User:AndrewNeo/The HL2 Xbox Project

This page is to document my project involving attempting to mess around with Half-Life 2 on the Xbox, in an attempt to see what is possible compared to the PC version of the game.
My goal is, at minimum, to attempt to run custom compiled maps on the Xbox version of Half-Life 2.
Please do not edit this page, this is my 'journal' of sorts. Please leave any comments on the talk page. If Valve (not a standard wiki user) finds this to be out of the wiki's context or if I should just stop in general, please leave me a message.

And a short note: I believe for the most part what I'm doing is not wrong. Valve is happy to give us the SDK and other tools for the PC version. The Xbox version has most of the same stuff. I'm just trying to see if it's possible to put things from the PC to the Xbox.. think of it this way. Wouldn't it be kind of cool to play SP maps (no mods, obviously) to play on the Xbox? Like MINERVA or Mistake Of Pythagoras? I would.

Initial Look

The disc seems to have relatively simple layout, with BSP files and some files containing language-based data. It also has simple Xbox-format movies as well as the music in WAV format. Also, I'm sure that the game is not moddable, because the client-server style engine in the PC version isn't in the Xbox version.

Retail disc layout

• Root
  • Standard default.xbe (Probably points to hl2_xbox.xbe)
  • hl2_xbox.xbe (Around 8mb, probably the engine)
  • GameMedia
    • zip0_xbox.xz_ (Probably the main game contents, like a GCF file except in Xbox format?)
    • zip0_xbox_(language).xz_ (Most likely language specific things like speech and closed captioning)
    • Maps
      • All the standard HL2 SP BSP files.
    • Sound
      • Music
        • Most (all?) the HL2 music files in WAV format from the source sounds.gcf
        • Stingers
          • More music from source sounds.gcf
  • LoaderMedia
    • Demo_Attract.xmv (Regular Xbox video file, attract video that plays when idle)
    • install.txt (!!! Something interesting, has something about copying files.. left behind?)
    • loader.xpr (Don't know, I think xpr's are normal files)
    • Title_load.xmv (Video that plays while game loads)
    • Valve_leader.xmv (Our favorite video that plays when HL2 starts)

BSP files

The BSP files have the same names as single player Half-Life 2.

Day Logs

January 21, 2005

I've rented Half-Life 2 for the Xbox. The structure of the disc seems pretty simple, and the single-player BSP files are exposed. I need to look into the individual files a bit more.

January 25, 2005

Started this project on the wiki. Hope to get some more information.
Checked the disc's filesystem and wrote some stuff down on it, posted above. xz_ files don't seem to match the XZP files as read on the Free60 wiki. Valve's propriatary format? Will look into savegames and data on disk tommorow.
I've also read that the finalization from beta to release of the last Source SDK beta has removed Xbox map compile ability. I haven't updated my Source SDK files yet, so I should be clear as long as I back it up.