mission select screen and allows the player to select any level in the game to start from. The unlocked levels don't save, though, and closing and relaunching the game will cause them all to be locked again if they were not unlocked before.

SP Style Maps - Similar to SP Missions, but instead features a selection of (non-working) test maps. These are explained in the unused maps section.

Unused Dev Menu Options

Internally, some options from this menu were commented out and thus are not displayed, but they evidently did exist at one point.
While they can be restored so that their option appears again in the in-game dev menu, none of them work anymore.

To do: Full function definitions for these can probably be found somewhere, and would give much more reliable info.

Name	Purpose	Notes
Difficulty	Would have allowed SP difficulty to be changed from the dev menu.	Oddly, was not made Singleplayer exclusive. It was also left broken and crashes the game if you try to restore it.
Disable New NPCs	Unknown
Toggle Blood Spray Decals	Would enable or disable enemy blood decals when attacked.
Play<name>VDU	VDUs here are referring to fully animated sequences of enemies' reactions to you, that were replaced with static images in the final game. This would have forced played some character's VDUs.	These contain some character names from the original Titanfall, who never actually appear in this game - namely "Spyglass", "Graves", "Mac" and "Bish".
TrailerTitanDrop	Presumably would set up a Respawn trailer-footage-gathering antic.	There are other things in levels related to dropping trailer titans, but it used the player's local view as a starting point and so was likely a separate thing.
AI Chatter: aichat_callout_pilot_dev	Would play a conversation test of the same name. Presumably this was a test for situational grunt callouts (e.g. the infamous "Look! A pilot! Now the odds are in our favour!")
Display Embark Times	Unknown	The function name shows they were debugging "embark times", whatever those were.
Toggle Bubble Shield	Unknown, but it seems pretty self-explanatory.	"Bubble Shield" is probably referring to the titan drop shield.
Toggle Grenade Indicators	Would have toggled on or off the grenade danger HUD indicator.

The dev menu would have also been where the [action block levels] were listed during development, but these options were also removed.

Unused / Early Maps

Unfortunately, functioning unused maps in this game are VERY hard to come by. We do, however, have many concepts of unused maps and information regarding them.

To do: you can load SOME of the pre alpha maps in retail lf_titan_sands referenced in dev strings (probably just an r1 thing)

Dev Menu Test Maps

As previously mentioned, the developer menu contains a collection of maps that were used for testing, though none of them work because their map files were removed from the game entirely. They do have names, (bad) descriptions, owners and filenames that give us some clues, though.

Name	Description	Owner	Tries to load
Timeshift Lobby	Timeshift lobby	Virgina	sp_timeshift_lobby_style_JV
Timeshift Lobby Destroyed	Timeshift lobby destroyed	Virgina	sp_timeshift_lobby_02_style_JV
Timeshift Bunker	Timeshift bunker	Timo	sp_timeshift_bunker_timo_art
Timeshift executive suite	Timeshift executive suite	Josh	sp_josh_timeshift_test_01
OLA Sewer	OLA Sewer	Jose	mp_sewer_style_jose
Lavaland Test	Lavaland Test	Jose	mp_lavaland_test_jose
Grave sky	Grave Sky Damaged	ToddS	mp_grave_sky_damage_style

• The first four all have "Timeshift" in their name, implying that they are based on the level Effect and Cause.
• The "OLA" in "OLA sewer" is a dev name referring to the Draconis ship, suggesting that it would have taken place there.
• In the map described as "Grave sky damaged", "Grave" is the internal name for the multiplayer map "boomtown", which is indeed a map that features a damaged sky. The pre-alpha contains a damaged grave sky "concept" model attributed to the same developer as this map, that depicts the geometry above the cracked sky from boomtown - this map was most likely Respawn messing around with this idea.

Action Blocks

A very interesting set of early levels, only found in a disabled menu in the scripts, are definitions for "Action Blocks". Respawn employee Soupy has done an entire GDC talk on these, but the overall idea is that Respawn spent the first 7 weeks of development blocking out quick, random, gimmicky test maps for whatever gameplay mechanic they thought would be cool. Every week would have a set of action blocks for other developers to try out and discuss, and at the end of this period they would take the ideas that worked and used them as a basis for gameplay mechanics in the actual campaign. Effect and Cause's time travel mechanic was the result of an action block, for instance.
While none of the test maps exist anymore, the dev menu contains an unused, commented out section defining every single week's action block names, maps and descriptions on what they were, giving us a ton of insight into what they looked like. Respawn themselves have also shown a lot of footage of action block maps.

According to the code for this, the dev menu would only show the action block maps from that particular week, which is why they each have a week number defined. It's also worth noting that the Fun House and Space Battle were both weirdly commented out of this menu before the rest were.

Action Block Name	Description	Week	Owner	Would Load
Timed Switch Panel Run	"Test your wallrunning abilities by jumping on timed platforms"	1	Sean	sp_platform_test01
Energon Room	"Combat test arena. Collect all Energon Spheres to win"	1	Mackey	sp_abmac1
Titan Buddy + Turret Columns	None	1	Carlos	carlos_test
Titan Buddy + Turret Columns	None	1	Carlos	carlos_test
Titan Maze	None	1	Soupy	p_act-block_maze
Catch me if you Can	"Catch up to a moving pilot and kill him to win"	1	Chin	catchmeifyoucan (would launch a playlist)
Jumping Puzzles	"Various pilot jumping puzzles with moving platforms"	1	ChadG	mp_chad
FLANKER BOOST loadout basics	"Non-wallrunning pilot jumping basics"	1	Brent	mp_ab_test
Flee Titan Attack by wallrunning	None	1	Roger	sp_ab_flee
Protect Grunt squad from Mortar fire	None	1	Roger	sp_ab_vortex
Catch me if you Can Part 2	None	1	Soupy	mp_catchme (would also set a playlist and gamemode)
Environment Puzzles	"Get your titan to the exit by solving some puzzles"	2	ChadG	mp_chad2
Fun House - survive to the end	None	2	Mo	mp_ab_funhouse
Assassin Arena - boss fight with the Assassin	None	2	Mo	sp_ab_assassin
Creature Ship	"Explore a crashed ship with mysterious cargo"	2	LumberJake	mp_actionblockjake01
Titan/Pilot Puzzles	"Get your titan to the green room"	2	RyanR	mp_ryanr_actionblock_01
Titan/Pilot Core Combat	None	2	Carlos	sp_ammo_pickup
Titan Overwatch	"Your sniping titan will cover you as you advance to the bunker"	2	Roger	sp_ab_titanbuddy
Rodeo Express	"Use your titan to get you through a pilot hazard area"	2	Chin	mp_chin_rodeo_express (would also set a playlist "lava")
Wallrun Gauntlet	"Wallrun through the geo and don't fall to your death"	2	McCord	sp_zipline_action_block01
Titan Mortar Targeting Test	None	2	Soupy	sp_mortar_targeting_test
Tremors	None	2	David	sp_tremors
Titan Combat Blok	"Combat arena. Kill all enemies."	2	Mackey	sp_abmac3
Smart Targeted Switch Panel	"Wallrun from wall to wall while activating switches"	2	Sean	sp_platform_test02
Combat Canyon	"Kill enemies in the canyon and extract"	3	Mo	sp_ab_ski
Titan v Titan	"Test Titan vs Titan combat against various titan AI"	3	Roger	sp_ab_tvt
Train Raid	"Board a speeding train and hack the explosives on board"	3	ChadG	sp_ab_trainride01
Super Spectre Bros	"Survive 6 waves against super spectres"	3	David	mp_ab_super_spectre_bros
Nightshot	"Help your titan buddy hunt in the dark."	4	David	sp_ab_nightshot
Space Battle	"Pilot a ship in space. -Play with Always run OFF. -Use low sensitivity. -Use bug_reproNum 1 to invert flight controls. -Use bug_reproNum 2 for PRO flight controls. (free look) -Use bug_reproNum 3 for inverted PRO flight controls."	4	Mo	sp_ab_week4
Buddy Fight	"Arena fight with buddy Titan"	4	Mackey	sp_buddy_fight
Fastball Special	"Use a new Titan ability to hurl yourself to new heights."	4	Slayback/McCord	sp_fastball
Time Travel Mechanic	"Travel back and forth through time to complete your mission."	4	Slayback/McCord	sp_actionblockjake02
Titan Ability: Death Blossom	"Use Up on D-Pad to use Death Blossom Use your new ability to defeat the enemies"	5	Mo	sp_ab_blossom (would also set bug_repronum 0)
Titan Ability: Arc Blast	"Use Down on D-Pad to use Arc Blast Use your new ability to defeat the enemies"	5	Mo	sp_ab_blossom (would also set bug_repronum 1)
Titan Abilities: Death Blosson + Arc Blast	"D-Pad Up = Death Blossom D-Pad Down = Arc Blast Use your new abilities to defeat the enemies"	5	Mo	sp_ab_blossom (would also set bug_repronum 2)
Time Stasis Gun	"Titan freezes enemies allowing the Pilot to do a one-shot kill"	5	LumberJake	sp_actionblockjake03
Fastball Mortar Battle	"Freeform Buddy Titan arena battle. - Fastball Special - Mortar Crews - Buddy Hibernation - Harvester Defense"	5	McCord/Slayback	sp_ab_mortar_battle01
Zipline Gun	"Create permanent ziplines in the map"	5	ChadG	mp_angelcity (would also set gamemode tdm and bug_repronum 1234)
Titan Hulk	"Buddy Titan hulks out and throws things."	6	David	sp_ab_titan_thrower
Player & Titan vs Enemy Titan	"Bare bones Pilot & Auto Titan vs Enemy Titan"	6	Roger	sp_ab_ptvt
Pilot Stasis Gun	"Pilot has a Stasis gun to help a friendly Titan out"	6	Soupy	sp_ab_synergy
Acid Rain	"- Destroy 3 harvesters in a poison rain storm - Avoid poison rain by staying in your Titan or indoors - Collect powerups to get rain immunity"	6	LumberJake	sp_actionblockjake04
Freeform Hallway Fight	"Move through the tight hallways with your Titan Buddy."	6	McCord/Slayback	sp_ab_hallway_fight01
Stealth Town	"Stealth through a group of enemy titans"	6	Carlos	sp_titan_stealth
Titan Attack Command	"Command your buddy titan to attack a position."	6	Mo	sp_ab_break
SP Shell	None	7	Chad/McCord	sp_shell1
Smart Pistol Progression	"Try different smart pistol mods in different combat situations"	7	Soupy	sp_ab_smart_pistol_ramp

mp_box

This is a rather iconic map among modders that can be seen all over early development screenshots, but the biggest in-game evidence of it existing can be found in the pre-alpha's files. It contains, among other levels, an overhead screenshot of mp_box from the level editor that was used as a placeholder minimap. It is also listed in the overview text file for mp_lobby, where it and its minimap are strangely listed in place of the actual lobby map, and it is also referenced in the persistent player data file where a developer comment says they needed it there in order to test stat tracking on it. This definitely seems like a barebones testing map for developers.
This is a map that has also existed in previous Titanfall games, and the version from Titanfall Online is able to be ported quite stably into Titanfall 2. Comparing these versions with the minimap, it seems like half of mp_box (namely, a separate firing range area) was removed and put in mp_engagement_range_test instead.

(IMAGE) (IMAGE)

mp_engagement_range_test

This map's name can be found in a few places internally, and is also referenced in the player persistent data file for the same reason as mp_box. The only public footage of this map that has ever existed is a video by former Respawn employee Ronan Sarono of a dabbing execution animation that he made and then instantly deleted.
As mentioned before, this map used to be merged with mp_box in earlier Titanfall entries.

(IMAGE)

Miscellaneous Test Maps

To end off the test maps, here a list of maps whose names appear in scripts, but that we know virtually nothing about.

• mp_titan_rodeo: shows up in the dev menu scripts, where it would've had unique dev menu commands for the map.
• model_viewer: ditto.
• sp_grunt_arena: ditto. Its unique dev command suggests there were health pickups on the map.

Early Versions of Used Maps

Also among the pre-alpha's collection of placeholder minimaps are a few screenshots of existing maps as they were in development.
There are 2 different unreleased layouts of the map Complex, oddly containing an ammo pickup icon from Titanfall 1:

(IMAGE) (IMAGE) (IMAGE)

And there is a much different version of the map used in the mission BT-7274.

(IMAGE) (IMAGE)

Unused Graphics

stuff

Unused Text

A file called dev_strings.txt contains the following unused localization strings. lf_titan_sands is a map file from the original Titanfall game.

"MP_LF_TITAN_SAND"							"Blasted Sands"
"MP_LF_TITAN_SAND_CLASSIC_DESC"				"An abandoned weapons testing facility? For me? You shouldn't have."

"BOSS_TITAN_A_LINE0"							"'Ion'"
"BOSS_TITAN_A_LINE1"							"Sgt. Mcdowell"
"BOSS_TITAN_A_LINE2"							"Particle Accelerator"

"BOSS_TITAN_B_LINE0"							"'Scorch'"
"BOSS_TITAN_B_LINE1"							"Commander Kessler"
"BOSS_TITAN_B_LINE2"							"Thermite M203"

"HINT_SWAP_LOADOUT"								"Hold %use% to switch loadout"