Halo 2 MP Beta

[Leon]

(to vip: posting this in public since theres no point talking in private)
This is the beta released to MS employees in July 2004.
Some people (mainly Xbox XDK owners) have this beta.

It would be nice if someone would share, seeing as the official Halo 2 servers are shut down, it may as well get leaked.
Would make a awesome present to everybody too

[lucas93]

It would be nice to have, even though it is unusable since the XBL servers went down.

It's probably possible to reactivate just like Xenon.7 did with the Halo 3 Beta.

EDIT: Leon did you get my PMs?

[Vista custo]

I've been waiting for this to leak for awhile, but it appears to still be in the clutches of build hoarders who either want money or simply refuse to leak it. I'm sure it could be reactivated as the original Xbox is so much more hackable than the 360. It should contain some interesting tidbits that probably haven't been seen in awhile.

[lucas93]

I've been waiting for this to leak for awhile, but it appears to still be in the clutches of build hoarders who either want money or simply refuse to leak it.

I think that's because they didn't originally get the build. I think some of them said that they got builds off their friends (who were Bungie employees or MS testers), and since builds are tagged to specific people, MS would knock on their friends door red in the face asking why the Halo 2 beta leaked to the general public.
So asking for money in return for the beta is probably a way to prevent the buyer leaking the build.
(all iirc)

It should contain some interesting tidbits that probably haven't been seen in awhile.

No point keeping these private:
A video I pulled from an old Bungie ViDoc


Everything below this point is not mine, I found them on another forum

Mongoose:


Weapons:
Flamethrower (note the incomplete HUD, ammo is still in Halo CE position)

Disruptor (I believe the original image uploader says this weapon does no damage)



Random images:

Note the health pack on the floor (on the floor above the viewmodel)

Headhunter? Oh, that thing that's now appearing in Reach!


Enjoy

[Leon]

Some images of the folder structure I found:




not sure if they are real, but they look legit, googling Halo2B.xbe finds nothing so don't try)

Offtopic Comment

(lol, everytime i used to see someone not use image uploader i'd think wtf how did they forget, but now i see how easy it is lol... fixed)

I think that's because they didn't originally get the build. I think some of them said that they got builds off their friends (who were Bungie employees or MS testers), and since builds are tagged to specific people, MS would knock on their friends door red in the face asking why the Halo 2 beta leaked to the general public.
So asking for money in return for the beta is probably a way to prevent the buyer leaking the build.
(all iirc)

I don't think this is true, somebody I talk to has told me that the hash of 2 different discs was the same, so there is no tagging on these. People just don't leak because they enjoy hoarding.

[Vista custo]

Well as far as I can tell the builds aren't tagged to any specific person the names are simply the account that's playing and it can be local or LIVE so it's not specific. I forgot Headhunter was planned for Halo 2 as well as Halo 3 but never made it into either which is odd but seeing how it plays out in Reach doesn't exactly have me curious.

So far from the leaked beta footage from a few years ago it doesn't appear playable or I suspect the user would of put out gameplay footage. Seeing how it requires a Developers Kit kinda make it hard to use I suppose. I wonder what Cyclotron is? Is it the original name of Lockout or a scrapped map?

[Leon]

zanzibar = zanzibar
midship = midship
cyclotron = ivory tower
waterworks = waterworks

I don't think it requires a dev kit, as it was given out to any MS employee who asked (and not all of them had dev kits). I know that the documentation that comes with the disc says that it doesn't connect to the retail network, but a "G5 Live" network, (or GS, idk). As said above this should be able to be cracked just like the Halo3 and reach betas.

[lucas93]

Again iirc, retail discs no longer work, and builds installed on dev kits worked prior to MS shutting down the original Xbox servers.

[eisnerguy1]

Huh, this is some pretty interesting stuff. It's always exciting to see some of the stuff that was cut out of final versions of games. This is quite a community

[Fusion]

This requires a debug/dev kit as they have 128MB of RAM. The game runs like ass on a modded retail.

[lucas93]

Are you speaking from experience Fusion?

[Fusion]

Yes

[SLAYERMAGGOT]

Does anyone have the Halo 2 PC Beta?
http://digg.com/gaming_news/Get_Halo_2_PC_Beta

[Leon]

XBE Header Details
----------------------------------
(c:\halo2\Beta\bin\halo2alpha.exe)
** Image header size is unusual!
Base Addr: 0x00010000 65536
Size of Image: 0x007E4EC0 8277696
Number of Sections: 0x00000011 17
Initialization Flags: 0x80000005 2147483653
(Mount utility Drive)
(Limit memory to 64MB)
Entry Point Address: 0xA8CD7936 2832038198
Entry Point Real: 0x00302E9D 3157661
Original Base Address: 0x00011B60 72544
Original Size of Image: 0x0082DF80 8576896
Original Checksum: 0x00838099 8618137

Strange, the original xbe I have has the 64mb memory limit flag, but the partnernet-patched version I have doesn't, too bad partnernet doesn't work since they shut down the original xbox servers does anyone know a way around this? maybe memory editing using the xbox debug stuff...

[pyong]

Hey, new guy here who just got debug stuff working on my retail.
Is there any news as to where this has gone?
I'm really interested in playing the beta.

[Gamecheat]

i had the halo 2 beta
when xbox1 pnet was still up
some stuff was fun but as for online it sucked
the game would crash if you join another players party

[thegoldenrole]

gamecheat, then whats stopping you from doing a quick rip and upload?

[pyong]

Do you happen to know anyone with it?

[pyong]

Anyone happen to have the forceloader files?