Current events

Valve's GDC presentations available

February 29, 2008: Four of the presentations given by Valve at the Game Developers Conference are now available from their publications page. They are:

• Kim Swift and Erik Wolpaw, Integrating Narrative and Design: A Portal Post-Mortem
• Jason Mitchell, Stylization With a Purpose: The Illustrative World of Team Fortress 2
• Elan Ruskin, How To Go From PC to Cross Platform Development Without Killing Your Studio
• Alex Vlachos, Post Processing in The Orange Box

Source SDK Base - Orange Box available

February 23, 2008: The Source 2007 version of SDK Base from which Source mods can run for cross-game compatibility is available now. To use it, assuming your code has been updated of course, simply change your mod's AppID to 218.

SDK Base Orange is only a 10MB download on top of the old SDK Base. Unfortunately it doesn't yet provide access to Episode Two content, but that's likely to change soon.

Source website updated

February 23, 2008: There's a stylish new Source website: source.valvesoftware.com. Thank god they updated those screenshots!

Valve Unveils Steamworks

January 29, 2008: Valve has released Steamworks, a complete suite of publishing and development tools – ranging from copy protection to social networking services to server browsing. Steamworks is available free of charge, and will allow developers complete control over many aspects of production and post-production of their games.

“Developers and publishers are spending more and more time and money cobbling together all the tools and backend systems needed to build and launch a successful title in today’s market (...) Steamworks puts all those tools and systems together in one free package, liberating publishers and developers to concentrate on the game instead of the plumbing.” — Gabe Newell.

• Read the press release for more information: Valve Unveils Steamworks

Source SDK Updated

November 7, 2007: The Source SDK has been updated with content and tools to create maps, models, and textures for Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. In addition to support for games in The Orange Box, the Source SDK can continue to be used to create content for other top-selling Source engine-based games, such as Half-Life 2: Episode One and Counter-Strike: Source.
Included in the Source SDK are:

• The Hammer World Editor, which provides the capability of creating custom levels for Source engine games
• Valve's custom Faceposer tool that allows users to produce choreographed sequences in the Source engine
• A model viewer that allows artists to preview models and their animations quickly and easily
• Source code that allows mod makers to create their own game based on Half-Life 2 or Half-Life 2:Deathmatch
• All of the tools required to make build custom textures and models for Source engine games

Future Source SDK updates will provide new development tools, as well as source code for creating single and multi-player mods that utilize the latest Source engine features.

See also:

• Source SDK Release Notes
• Source

Afraid of Monsters Directors Cut Released

October 31, 2007: The incredible horror survival mod for Half-Life, is now re-released with various extra features, including new endings, random monster spawns and more! Go and grab it from their ModDB page here!

The Orange Box Released!

October 10, 2007: Enjoy playing Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2.

MINERVA: Metastasis Released

October 1, 2007: Two and a half years in the making, it's finally done. With three new maps, and the whole lot redone with HDR - the third episode of this wildly popular, single-player Half-Life 2 has now been released. Requiring Valve's Half-Life 2: Episode One to play, this completes the beginning of the apocryphal, engaging MINERVA story.

• Official site with screenshots, download links, plot expansion, hidden blog and forums!

Fortress Forever Released

September 13, 2007: Fortress Fans, the time you've been waiting for is here! Whether you've followed the mod since the beginning, or are just looking to tide yourself over before TF2 it matters not. Team Fortress is a game we love, and we invite you to give the mod a try.

• Official site with screenshots, videos and download links

The Orange Box now available for preorder

September 11th, 2007: The Orange Box is now available for preorder from Steam, including the ability to play in the Team Fortress 2 beta starting September 17th.

VTF Shell Extensions 1.05, with Vista support

August 20th, 2007: The VTF Shell Extensions tool, which enables Windows to display the contents of VTF files as thumbnail images, has been updated to support Vista. Download version 1.05 here.

New version of XSI Mod Tool available for modelers!

August 14th, 2007: A new version of the SoftImage|XSI Mod Tool is available! This brings the tool from version 4.2 to 6.0. A series of tutorials from Noesis Interactive's DVD range are available for free to help you get started.

Illustrative Rendering in Team Fortress 2

August 13th, 2007: Watch this TF2 tech demo for an overview of Valve's technological and artistic direction. Prepare for big words!

Steam community

August 5th, 2007: The Steam community beta has now been released. You can take a look at it here to find out more about it: The Steam Community