Valve Developer Community:Community portal

Welcome to the Valve Developer Community! From here on you can forget Valve; every page you see with an edit tab, including this one, is likely written or at least altered by someone in the community (though Valve staff are sometimes among them). If you want to do the same, go right ahead! Otherwise, take a look at the Categories or run a search to find what you want.

Cross-Purpose and General Development VERC - Valve Editing Resource Collective. This site's predecessor, which offers primarily HL1 resources (Official) Game-Advance.net - Very small new modding community. Focus is on Source engine, but forums exist for other modding as well. Hosts modding projects. HL2World.com - Half Life 2 Knowledge Base Nem's Tools - Several useful Source tools including GCFScape TWHL - Mapping community and tutorial site with busy forums for HL and SOURCE mappers. Wunderboy.org - Several useful Source tools including VTFTool C-SEC - Japanese Source modding and mapping development site, including with translated many SDK documents to Japanese. Gamedesign.net - Some helpful modding and mapping tutorials. GamesModding.com Tutorial Database - A list of almost every Half-Life 2 modding tutorial out there. Handy Vandal's Almanac - One of the original top editing resource sites for Half Life, contains some HL2 info. Linked to in Worldcraft's help menu. Interlopers.net - News and general resources LevelDesign.nu - A large Swedish game-dev community which covers texturing, mapping and modeling. MappersNation.com - A New Half-Life 2 Community & Mapping Site. Mapcore - A great place to get mapping, modelling and texture help from industry pros. Mod Database - Free listings of mods for almost every moddable game. A great database full of tons of information on mods that are out there. Modhelp.net - A developing modding community. Mod HQ - Comprehensive news resource for Half-Life 2 modifications and Steam related content in general. Valve visits it. Why not you? PixelGames - File reviews and downloads, real friendly editing site based on community! The Snarkpit - Mapping and modelling community site Sourceblog - General tutorials (Many on Texturing/Skinning) SourceWiki - Unofficial and older Source Wiki Wavelength - One of the original sources of HL1 editing material, now steadily servicing HL2 HLFallout.net - Up-to-the-minute coverage of modifications and Valve/Steam.Contains other features as well, such as interviews and walkthroughs. Valve posts/visits the forums, so join the community today! Modeling Cannonfodder's Tools - 3DSMax Importers and Exporters, Dispgen - Displacement Terrains from heightmaps, StudioCompiler - Model/Texture Compiler/Decompiler, winBSPzip - BSP Packer RnL Forums' Lightwave Plugins - Lightwave mesh export plugins. Not currently available, but may be in the future. Insects Infestation - II SDK modeling Export models to Source engine tutorials for 3DSMax, Maya, MS3D, XSI, FRAG. CG Talk The largest and most useful model discussion/news site on the internet. Digital Tutors - Excellent video tutorials, free and packaged, for using SoftImage|XSI and Adobe Photoshop Redemption - Modeling tutorials and blog for XSI and HL2 Source Programming Hl2 Coding - Has some good hl2 related coding tutorials and has great forums for coders to chat. HL2 SDK Doxygen [1] - Half-Life 2 SDK functions and classes mapped out. Tutorials of Rocket Commander - 10-Part Howto make 3D Games Tutorial MSDN - MSDN Half-Life Coding4fun. Directx C++ - Documentation for Unmanaged Directx Directx Managed - Documentation for Managed Directx Gamedev - Website with a lot of useful resources for game developers. Managed Directx Info - Includes various resources, tools, samples, code snippets for Managed Directx Game Programming in C# - 11-part Video Tutorial for Game Programming from MSDN. Mattie's Eventscripts - Great for gaining some minor coding experience, simple plugin addon for Source games. Sample Source Code Quake Engine Source Code - Source code from old Quake (used by Half-Life too) and Doom games. Mech Commander 2 - Entire game and source code. Can serve as an example for learning programming. Plan of Attack Source Code - The entire source code (including art assets) for the Plan of Attack mod, free to use in other mods. Other Official VERC Network Forums	Resources Content for your project. See also Material Download Sites and Free texture resources. Photo Reference 3d.sk - Human Photo References for 3D Artists and Game Developers (large source -partly free) ShutterStock - 700,000 photos/vectors/illustrations/images/etc avail by subscription. All royalty-free. TextureRef.com - Online repository of Texturekits and high-res Photo References for Artists (small source - partly free)
	Game Design Game Design Theory - Interesting for art directors, team leaders Valve in the press The Cabal: Valve’s Design Process For Creating Half-Life (registration required) Scaling the Cabal (purchase required) Valve's Design Process for Creating Half-Life 2: MP3 PPT
	Steam Steampowered forums The Steam review - Comment and discussion on Valve Software’s digital distribution platform. Steam Applications Steam Application IDs
	Modifications HL1 Third Party Mods HL2 Third Party Mods Third Party Goldsource Engine Games Third Party Source Engine Games