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| <div style="float:right; margin-top: 20px; width: 250px; background:#F0F0F0; border: none; padding: 0.5em">
| | {{LanguageBar}} |
| ==Archives==
| | {{discussion page}} |
| Please '''do not''' edit the archives
| | {{menubox |
| * [http://developer.valvesoftware.com/w/index.php?title=Talk:SDK_Docs&oldid=109619 28 June 2005 to 4 Aug 2008] | | |title=Archives |
| </div>{{clr}} | | |link=Talk:SDK Docs |
| | |text=*[http://developer.valvesoftware.com/w/index.php?title=Talk:SDK_Docs&oldid=109619 August 4 2008]<br /> |
| | * [http://developer.valvesoftware.com/w/index.php?title=Talk:SDK_Docs&oldid=116470 April 30 2009]<br /> |
| | * [http://developer.valvesoftware.com/w/index.php?title=Talk:SDK_Docs&oldid=163196 December 05 2011] |
| | }}__TOC__ |
| <!-- Please start new discussions below this line. --> | | <!-- Please start new discussions below this line. --> |
| | == Shortname or longname == |
| | Compare this [[Template:KV_RenderFields]] and this [[Template:KV_Shadow]] and this [[Template:I_RenderFields]]. As you can see, sometimes it's "bool"/"int" but sometimes "boolean"/"integer". What will be better to use? --[[User:Mehiller|Mehiller]] 21:54, 2 May 2012 (PDT) |
| | :In my opinion, "boolean" and "integer" is friendlier for non-programmers, though I would prefer the shorthand versions. That's just me. —[[User:Mattshu|Mattshu]] 23:11, 11 July 2012 (PDT) |
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| == Restructuring the category pages == | | == SFM link == |
| I would like to restructure the categories section from their current implementation for what I believe would be easier navigation. My two suggested changes are stated below. --[[User:Brandished|brandished]] 05:24, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
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| === 1. Over-categorization ===
| | The link at the Source page for the [[Source Filmmaker]] leads to a Category page. Which isn't supposed to happen. Can you guys fix it? --[[User:017Bluefield|017Bluefield]] 23:39, 10 July 2012 (PDT) |
| I feel many of the categories, such as entities and level design are covering a topic ranges a bit too broad to be useful to most users. I'd like to restructure according to these guidelines from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories,_lists,_and_series_boxes Wikipedia]:
| | :I'm thinking that was intentional. —[[User:Mattshu|Mattshu]] 23:56, 10 July 2012 (PDT) |
| : ''An article will often be in several categories. Restraint should be used, however — categories become less effective the more there are on a given article.'' | | ::Uh-huh… Did you check the history yet? Any edit—even the vandalism type—gets recorded their, right? --[[User:017Bluefield|017Bluefield]] 00:13, 11 July 2012 (PDT) |
| : ''An article should usually not be in both a category and its subcategory, e.g. Microsoft Office is in Category:Microsoft software, so should not also be in Category:Software—except when the article defines a category as well as being in a higher category, e.g. Ohio is in both Category:U.S. states and Category:Ohio'' | | :::Yes. You're referring to the link on [[SDK Docs]], right? —[[User:Mattshu|Mattshu]] 00:16, 11 July 2012 (PDT) |
| | ::::Yeah. I remember checking it yesterday, but it must've slipped my mind today. --[[User:017Bluefield|017Bluefield]] 12:42, 11 July 2012 (PDT) |
| | ::::Nevermind. It's someone named Dmx6 who did the edit. --[[User:017Bluefield|017Bluefield]] 12:45, 11 July 2012 (PDT) |
| | :::::{{user|Dmx6}} is a regular, trusted contributor to the wiki. It is linked to the category page because it contains many resources for using SMF. Sorry, but I'm not sure where you're seeing the vandalism. —[[User:Mattshu|Mattshu]] 22:42, 11 July 2012 (PDT) |
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| For an example, a category I feel would benefit from this is [[:Category: entities]]. I would like to remove articles related to specific entities from the parent category entities and place them only in subcategories instead. My arguments for this are:
| | == New design == |
| # There is no clear delimiters as to which game engine, game, or mod certain entities are available for. Many of the articles listed in the main category will be of little to no use to users who don't own those specific games
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| # The current tags groups many mostly unrelated articles together.
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| : --[[User:Brandished|brandished]] 05:24, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
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| | I've been testing the [[User:THE OWL/Sandbox/Pages/Software docs|new design]] in my sandbox. It's not finished as I don't work with VDC very often now, but I still wanted to offer a new look. |
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| ::According to wikipedia - | | [[File:Source SDK documentation page redesign.jpg|400px]] |
| :: ''If category B is a non-distinguished subcategory of category A, then pages belonging to category B (directly or through further subcategories) are not placed directly into category A.''
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| :: ''If category B is a distinguished subcategory of category A, then pages belonging to category B are placed directly into category A if otherwise appropriate.''
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| ::If we were to create categories like Entities:Half-Life 2, Entities: Portal, etc. for each game, then the entities that are only in those games would NOT go into the general entities and into the game entities category. However, if an entity is shared between all games it should go into Entities. If an entity is shared between a couple games then it would go into each of the game entity categories and NOT into Entities.
| | === Pros === |
| | * There is now quick access to Source Engine branches and their SDKs. |
| | : {{Note|Not that it's useful, but when I needed it, I couldn't find the tool I needed quickly because someone didn't even bother to create a redirect from Source SDK Base 2013 to Source SDK 2013 🗿}} |
| | * Now games don't hide from you. Documentation of their tools is right on the Source SDK page. |
| | : {{Note|The level design page with a link to the games now doesn't always link to the level design (for example, [[Team Fortress 2/Docs]]), and you have to do more unnecessary actions to reach the game tools page.}} |
| | * The colors and larger content size will help you find the right link faster. |
| | * The new design should look better on mobile devices (well, if rewritten). |
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| ::For instance, [[info_player_start]] would go into only [[:Category:Entities]] because every game has that. [[func_liquidportal]] would only be in [[:Category:Portal Entities]]. If we have a [[:Category:NPC Entities]], anything in that category would also go into [[:Category:Entities]]. However if we have a [[:Category:Half-Life 2 NPC Entities]], anything in that category would also be in [[:Category:Half-Life 2 Entities]] because [[:Category:Half-Life 2 NPC Entities]] is a distinguished subcategory of [[:Category:Half-Life 2 Entities]] and none of the pages would be in [[:Category:Entities]]. I hope this makes some sense because it's kind of a hard thing to explain. If you want, I can try to properly categorize all entities on a page this weekend for review.
| | === Cons === |
| :::--[[User:Remmiz|Remmiz]] 23:57, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
| | * My design offers a larger view of the links, which forces you to scroll down the page to reach certain links. |
| | : {{Note|I don't think it's a problem because it's easier to identify links. Spending time on scrolling is much less than trying to find a certain link among a bunch of other links in a row.}} |
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| ::: I understand what you are saying, an entity that could be placed in all subcategories going in the parent category. It gets tricky though, some entities that you would think would work in all Source games don't (eg: func_rotate). I'm still not quite sure how to organise all the Half-Life 2 specific entities between H-L2, EP1, EP2, H-L2 Deathmatch and Portal. --[[User:Brandished|brandished]] 13:02, 29 March 2009 (UTC) | | --[[User:THE OWL|THE OWL]] ([[User talk:THE OWL|talk]]) 22:00, 3 November 2024 (PST) |
| | :: New design is not needed. The current one works perfectly fine and I don't have to scroll to see all links. One thing from it that would be good to do is adding the links to individual game doc pages but not with such overly huge boxes --[[User:Nescius|Nescius]] ([[User talk:Nescius|talk]]) 07:12, 4 November 2024 (PST) |
| | ::: I'll try to do something about it later. |
| | ::: [[User:THE OWL|THE OWL]] ([[User talk:THE OWL|talk]]) |
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| :::: I would say if it belongs to every game, it goes into [[:Category:Entities]]. If it belongs to more than one but not all, you would put it into each game's entity category. For the Episodes, I'd say to make a Half-Life 2 Entities category. Then have Episode 1/2/3 entities be sub-categories of Half-Life 2. So [[:Category:Half-Life 2 Entities]] would have all entities that are shared between Half-Life 2, Episode 1, 2, and 3. [[:Category:Half-Life 2 Episode 1 Entities]] would only have entities that are specific to Episode 1, etc. --[[User:Remmiz|Remmiz]] 18:47, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
| | == About the Brief Description == |
| | I added a simple description to make this SDK documentation similar to all the others. Also, I think it helps to find different versions of Source SDK faster. |
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| ::::: Hmm... I was thinking of something similar, the only possible problem I can think of is the one I described below, where if there were too many subcategories making it a hassle to scroll down to the actual entities. The other option I was thinking of was having a "Category: Base Entities", but that might be difficult to integrate into other categories. It might be a good idea to draw up some mock-ups first and get an idea of what the final concept will actually look like. --[[User:Brandished|brandished]] 22:55, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
| | I'm sure it's useful, and beginners to working with Source in general didn't get a brief description of the here and now before. |
| :::::: Thanks for your attention to all this. According to the general guidelines of wikis and the discussion above, the only way that would seem to make any sense would be the following:
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| ::::::*Parent Category: Entities
| | I'm leaving this topic here to explain the reason for adding the description and to provide a place to discuss this edit, if any. |
| :::::::*Subcategory: HL2 Entities
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| ::::::::*Sub-subcategory: HL2 NPCs
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| ::::::::*Sub-subcategory: HL2 Vehicles
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| :::::::*Subcategory: Episode 1 Entities
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| ::::::::*Sub-subcategory: Episode1 NPCs
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| ::::::::*Sub-subcategory: Episode1 Vehicles
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| :::::::*Subcategory: Episode 2 Entities
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| ::::::::*Sub-subcategory: Episode2 NPCs
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| ::::::::*Sub-subcategory: Episode2 Vehicles
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| :::::::*Subcategory: Portal Entities
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| ::::::::*Sub-subcategory: Portal NPCs
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| :::::::*Subcategory: and so on....
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| :::::: Everything that is in a child category goes in the parent, full stop. The recurring example of func_liquidportal will go into Entities and Portal Entities. And yes, a logic_auto will go into all of the above main sub-categories as well as the parent category Entities. This is normal and not a problem.
| | --[[User:THE OWL|THE OWL]] ([[User talk:THE OWL|talk]]) 16:19, 13 May 2025 (PDT) |
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| :::::: As pointed out above, the difficult part is going to be determining the games in which each entity is available. Your task is made relatively straightforward by the fgd system: in sourcesdk\bin\ep1\bin you will find a base.fgd. This contains entities available for all games. The entities specific to each game are then found in each named fgd such as halflife2.fgd. By using a text editor to sort the contents of a copy of each fgd you can quickly get a list of classes and these correspond to the entries in this wiki. It may not produce perfect results, but it will be a start, which we can all then modify.--[[User:Fitzroy doll|Fitzroy doll]] 11:13, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
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| ::::::: Hmm, do you know how Hammer determines which entities from the base fgd to filter out for specific games such as CS:S and TF2? I thought it was done through fgd files, but I'm not seeing (or am overlooking) the values. --[[User:Brandished|brandished]] 02:55, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
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| ::::::::I don't think it does filter them out. As far as I am aware, all entities in the base.fgd are available to hammer in all games. This can lead to things appearing which do not work, for example, if you start up Hammer with the Episode 1 engine and Half Life 2 game selected, you can put a [[func_fish_pool]] in your map, but in-game, running under HL2, the entity will not work. For now, given that the FGD is the only external standard which exists, you may want to base inclusions in each category solely on the fgds, and then over time users of the VDC can fine tune it if required. --[[User:Fitzroy doll|Fitzroy doll]] 10:13, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
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| ::::::::You might find [[User:Fitzroy_doll/entities|these lists]] useful for this task.--[[User:Fitzroy doll|Fitzroy doll]] 10:20, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
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| :::::::::Ah, you beat me to it, how long ago were these pulled? I had a script for pulling entities, but it had some problems and I had to revise it. I just finished working on yesterday, but was too tired to run it. Also, is it worthwhile to include the "BaseClass" and "FilterClass" entities? If I'm understanding them correctly, I don't think they can be accessed directly, only through other entities. --[[User:Brandished|brandished]] 20:43, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
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| ::::::::::These were generated this morning, so they should be current. Any entity with a class "BaseClass" or "BaseClass base" does not need its own entry - I included them only for completeness. Having looked at these lists, I would now suggest that there should be 7 main categories (corresponding to Base and the 6 main games). EP1 and EP2 would now probably make more sense as sub-categories of HL2 rather than as categories of their own.--[[User:Fitzroy doll|Fitzroy doll]] 20:57, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
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| :::::::::::I agree with EP1 and 2, I didn't realize until I started working on these entity lists that HL2, Ep1, and Ep2 all shared the same entity list. I'm guessing Valve was planning on moving their whole Source game library over to the Orange Box engine, but decided against it, probably to keep from moving the system requirements outside the capabilities of game owners on older hardware. Anyways, thanks for putting this list together, it makes a great resource and definitely saves me some time. For now, I'm just planning on making sure the game-specific entity lists on all the game-specific level design pages are up to date. Maybe also have all entities available for the each game on one page, but keep the new, game-specific entities separate from the "base" entities and then comment out the base entities that don't work for those games. Once that gets done, work on categorizing from there. I'd like to also at some point update a lot of the individual entity pages to include several example uses of each entity, similar to how the sky list pages are set up now with the different example settings for each map, but that's another matter. --[[User:Brandished|brandished]] 10:54, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
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| === 2. Splitting apart category pages from entry pages ===
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| A lot of the large category pages, such as [[:Category: Level Design]], I believe have become too overloaded with content to be easily used as WiKi categories. Many of the categories with these problems are linked directly to the "SDK Docs" page. The actual categorized pages are being over looked and unused by many due to having to scroll to the very bottom of the most of the linked pages to see the actual categorized pages with their current set-up. This problem is compounded if an article in the category is not located within the first 200 results, after clicking next users are forced to scroll through all the contents again to get to the categorized pages. To be clear, I'm not saying get rid of the Category pages, but just moving the table-of-contents parts into regular articles. On other Wikis, category pages are used primarily for cross referencing, not as entry pages.
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| For example, the lower half of [[:Category: Level Design]], starting from "Subcategories" and below, would remain along with the categorized pages, but table of contents portion above that would be moved outside of the category into an article page.
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| :eg, instead of the main page being located at "[[:category:Level Design|Level Design]]", the new location for the table-of-contents parts would be "[[Level Design]]", with a link at the top of the category page something like ''The main article for this category is [[Level Design]]''
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| Here's some parent categories on the Wikimedia Foundation's projects for further demonstration:
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| * [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Political_systems Category:Political systems (Wikipedia)]
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| * [http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Category:Computer_science Category:Computer science (Wikibooks)]
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| : --[[User:Brandished|brandished]] 05:24, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
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| ::I imagine that the reason the main article for each section is a category and not an article is that each article added to the category automatically shows up on the main article page, but given the number of articles this is not ideal. The solution suggested above seems very sensible to me.--[[User:Fitzroy doll|Fitzroy doll]] 11:59, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
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Note:Not that it's useful, but when I needed it, I couldn't find the tool I needed quickly because someone didn't even bother to create a redirect from Source SDK Base 2013 to Source SDK 2013 🗿