The Crossing is a cancelled FPS that was in development by Arkane Studios, planned to fuse singleplayer and multiplayer by allowing human players to take the place of enemies in the single player campaign. The game was officially put “on hold” in May 2009 after the company ran into “an unexpected financial challenge” and decided to focus on smaller projects. [Info from Wikipedia]
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You Are Empty is a FPS for PC with excellent level design and atmosphere, there are various beautiful locations, memorable enemies and great music. The action takes place in the Soviet Union. The scientists ran an experiment which was aimed to create perfect people, builders of the communism. Something went wrong, and the city became infected with monsters and zombies. The player is not affected by the scientists’ field, and has to find a way out of the situation. The game uses DS2 Engine, which was created by Digital Spray Studios. The game was developed by Mandel ArtPlains.
The game contains unused beta weapons (Maxim chaingun, grenades, unfinished flamethrower), features (ability to run, ability to pick up things and throw them at enemies, health regeneration), skies, scenes (uncut Kolhoz intro, scene where the player wakes up on a bed), NPC (bumper, pig, exploding pig, butcher, sniper, statue of woman with an oar which came to life), unused part of the Kolhoz level. Also, at one point what’s reflected in the water is different from what’s on the shore, so the reflection may be a glimpse into the earlier version of the level.
The unused beta NPC can be accessed by editing the entities on the levels (.ds2edf files), the quickest way is to change the classname of existing NPC. Unused skies can be seen by replacing used ones, weapons can be taken with “give” console command, features can be accessed through console commands or editing game scripts. Thankfully, the game’s files contain all data from the early uncut version of the Kolhoz level intro, so it’s possible to restore and watch it.
Below you can find videos which demonstrate the unused content. If you want to find out more, check the video descriptions (click the YouTube logo when the video is playing) for thorough information, including the process of getting it to work in the game.
Powerslam is the first ever pro wrestling game for OS X and was developed by Cobra Blade. Development of this Mac wrestling game began at the end of 2008 and there were many changes made before its final release in 2012.
2009 Beta (click for bigger version):
2010 Beta (click for bigger version):
Final (click for bigger version):
Article by Razor
Removed Content
The development of Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now! was a frenzied one, a lot of changes were made throughout the game. Most of the changes have been documented by several fans of the franchise on the Carmageddon fan discussion boards.
Got ‘im in the bollocks powerup icon from the Alpha demo of C2
The Got ‘im in the bollocks powerup is a removed powerup from the Splat Pack (it may be in the original Carmageddon also) and it was carried over into C2, this powerup can still be activated in the final version of C2 but it just gives you credits, not only that but it displays a message on the screen that confirms the powerup has been activated.
The powerup icon doesn’t exist in the final version of Carmageddon II but it does exist in the alpha/demo versions of Carmageddon II.
Turok 2008 is a FPS for PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 with very stunning and exciting cutscenes. The player takes part in the military operation which occurs on a planet populated with dinosaurs. While it’s a first person shooter, Turok features a lot of third person moments, creating original and unique gameplay experience. It uses Unreal Engine 3. It was developed by Propaganda Games.
PC version of the game’s folders TurokGame\Baked and TurokGame\Live contain beta / unused maps. It’s possible to get the maps to load in game by copying these folders to TurokGame\Content\Maps folder. After that it’s required to remove the .u files from the Baked folder, otherwise the game will not launch.
The beta / unused maps can be loaded from the game console with the open command. Most of them contain only few brushes or a black room, or crash the game. But there are exceptions: developers’ test maps and prototypes of the game content.
L02_06 map contains early version of the jungle. There’s some of the game’s early content.
Lv02_htest and Lv02_c seem to be terrain testmaps.
First three maps shown in the second video are testmaps from TurokGame\Content\TurokDLC1 folder, other two are from Baked. The last one, LV_15_WB, contains very early prototypes of the game content.
RaptorTest map is an early prototype of the jungle.
Third video shows bunch of testmaps from Live folder. One of them contains unused tyrannosaur.
It’s possible to view Turok’s packages with the viewer which you can get here.
Thanks to this program, we can see beta / unused models from the game.
It is also worth mentionning that Nathan Cheever, who was Assistant Lead Level Designer until January 2007 on the game, wrote on his personal website that Turok 2008 had some cut contents during its development:
(…) As you can guess, Turok went through the typical growing pains a new company, team, and title goes through. It was originally a longer, more diverse action game. When I arrived, it was titled Turok: Rebirth. The subtitle was eventually dropped to mark it as a true relaunch of the franchise.
Other changes included reducing most of the vehicle levels, as well as an ongoing companion. Lil was a young survivor Turok had to protect throughout the story, much in the same way Ripley protected Newt in Aliens. Companion AI and gameplay diversity were the reasons she was removed from the final game. You can still dig through the game assets and find her model, however.
The project was a valiant effort for a new, robust FPS experience with a long-standing franchise. The young team, company, and scope of the game was too much at the time to find the right mix to make Turok a high-ranking game. Licensing the Unreal Engine 3 at the time had its own share of woes as well. Disney needed the game released and the team had to make things work within the allotted time.
Post by EmoLevelDesigner
Updated by Daniel Nicaise
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