Digsite

The logo used by the Digsite team.

Digsite is the name of a team comprised of 343 Industries employees and community modders, whose goal is to recover cut content from previous Halo games, polish it, and make it available to modders of those games, usually through the Halo Editing Kit released for the game, if available. This process requires scouring 343 Industries' internal archives to find surviving files related to the cut content, in some cases reverse-engineering compiled assets, updating them to work with the version of the game engine used at launch - which may have been changed significantly during development after the cut content was abandoned - and occasionally creating new textures or animations to fill gaps in cases where the cut content was partially lost or unfinished. For some of these purposes, the team devised custom tools to allow them to work more effectively.

History

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Known team members

• Kenneth "Ken" Peters (Senior Franchise Writer at 343 Industries)
• Sean "kornman" Cooper (Publishing Team member at 343 Industries)
• Conscars (Community modder)
• General_101 (Community modder)
• Num0005 (Community modder)
• xScruffyDaSasquatchx (Community modder)
• Sean T (Community modder)
• Ludus (Community modder)
• Zeddikins (Community modder)

Additional team members joined the project in 2023:

• Crisp (Community modder)
• Killzone64 (Community modder)
• Krevil (Community modder)
• Neo Te Aika (Community composer and modder)

Departure and content leak

In December of 2024, following the releases of Earth City and Alpha Moon, the team shipping all content for the first two games departed the Digsite project, citing burnout and no longer being able to contribute. The remaining team intended to continue efforts towards later games.

Later that month, around December 27th, a leak of ~90 gigabytes of source data and material pertaining to Halo development and debugging appeared on 4chan, and quickly circulated online. This included playable builds of the Macworld 1999 and E3 2000 era, game design documents, cut content, development and debugging tools for games across MCC, an early version of the development tools for Halo 2 Vista, and material that was part of, or going to be released via Digsite, across all games in MCC except for Halo 4 and Halo 2: Anniversary.

Digsite members were able to corroborate that the leaked Digsite content appeared to be sourced from before their work on Earth City and Alpha Moon for HCS 2024 and also contained several files and data that the Digsite team themselves had not personally known existed, but publicly stated they did not know who leaked the content, and were not responsible. Shortly after, Ken and other studio staff departed multiple community Halo servers, where it is presumed that the project is now on hold until further notice.

On December 31st, Microsoft begun to issue DMCA notices to several YouTube content creators and Discord servers, not only for covering the leaks, but including content posted about wider Digsite, including direct links to Halo Waypoint articles. Their reasoning for this has not yet been publicly stated.

Restored content

Digsite Alpha (Pre-Xbox Halo and Halo: Combat Evolved)

Main article: Halo: Combat Evolved cut content

This section needs expansion. You can help Halopedia by expanding it.

The following is a list of known Halo: CE content restored as part of the Digsite Alpha project, named in reference to Alpha Halo.

Characters and NPCs Human 5 early cyborg (Master Chief) models Covenant Early "toad" Elite model Slugman Ambient life Blind Wolf Thornbeast Keelbug Maps b20 Dusk Indoor Spasm Ruined pain

Weapons Various early iterations of Halo: Combat Evolved weapons Human Machete Missile Launcher "Needler" minigun Several SMG variants Spear Gun Covenant Early Beam Rifle iterations Forerunner Concussion Gun Excavator Flak Cannon Gravity Wrench Microwave Gun Vehicles Various RTS vehicles Human Early Warthog iterations Doozy Kestrel Viper Covenant Seraph tank Shadow (originally known as the c_transport) Spectre (originally known as the "Shadow") Forerunner Forerunner Tank

Digsite Delta (Halo 2)

Main article: Halo 2 cut content

This section needs expansion. You can help Halopedia by expanding it.

The following is a list of known Halo 2 content restored as part of the Digsite Delta project, named in reference to Delta Halo.

Maps Singleplayer Alpha Moon Arcology Destructo Earth City M20 Moonbase (not to be confused with Alpha Moon) Multiplayer (Early revisions of maps that shipped in the final game) Ascension Burial Mounds Colossus Headlong Lockout Midship Waterworks (Previously unreleased maps) Anchor Point Artery Backwoods Convergence Convict Grotto Rodentia Shaft Soccer (Rare map samples intended for distribution with the editing kit from Halo 2's Vista port) Human Sample "Earth City" Forerunner Sample "Beach Battle" Covenant Sample

Vehicles Human Early Warthog iterations Mongoose Piglet Überchassis Covenant Covenant Command Shuttle

Gallery

Trailers

A trailer for Digsite, as premiered at the 2022 Halo Modding Community Showcase.

Branding

• 

  An older, unofficial logo used by the Digsite team.

• 

  The current logo, created by Ludus in 2022.

List of official Digsite articles

• Cutting Room Floor
• Cutting Room Corps
• Canon Fodder - Cutting Room Lore
• Digsite Deliveries (Cutting Room Galore)
• Digsite Discoveries (Cutting Room More)
• Canon Fodder - Digsite Dissection (Cutting Room More)
• Digsite Deep Dive
• Canon Fodder - Digsite n'Discourse
• Disgite Demos - Halo 2