Source SDK Base: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 13:51, 14 July 2013

Source SDK Base is a game/tool available to all Steam users which is locked to a particular engine branch. Compared to basing your mod on a "real" game, use of SDK Base massively increases your potential audience and prevents incompatible engine updates from making your code unusable.

Versions

There are currently four versions of SDK Base: the original Source 2006 version (AppID 215), the Source 2007 version (AppID 218), and two Source 2013 versions - SP (AppID 243730) and MP (AppID 243750).

Alien Swarm deserves mention here too, as it is also freely available and also provides source code.

Todo: Make a page explaining which game to pick.

Content

The stock gamecode is a duplicate of Episode One's or Episode Two's, depending on which version (see below) you are using. But the only content available is that of Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Lost Coast: while Zombines and Hunters exist in the code and can be spawned, they appear as errors because their models are not available. If you want to use episodic things, you will need to mount the appropriate game.
SDK Base might provide mods with Lost Coast's content, but dedicated servers do not. Multiplayer mods should either not use anything from Lost Coast, or include what they do use in their dedicated server download.
Tip:In Source 2007 or later you can remove the sourcetest SearchPath from gameinfo.txt and Lost Coast will disappear. Unfortunately, doing this under Source 2006 (Episode One) will make the game crash immediately!

Bugs

Currently multi-player mods using SDK Base 2006 or 2007 come up with empty server lists in the Steam server browser, while the in-game server browser works. This bug is around since at least the 9th of June, 2013.

Fixes

There are two small glitches:

The main menu has a "Visual Stress Test" option instead of anything useful. Copy resource\GameMenu.res from another suitable game into your mod.

Episode Two's flashlight and weapon pickup icons do not appear. Open resource\ClientScheme.res and add this to the Fonts section:

		WeaponIconsSmall
		{
			1
			{
				name		HalfLife2
				tall		32
				weight	0
				antialias 1
				additive	1
				custom	1
			}
		}

Content (2007)

Source SDK Base 2007 (sourcetest)
Source SDK Base + Half-Life 2: Lost Coast (sourcetest)
Source 2007 shared (hl2)
Source shared (hl2)
Source 2007 engine branch

Content (2006)

Source SDK Base + Half-Life 2: Lost Coast (sourcetest)
Source shared (hl2)
Episode One engine branch

@@ Line 3: / Line 3: @@
 }} __NOTOC__
-'''Source SDK Base''' is a game/tool available to all Steam users which is locked to a particular [[:Category:Engine branches|engine branch]]. Compared to basing your mod on a "real" game, use of SDK Base massively increases your potential audience and prevents incompatible engine updates from making your code unuseable.
+'''Source SDK Base''' is a game/tool available to all Steam users which is locked to a particular [[:Category:Engine branches|engine branch]]. Compared to basing your mod on a "real" game, use of SDK Base massively increases your potential audience and prevents incompatible engine updates from making your code unusable.
 == Versions ==