Proto:Metro 2033

This page details one or more prototype versions of Metro 2033.

To do:
I still need to upload screenshots of all three maps included in the prototype, along with a text walkthrough on its own sub-page. Plenty of the sounds in the files share names with sound files from Half-Life 2, although I'd have to confirm myself that the sounds are borrowed before putting it in here!

Build 375 of Metro 2033 (dated May 10, 2006) has the distinction of being both one of the few publicly-available prototypes, as well as one of the earliest. The game entered development in 2006, and this specific build was shown off at the Leipzig Games Convention that same year.

This build has several notable differences from the final product, but what is most remarkable is how little overall changed compared to other games at similar stages of development. This build was released by the community on Russian site Gaminator. How, we will probably never know (unless the 14-page thread gets translated), but what matters is that it's here and it works!

Models

Commander

Commander, Callsign "Children of the Underground"

The first NPC the player encounters, by virtue of spawning right behind him. The commander of The Children of the Underground serves the same role in this prototype as he does in the final game; fending off waves of Nosalis mutants before perishing and requesting the player to spread word of the defeat via Radio. The model's arms curiously feature an armband of the Fourth Reich, a neo-Nazi faction in Metro which the character could only be opposed to. Also of note are his helmet and night-vision goggles, which survived development and can be seen on other NPCs in the final game practically unchanged.

Diger/Digger/Soldier

Diger Zero
Diger One
Diger Two
Diger Three
Diger Four

The mysterious "Diger" (as his filename, diger.ogf, dubs him) is one of five models used for nearly all human soldiers in the build, of which there are a handful. Every model features slight variation in armor and headgear, as shown above. Unlike his commanding officer, nothing substantial from the Diger family survived until the final game.

Winged/Female Nosalis

Guess where the "nos" in "nosalis" comes from?

The only creature model present in the build's monster meshes, curious given that the final game's Demon appears in the pre-release footage shown at Leipzig GC 2006. The design is nearly identical to the final build, even sharing the same UV map and geometry as the final monster. In-game, it functions all the same, sonic attacks and the like.

Old Diger/Digger/Soldier

Get out of here, Artyom!

This character model is entirely unused in the prototype build, and is evidently older than every other original model. The character has a different T-Pose than every other NPC, and their PBF gas mask shares texture elements from STALKER's gas masks. Some pre-release images show other characters wearing this gas mask on top of other models' torsos.

AK-74/Kalash

Papali, papali suki!

This is the model always seen in first person in the build. At this point in development, the AK-74(later known simply as the Kalash) was the only weapon available. Artyom's watch, a staple of the series, was also not implemented, leaving the poor boy's wrist empty. Curiously, the scope does not appear on the model in-game, but does appear when converted to another program for viewing.

Placeholder S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl Assets

4A Games, the studio that developed Metro 2033, was founded by ex-employees of GSC Game World who left during the development of STALKER. The engine itself bears a lot of similarity to GSC's X-Ray Engine, and a few placeholder and unused assets feature as legacy content.

Player Model

The Marked One, as lifted straight from the build's files.
The Marked One's hand texture, unused in the build but still in the files.

Artyom's model is a direct port of the default player model in STALKER.

Controller Psy-Attack Frames

A psychic attack, it boggles the mind.
Ditto.

Attack frame textures used by the Controller mutant in STALKER. The Controller itself does not make any appearance in the prototype itself.

Unused Sounds

The Commander in the game's story hands Artyom a cassette tape which has a warning message for the Polis metro station about the encroaching mutant hordes, which Artyom is tasked to play on a radio beacon outside. This side objective can't be completed at this point in development, but an early version of the tape's recording is still in the data files.

Prototype Children of the Underground Tape

Retail Children of the Underground Tape

The message of both lines is very similar, it's evident though that the game's English script was in a very rough state at this early of a stage in development. Oddly, despite taking place in Russia and having been developed in Ukraine, all of the dialogue in this build is in English.

Unused Music Files

Three music files can be found in the leaked build under content/songs/music. Two of the music files, namely stancia.ogg and tonnel.ogg, are ambience songs, while town.ogg is an instrumental song.

The tonnel.ogg music file can be related to the underground tunnel parts of the game (accessible through indoor.cmd), while town.ogg is connected to the unfinished town (accessible through outdoor.cmd). Probably the most interesting one of the three is stancia.ogg, which can be traced back to STALKER and the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, as some game files refer to the CNPP as "Stancia".

Stancia