A semi-finished version of Valve’s hugely successful game (which was initially mishandled by the publisher, and which we’ve written about before) has surfaced online, courtesy of a veteran developer.
Chad Jessup found a CD with gold on it while cleaning out an old storage unit. Jessup was one of Half-Life’s external testers at the time, but we can’t find him on the staff list, as publisher Sierra’s QA folks only mention “a special thanks to our hard-working beta testers,” but he went on to work on Shadowrun for Xbox 360 and Destiny 2 add-ons. On September 12, he posted on Twitter that he had started cleaning out his old warehouse, and a week later he got his hands on a disc dated October 20, 1998…
Oh! Oh! Something I’ve been talking about for years…
Half-Life 1 beta 2 CD.
10.20.1996@Frogsnatcher – lemme see if it avoided disc rot, but 🤞. pic.twitter.com/bckztgatMb— Chad Jessup 🌻🍉 (@ubahs1337) September 19, 2024
I beta tested half-life 1, and was someone that came into their studio and looked like an idiot trying to solve their puzzles.
I can still point to the changes they made to the game because I was an idiot.
— Chad Jessup 🌻🍉 (@ubahs1337) September 19, 2024
The disc reads: Half-Life, Beta 2, Net Test 2. We’re still a few weeks away from release, but there are unfinished maps and changes to the script and textures. Jessup says there are some pretty surprising changes. The contents of the disc have found their way to the Internet Archive, although installation doesn’t seem to be that easy: some files need to be removed, and the multiplayer component tries to connect to a service that no longer exists.
One of the tracks has undergone a major change. The Forget About Freeman map in the beta has a section where it turns into the Communications Center, a map that is the basis of the Half-Life Uplink demo level and, according to Reagan, is one of the oldest maps in the game. So far, Reagan, who is documenting the beta, has only played 15 hours with this build, and Jessup says he’s not sure that’s all that’s left to be discovered in Valve’s great game.
Whatever else is yet to be discovered, there’s no doubt that the beta disk we found is very important for the preservation of the game, as it’s always exciting to see what’s different from the “retail” version so close to release (where was Steam back then…?). You can download the beta here.
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