Digsite
From Halopedia, the Halo wiki
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.[1][2]
History
This section needs expansion. You can help Halopedia by expanding it.
Known team members
- Kenneth "Ken" Peters[1] (Senior Franchise Writer at 343 Industries)
- Sean "kornman" Cooper[1] (Publishing Team member at 343 Industries)
- Conscars[2] (Community modder)
- General_101[2] (Community modder)
- Num0005[2] (Community modder)
- xScruffyDaSasquatchx[2] (Community modder)
- Sean T[2] (Community modder)
- Ludus[2] (Community modder)
- Zeddikins[2] (Community modder)
Additional team members joined the project in 2023:[3]
- Crisp[3] (Community modder)
- Killzone64[3] (Community modder)
- Krevil[3] (Community modder)
- Neo Te Aika[3] (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[4] 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 from before their work on Earth City and Alpha Moon for HCS 2024, 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 NPCsHuman
Covenant Ambient life Maps |
Weapons
Human Covenant
Forerunner Vehicles
Human Covenant
Forerunner |
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.
MapsSingleplayer
Multiplayer (Early revisions of maps that shipped in the final game) (Previously unreleased maps) (Rare map samples intended for distribution with the editing kit from Halo 2's Vista port) |
VehiclesHuman Covenant |
Gallery
Trailers
Branding
![An older, unofficial logo used by the Digsite team.[1]](https://halo.wiki.gallery/images/thumb/0/07/RW_Digsite_OldLogo.png/200px-RW_Digsite_OldLogo.png)
An older, unofficial logo used by the Digsite team.[1]
The current logo, created by Ludus in 2022.
![An older, unofficial logo used by the Digsite team.[1]](/File:RW_Digsite_OldLogo.png)
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
Sources
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad Halo Waypoint, Cutting Room Floor (Retrieved on Jan 21, 2022) [archive]
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Halo Waypoint, Cutting Room Corps (Retrieved on Jan 21, 2022) [archive]
- ^ a b c d e f g Halo Waypoint, Digsite deliveries (Retrieved on Jan 28, 2024) [archive]
- ^ X, Leaving (Retrieved on Dec 21, 2024) [archive]
- ^ Halo Waypoint, Canon Fodder, Cutting Room Lore (Retrieved on Jul 26, 2022) [archive]
