Source SDK Release Notes

Major new features in this release

• Half-Life 2: Episode One enhancements.
• NPC behavior enhancements.
• New Game Content called 'Source SDK Base'.
• Many other improvements and bug fixes.

Current Known Issues

See Source SDK Known Issues for a list of known issues and workarounds.

New Features

General new features

• New Game Content Called 'Source SDK Base'.
  • Located on Steam's 'Tools' page.
  • Available to anyone who owns Half-Life 2.
  • Uses the lastest shipping version of the Source Engine (HL2: Episode One).
  • Contains only the hardware stress test included in Lost Coast.
  • This content will be updated whenever a new version of the Source Engine ships.
  • Mod makers should always use its SteamAppId (215) in their single player and multi-player mods.
  • 'Create Mod Wizard' looks for any mods that are referencing SteamAppId 220 and reminds the user to change this to SteamAppId 215. The user must make this change manually.
• SDK now includes cs_militia.vmf so that users can study it more closely.

New SDK code features

• Half-Life 2 Episode 1 Enhancements.
  • Episode 1 behavior for Alyx and combine NPCs is included.
  • Support for Alyx Darkness Mode.
• Analog joystick support as well as rumble controller support.
• Added support for HUD hints for ALT-Fire. (e.g. #valve_hint_alt_weapon_smg1).
• Now perform view smoothing when the player is walking on entities that cannot move.
• Beam Effects Enhancements.
  • Added HDR color scale.
  • Added separate inputs for red, green, and blue.
• Added InputStopSweeping to snipers.
• Client side .vcd's can now share a cache with the server ones, prevents hitching when loading instanced .vcd files (response system, etc.) which are used by the client, too. System allows MOD authors to install their own shared .dlls which export an IAppSystem so they can do similar kinds of shared caching system.
• Optimization to box/ray traces against vphysics objects. Net result is that the new code is rougly 2.3X faster for traces that hit.
• Weapon System Enhancements.
  • Changed weapon selection UI so that selecting an empty bucket makes a deny sound and closes the UI.
  • Added "weapondelay" to response rules. This field lets you specify how long an NPC should suspend firing their weapon when they start to speak certain responses.
  • Player will now auto-switch to a newly acquired weapon if he pulls it in with the physcannon.
  • Weapons can be configured to have an underwater ALT-Fire option.
• NPC Behavior Enhancements.
  • Added input "RemoveFromPlayerSquad" to npc_citizen. This instantly and properly ejects a citizen from the Player's squad.
  • Added "Urgent" flag to assault & rally points. NPCs moving to Urgent points will run Urgent navigation solutions (Ignoring prop_physics blockers, eventually teleporting).
  • Made "ForceCrouch" option on assault/rally points only make the NPC crouch when they're near the point.
  • Added AI_BaseNPC::GetJumpGravity(), default 1.0f.
  • Activities can be remapped to new activities based on NPC readiness. See episodic/scripts/actremap.txt.
  • Added CAI_BaseNPC::PlayerPenetratingVPhysics to enable player avoidance when player vphysics intersects npcs.
  • Episodic now forces all trackpathers to use the "fixed" patrolling logic. Fixes the gunship not patrolling properly above the attic.
  • Added "Max Squadmates Per Enemy" option that allows the designer to specify how many squadmates may attack any given entity.
• Changed DLL loading code to search the system path after loading from the bin directory.
• Optimized sound engine.
  • Sound engine is now 1.3X the original speed.

New Hammer Editor features

• Added an "Enable Autosave" check box in general options.
• Auto-save files use the .vmf_autosave extension so that auto-save doesn't overwrite manually saved .vmf files.
• The check for an autosave file is now made on map load, rather than on crash recovery.
• Layouts of vgui panels in Hammer are now saved.
• Viewport splitter now saves its position at program shutdown.
• Added support for "setpos x y z; setang u v w" format in view->Go to coordinates.
• Model browser now exchanges skin values with the properties dialog in Hammer.

Faceposer features

• Close caption system now knows how to fall back to hl2\resource\*.txt/.dat files if the requested token isn't present in the MOD game dir.
• Added Select all events for current actor/channel menu items to right click "Select/Deselect" submenu.
• Holding shift key while hitting 'h' or 0->9 keys in flex animation view will apply the curve type to all selected samples across all flex controllers, not just the current one.
• Choreo view timeline area draws w/ a slightly different color to make it clear where you should right click.
• Added check/uncheck all and invert selection buttons to flex sliders view.
• Changed flex panel buttons to have several of them under a menu button which pops up a menu having the choices there instead.
• Changed bitmap generation to overlay gestures with idle pose instead of being composited with reference pose, fixed gesture bitmaps being rotated 90 degrees.
• Mousewheel zooming tries to maintain focus on what the mouse is over (applies to Choreoview, Ramp tools, Gesture tool, Flex Animation tool).
• Also, added Home/End/PgUP/PgDn key support to various windows to allow rapidly moving around the event or scene being edited (applies to Choreoview, Ramp tools, Gesture tool, Flex Animation tool).
• Shift-H for toggling hold of flex animation tracks now gathers left/right samples as well as value samples if any are selected.

Model Viewer features

• HLMV sorts animations by type (full body, posture, gesture), by name. Full body comes first, then gestures, then postures.
• Enabled the ability to view models with normalmaps in HLMV. This feature, for whatever reason, had been disabled.
• Changed hlmv to save current sequences by name instead of index number.
• Added -nosort to HLMV. This will display sequences in their compile order instead of alphabetical order.
• HLMV now caches normal-map viewer settings in registry along with other stuff.

Bug fixes

SDK code fixes

• Incorrectly using the maximum carry amount for ammo damage dealt by NPCs when not getting max carry amount from a console variable.
• Gravity gun beams no longer draw when r_drawviewmodel is 0.
• Added a sorting rule to the mapentity loader to make vphysics triggers spawn before props.
• Fixed crouching NPCs not standing up when running ACT_RUN_AIM.
• Fixed refcounting issue with procedural textures.
• Fixed memory leak in vgui::HTML control due to procedural texture being recreated, but old texture not being deleted until level change.
• Fixed several bugs related to awkward NPC behavior regarding crouching and rally points.
• Fixed case where missing files would hose the audio sound cache every time the cache was reloaded from disk.
• NPC's now take a smoother (no more stop/start) path when navigating between assault points which are marked "clear on arrival".
• Fixed bug where Assault behavior was supposed to, but did not, have a higher priority than Follow behavior (player companion).
• Fixed bug/missing feature where "Never Timeout" on Assault Points was being ignored unless the point in question is the last in a chain.
• Combine ball now dissolves NPCs if fired by an Elite Combine; The ball will not dissolve Vital Allies and will only dissolve the FIRST player ally it finds and do the regular damage to the rest, this way it wont nuke your whole squad.
• Combine ball now applies the correct base velocity to the player; Fixes player flying forward when hit by a ball while on the air.
• Fixed crashing bug where vehicle driver could reference a null pointer for the physics object of its recently-destroyed vehicle.
• Player's impact velocity (used to compute falling damage) now subtracts the velocity of the ground entity that the player lands on.
• Fixed crashing bug where bouncebombs carried by scanners would reference a NULL physics object upon restore.
• Fixed crash with restoring ragdolls that are touching triggers.
• Fixed NPC's in LEAD behavior waiting for the player even though the player is 'ahead' of the NPC, relative to the goal.
• Turned off stair smoothing when on a moving object (fixes view floating up when falling).
• Fixed a bug in unduck where the view could get stuck in a 'not ducked' position when the player was actually still ducked.
• Added distance checks when determining enemy visibility in AI_BaseNPC.cpp. Fixes npcs freezing due to choosing enemies that it can see but are too distant when another enemy is closer but not visible.
• NPCs searching for lateral LOS to their enemy will ask their behaviors for maximum allowed lateral movement. Fixes NPCs on rally points not being able to use lateral LOS checks at all.
• Fixed case where Citizens could fail to pick up a weapon without marking it unavailable to other citizens. This caused a bug where citizens would stop following.
• Fixed bug where citizens could stop following if unable to retrieve a weapon in an unreachable location.
• Fix for user reported bug where built in mp3 player would advance > 1 song during level transition due to multiple engine calls to StopAllSounds.
• Fixed crash when saving if the level contains a color_correction entity.
• Fix for .wav's with emphasis track reading bogus sentence data causing mouths to go haywire.
• Changed CStdioFile::FS_fwrite to chunk out files bigger than 256kb; fixes "Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service" issue.
• Fixed crash when try to load a map after a 'flush'.
• Fixed longstanding bug where ropes out of pvs might accumulate an impulse (from rotorwash effect, e.g.) and then suddenly simulate a huge impulse when they come into your pvs for the first time.
• Fixed bug where any npc taken through a level transition would no longer blink.
• Fix backward compat bug with MODs where dtvariant data structure had changed sizes.
• Fixed bug if you jumped and landed crouched, the view wouldn't completely return to standing height when you released the crouch key.
• Fixed buffer overflow in vgui::RichtText control when parsing input strings for URL's.

Hammer Editor fixes

• Fixed several bugs related to the auto-save directory validation.
• Fixed an entity-properties related crash based on a submitted minidump.
• Fixed several exit crashes in Hammer.
• Fixed an autosave crash in Hammer where the code was using FindClose instead of CloseHandle to close a file handle.
• Fixed a rendering problem in Hammer (the model browser window would look freaky for a while until you moved it) caused by a bug in shader code.
• Backslashes are now disallowed in keyvalues entered in an object properties box and are replaced with forward slashes at apply time.
• 'setang' actually works now in view->Go to coordinates.
• Hammer Check For Problems no longer reports !caller and !self as missing or invalid targets.
• Fixed bug in Paste Special which truncated I/O connections with wildcards by one or two characters each time.
• Fixed a bug in Check For Problems that caused it to incorrectly flag I/O connections in the wrong case as broken.
• Fixed crash when hit browse for model when entity model was not found.
• Fixed hammer not correctly loading npc model.

Faceposer and Model Viewer fixes

• Fixed crash in "redo extraction" when operating on a selection of words only.
• Fixed bug where rame/sceneramp curve types weren't being loaded back out of .vcds correctly.
• Fixed Faceposer Flex animation timeline hotkeys not copy/pasting flex sliders at the correct time.
• Fixed bug in faceposer where jaw_drop would return max drop when asked for flextrack data outside of range.
• Fixed bug with setting keyframe from sliders for high range flex controllers - fixes "funneler" and "jaw_drop" keys not cutting and pasting from the slider window.
• Fixed bug where balance of high range combo flex controllers wasn't returning the correct left/right weighting - fixes "funneler" always showing up as being unbalanced.
• Fix for faceposer unable to select flex event after closing and reopening a new .vcd.
• Fixed longstanding bug where clicking in the client area of a tool window or on a scrollbar, etc. wouldn't bring it to front.
• Fix for fighting between networked flex settings and client side "Expression" support causing facial jitters when using Expression events.
• Fixed faceposer starting out rendering remnant of previous faceposer session.
• Fixed a bug in cleanup of physics models in HLMV.
• Fixed bug with HLMV not linking flex sliders to the face on initial load. Fix should also help with random alt-tab crashes.

Previous Releases

• Click here for information on previous releases.