I am not Valve, I do not work for Valve, but I like Valve, and like a good friend I like to point out where I think they go wrong.
There is no such technical design document for source, available to the modders, but I suspect there is such a design document if you pay for a license. Valve is a good company, and has excellent people. But the top games released for source have been made exclusively by and for Valve. The source engine is powerful and highly adaptable, if you work for Valve. I think other engines are designed to be easier to understand because the other major game engines are being used by people outside the original company. Quake/id and Bioshock/ut3 and america's army/ut3 are some examples I can think of here. Source engine is powerful if you know how to use it, Valve people are the only ones who know how to use it properly. That isn't going to change unless Valve invests heavily in making it more open or documenting it more. ( not anytime within the next 3 years). UT3 engine is equally powerful, but epic games has gone to great lengths to make it easier to use, and highly documented. Also actively encourages scripting instead of forcing everyone to use c++ like valve does. Bioshock/Americas Army/Gears of War 2. Look at the material editor that comes with ue3 http://hourences.com/book/tutorialsue3mated.htm includes shaders also from almost one and half years ago! http://www.unrealtechnology.com/features.php?ref=editor I hope valve seriously thinks about open sourcing the tools, formats, and making the engine available on linux. Unless valve thinks it can exist only by relying on steam sales/distribution. Eventually microsoft will make steam obsolete(by creating a steamlike replacement for windows7) or buy valve out entirely, which is probably bad for most people working for valve, but good for the owners :P On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 10:29 PM, Walter Gray <[email protected]> wrote: > I want to preface this by saying I know it's probably a kind of silly > thing to be asking for, but on the other hand I feel it would would be > stupendously useful. > I'm looking for something akin to a Technical Design Document for > the source engine, or at least the parts of it which are distributed > with the Source SDK. Really, any single document that lays out, in a > concise fashion, the general structure of the most commonly used > systems, what base classes they use, and enough about how they are > supposed to work for someone to start messing with them. It seems to me > that the general approach for mod developers has been to use the code > itself as the documentation and ask the community or check the wiki if > they find something they don't understand. This, unfortunately, means > that there's no easy way to get new developers on a team familiar with > the engine, which is what I'm aiming to do. I've looked around, and > there doesn't seem to be anything like this. Am I missing something, or > does it not exist, and if it doesn't, why not? It seems like it's the > kind of thing that would cut down on a lot of confusion for new mod > programmers and encourage 3rd party Source development in general. > > _______________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please > visit: > http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders > > _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
