Valve Developer Community:Community portal

Welcome to the Valve Developer Community! From here on in 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) C-SEC - Japanese Source modding and mapping development site, including with translated many SDK documents to Japanese. Game-Advance.net - Very small new modding community. Focus is on source engine, but forums exist for non-source modding as well. Hosts modding projects. 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. hl.tozcentral.net - Half Life and Half-Life 2 resource, Post your own bots, maps, media, mods and tutorials HL2World.com - Half Life 2 Knowledge Base Interlopers.net - News and general resources LevelDesign.nu - A large Swedish game-dev community which covers texturing, mapping and modeling. Mapcore - A great place to get mapping, modelling and texture help from industry pros. Modhelp.net - A developing modding community. 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. Mod HQ - Comprehensive news resource for Half-Life 2 modifications and Steam related content in general. Valve visits it. Why not you? Nem's Tools - Several useful Source tools including GCFScape 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 TWHL - Mapping community and tutorial site, mostly HL1. Wavelength - One of the original sources of HL1 editing material, now steadily servicing HL2 Wunderboy.org - Several useful Source tools including VTFTool Mapping Custom Source Tools - Source Mapping Compile Tools - Faster, and more helpful with errors over the V Tools (Includes 64bit, and Linux versions) DispEd - Precise displacement editor used to make geometric shapes in the style of "Quake 3 patches." Edit Life - Mapping articles, entity list, error documentation and forums Half-wit 2 - Another collection of Mapping tutorials Hl2Mapping.com - A Friendly helpful, mapping community. I Wanna Map - You wanna map, We wanna help. For Tutorials and help Madedog's E-Portal - A small amount of great step-by-step tutorials. NiRiDa Studios - Comunidad Española de Edición en Source - Spanish Community for the Source Engine edition tutorials. RobotChaos Map Making Tutorial - Along with a few other things (Sprays, etc.) - Has a small ever building step by step tutorial on making maps taken from a beginner's perspective. SdK Central - A small but growing community with map submissions, tutorials and overall help. Shammers Forums - A small community, with a couple of useful tutorials. SourcePrefabs.com - Great source for download-able prefabs to use in Hammer with a growing community. zombie's Optimizing-page information on optimizing your map zombie's *Edited* Optimization Page An in-depth guide to optimizing your maps. Spillmodding.no A norwegian mapping community with more than 130 tutorials for more than 13 engines! TAz00.com 22+ Tutorials on Mapping, Beginner to Advanced, 10+ Maps with source files included! Mapping-area - Tutorials on Mapping, Beginner to Advanced, all in french! Mir Half-life2 - Tutorials on Mapping, all in Russian!(Все по русски!) Modeling Cannonfodder's Tools - 3DSMax Importers and Exporters, Dispgen - Displacement Terrains from heightmaps, StudioCompiler - Model/Texture Compiler/Decompiler, winBSPzip - BSP Packer CG Talk The largest and most useful model discussion/news site on the internet. Insects Infestation - II SDK modeling Export models to Source engine tutorials for 3DSMax, Maya, MS3D, XSI, FRAG. RnL Forums' Lightwave Plugins - Lightwave mesh export plugins. Not currently available, but may be in the future. Redemption - Modeling tutorials and blog for XSI and HL2 Source Digital Tutors - Excellent video tutorials, free and packaged, for using SoftImage|XSI and Adobe Photoshop Programming Hl2 Coding - Has some good hl2 related coding tutorials and has great forums for coders to chat. MSDN - MSDN Half-Life Coding4fun. Game Programming in C# - 11-part Video Tutorial for Game Programming from MSDN. Directx C++ - Documentation for Unmanaged Directx Directx Managed - Documentation for Managed Directx Managed Directx Info - Includes various resources, tools, samples, code snippets for Managed Directx Tutorials of Rocket Commander - 10-Part Howto make 3D Games Tutorial Gamedev - Website with a lot of useful resources for game developers. Sample Source Code Plan of Attack Source Code - The entire source code (including art assets) for the Plan of Attack mod, free to use in other mods. 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. Other Official VERC Network Forums	Map Archives Day of Defeat Directory - Directory for custom maps, files and links to other Day of Defeat: Source sites. 17buddies - French community of gamers - Map Downloads, tools. The Ascendancy - What you're trying to live up to. Database of the very best HL2DM maps. CSM2 - Map Downloads,Tutorials and mapping help forums. LanManiaX - The largest map database for HL\HL2. The Nightlight Mapping - Maps devoted to realistic locations. Dimension Studios - Professional level design team. Order Source and Pre-Source maps. Also view tutorials in the forums.
	Image Creation and Editing Adobe Photoshop - The standard image editing tool in the industy, used by professionals all over the world. Very expensive. Adobe Photoshop Elements - Low-cost, consumer version of Photoshop with high-end features such as colour management removed. The GIMP - Completely free, open source image editing software available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and other UNIX operating systems. Complex to use, but powerful, scriptable and endlessly modifiable. Paint Shop Pro - A cheap alternative to Adobe Photoshop. For those who don't want to break the bank. Wally - Simple freeware texture/decals/skining editing program. Paint.NET - An open source .NET based image manipulation program.
	3D Modelling, Animation and Rendering Softimage|XSI - Program used to make models & animations for HL2. XSI Mod Tool is available for FREE. 3D Studio Max - Powerful tool for modeling and animation, one of the industry's best. Expensive. Maya 3D - Excellent modeling and animation package. Considered to be one of the best among modders. Also expensive. Blender - Free, open source modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback library/engine/IDE. Lightwave 3D - Excellent modelling & animation tool. See Lightwave for links to HL2 exporters. Like every other high end package, it is considered to be one of the best by its fans. :) Expensive, but less so than others. Milkshape3D - Low cost, popular and simple to use 3D modelling program. Wings3D - Free, open source Nendo-alike natural modeling IDE.
	Resources Content for your project. Animax.it - Free textures. Image * After - 10,000+ free images and textures. Mayang.com Textures - Free textures for your maps and mods. Moddb texture site directory - Directory of free, ready to use game textures. MorgueFile - Free, high-resolution stock photography. Oyonale - Small library of source photos suitable for turning into textures, courtesy of Gilles Tran. LocationWorks - Lots of pictures, anything from old castles to pubs. SXC.HU - Huge library of images. Photo Reference 3d.sk - Human Photo References for 3D Artists and Game Developers (large source -partly free) TextureRef.com - Online repository of Texturekits and high-res Photo References for Artists (small source - partly free) Morguefile.com - Lots of free photos. Anything from fruit to cement factories. ShutterStock - 700,000 photos/vectors/illustrations/images/etc avail by subscription. All royalty-free.
	Game Design Game Design Theory - Interesting for art directors, team leaders Ken Birdwell's Gamasutra article - The Cabal: Valve’s Design Process For Creating Half-Life (registration required)
	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 Official Games