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Source Engine SDK Released
wolrahnaes writes "It's finally available to the public. According to a post on The Valve ERC Collective, the tools needed to create maps and mods for Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, and other Source engine based titles are now available on Steam. Some documentation is available here."
You need to have pre-order HL 2 on Steam to have access to the SDK, right now.
Also, it isn't the "full" SDK. You cannot compile new binaries (IE, new mods) but you can start creating maps (Hammer is included, along with a model viewer) and I'm fairly certain you can compile models (made with XSI, a light version of which can be downloaded for free here).
If you've worked with Hammer or Worldcraft before (or any brush based editor before) you should be in familiar territory. The Snark Pit and The VERC boards can provide some resources for newbies (as well as other sites, I'm sure). The included documentation is actually quite good, though.
Some content of note: There are some models in a directory labeled "C17" (which I assume is City 17) that can be viewed in the model viewer/placed into maps with hammer. Interesting content, though I haven't seen any huge spoilers yet (just things like stoves and cupboards in the directory).
Um ... HL2 is not quake-based. It's based on "Source", a homebrew engine that has separate rendering paths for DX7, DX8.0, DX8.1, and DX9.
That means that the game is enjoyable on anything as low as a Radeon 7500 or Geforce2 MX. Low-end systems still get all the main content, while skipping the eye candy (like refractive water) that they can't draw.
And FYI, the new netcode in the Source engine (as seen in CS: Source) feels much more robust than what we previously had with CS 1.6.
The reason why original HalfLife was such a success is because it ran fluidly on every video card. HalfLife 2 with or without mods have quite a steep requirement to climb. If it's anything like Doom III, I'll wait for double-digit patches.
Half-life was released in November of 1998, and it did not run well on the typical gamer system then. I had a P2 400 and 128MB RAM with a TNT2 graphics card and got about 25 FPS in 640x480 after much tweaking. There were also many serious problems with the engine. For instance, in the original netcode, your ping and framerate were directly tied to each other. Also, WON was so broken it was turned off "quietly" for a while.
Once mods like Counter-Strike came around, you really needed a GF3 class graphics card to get a proper FPS experience. This was due to the DX8 code it used and higher polygon counts for the models.
When I say "proper FPS experience", I mean the right framerate for a first person shooter. I play my best if I'm getting 60-70+ frames/sec. Sure, your eyes can't put that rate together any different, but it is a whole world of difference when "the world" is in 70 fps as opposed to 20-30 fps.
" Um ... HL2 is not quake-based. It's based on "Source", a homebrew engine that has separate rendering paths for DX7, DX8.0, DX8.1, and DX9."
Source is just the working name for the engine. Its not written from scratch, its based on HL1. If it wernt for the legalitys, you could easil run jwz's code comparison on the hl2 source leak and the quake1 source dir and find a ton of similarities.
I've played with the engine for a while now, and even with a DX9 card (fx5600), you're still better off using the dx7 renderer just for the fps boost, but the visual difference is huge.
As for the netcode, CS1.6 was(and is) horrible. Even on a large lan the netcode screwups were apparnt, I saw plenty of people teleporting and shots not registering at CPL Summer 04.
Then CS:S came out, and its even worse because noone has the cpu required to update with the server at a timely frequency. Its like playing against people on dialup, even when theyre only 20ms away from the server.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Actaully, it was stated that Source is built from scratch.
If you've pre-ordered HL2, it'll be at the bottom of the Play Games list, next to the dedicated servers.
Hey guys,
:) The 'SDK' that was released doesn't have any actual code or coding information. It seems to be the new model viewer and updated version of Hammer (the map editor). So we still can't experiment with it, to see how much work it would be to move the code-base over.
I'm glad there's interest here.
If and when we do move NS over, we'll likely keep the gameplay exactly the same (at least for now) and then stop supporting the original NS. Trying to balance and support two versions would be a lot of unnecessary work.
Also, I've started design (and funding) work on a next-gen game in the Natural Selection universe, but there are no details available there yet (unless you want to help fund it).
Cheers,
-Charlie
Game Director
Unknown Worlds Entertainment
http://www.unknownworlds.com
http://www.charliecleveland.com