So, what was that?

Yesterday, as you can probably tell - I was able to help release a beta build of Half-Life. While it's not from the most exciting period of development, it's something that hasn't been done in over 11 years.

I had been speaking to Chad (the very storied & gracious tester who dumped the build) for a little under a full year, I had basically found him at random one night when scrolling through twitter. That's really all the backstory that needs to be explained, so onto the more appealing part.

Is that disc actually any different?

Yes! But in super inconsistently interesting chunks.

Multiplayer was one of the last things properly worked on for the game, and it remains one of the objectively unfinished things in this build. 

As a side effect of this, if you look at any screenshot of the game's multiplayer prior to PCgamer's preview of it in November 1998 (when the game went gold) - Gordon & Gina have no special animations for any of the weapons, and while containing one two handed idle and firing animation for the shotgun, they hardly use it.

Other than this, the playermodel remains the same. bar his idle stance and the included animations, which are already on the Half-Life: Day One playermodel, including the funniest run animation anyone has ever put in an official product.

Strings left in the installer point towards face customization, a feature I honestly thought was an outright lie and was never implemented, but I guess I'm wrong. This feature for those unaware, was the ability to paste an image over the selected playermodel's face texture, It would've been controllable through the multiplayer menu much like the color system that's in place now. Valve mentioned this a few times in interviews before abandoning the idea shortly before release, probably due to the foreseeable abuse of the function.

The models for the weapons attached to players aren't finalized yet, the mp5 retains a higher quality texture (which is in reality just edited clipart of an mp5 from an old navy seals website, oh valve!), and a bonus broken normal.

The RPG, Gluon gun, and Crossbow all retain their old designs, the RPG and Gluon viewmodels had only been finalized a matter of days before this build.

Top: Old designs Bottom: Retail designs

The crossbow's viewmodel for some reason has a different rack-mounting mechanism in the middle, it uses a unique texture.

Left: Net-Test Crossbow Right: Retail Crossbow
Below: Rack texture

Like in the first release of the sdk, everyone with an HEV is by default (kind of) the right color! In the steam release and most WON versions, the suit is desaturated significantly

Net-Test Texture

Current steam texture 
UV Discrepancies are due to my model viewer

The last model, is the Human Grunt model, and somehow, the already ugly lanky model was even uglier!

I assume this coloring is a side effect of customizable color values not yet working, plus if it's not obvious, all playermodels contain (and therefore lack) the same animations the singleplayer playermodel does.

Another inexplicable change, a random, specially labeled Pepsi machine! Half-Life tried using several real soda brands before giving up and inventing fake ones. Somehow, Pepsi was their last choice, with minute made, surge cola, and coke coming before it.

Most maps have scripting differences, but it's down to inconsequential things such as enemy placement and item spawns, however, one map is entirely different. Map C3A1C, which is actually C3A1B in the final game, is a section of the chapter Forget About Freeman, which had major restructuring done to it throughout development. From this point forward: Left is Retail, Right is the Net-Test Build

The map opens with minor differences, unless you really care about the rotation of a pipe, then you're probably losing your shit right now.

The Net-Test version also has less moody lighting.

A more visually distinct lighting difference.

But at this point, the two maps completely diverge, the retail game sends the player into a large hanger style garage, and has them join a fight with Alien & Human grunts.

But in Net-Test, you end up in The Communications Center.

To make a long, absolutely redundant story short, The Communications Center is the original version of forget about freeman, the basic story for this chapter was reused for the demo Half-Life: Uplink, but contrary to popular belief, it wasn't reused wholesale, the maps in that demo were constructed by engineers Kelly Bailey and John Guthrie in about 2 weeks.

The Original map is one of the oldest in the game, displayed as such in a scan-line ridden screenshot here.
The version in Net-Test is devoid of any scripting aside from the radar dish being able to turn.

Oh, and the little funny guy right here is the Stukabat, a cut divebombing enemy. He has no code in the final game, so in this map he's just a animation cycling entity.

Another interesting change is the Rocket Control center, which received one of the latest scripting changes before the game went gold, it was done so late in fact, that the first edition of the game's online guide was downright wrong!

In the Retail game, all of these scientists are long dead, executed by the marines guarding the outside blast doors, but in old version of the game sent to the press, they had simply been locked inside the research station. The scripting for all of this remains in the final game, despite the actors meant to follow the scripts being rather dead.

Net-Test has this scene fully intact. To the point where I think the reason it was cut was the lack of time to record last minute dialogue, the scientist near the window walks up to you like he wants to say something, but has no voicelines set to play, and is weirdly silent even when mourning his dead colleague in the hallway.

Conclusion

There's definitely more to talk about such as the minor scripting changes and even more interesting things like the seemingly different grunt behavior present in this build, But it's only been 15 hours since anyone got access to it, so these should be considered early days. If anyone wants my advice, try to look at the code in some reverse engineering program, valve loved doing arbitrary changes to things, especially in engine. I'm just not smart enough to figure that all out myself.

That's about all I have to say, my next article will probably be on the conversation I had with the first Half-Life writer, and surprisingly, that title doesn't actually go to Marc Laidlaw, Thanks For Reading!