Current events
Valve at Leipzig
24 Aug: Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2 have been previewed at the Leipzig games show. See shakey-cam gameplay footage here!
SDK Project: Hammer-only mods
16 Aug: SDK Project is an experiment in creating mods that create new completely gameplay purely through Hammer and the entity Input/Output system - no code involved! The project has already led to a breakout clone, Marble Madness: Source and zombie-crushing racer, complete with slow-mo cameras and a time rewind function.
Impressive stuff indeed. Read and see more at http://www.sdk-project.com/!
Modding tutorial DVD series announced
14 Aug: Noesis Interactive launches Mod Your World DVD series for Half-Life 2.
First 2 of the DVD series "3D Content Creation with SOFTIMAGE|XSI" and "Character Design & Integration with Half-Life 2" will be available in early September 2006.
"Map Design & Integration with Half-Life 2" and "Advanced Character Design" will be available in Q4 2006. http://www.softimage.com/about_us/press_room/2006/060801_noesis.aspx
SDK Update
11 Aug: A minor SDK Update was released today. The changelist can be viewed at the SteamPowered News page here - http://www.steampowered.com/index.php?area=news&client=1&id=717&appid=211
FGD Upgrade
8 Aug: Upgraded versions of both base.fgd and halflife2.fgd have been released by ts2do. They include fixes to many datatypes, exempt keyvalues; spawnflags; and I/O connections, and overall entity corrections. Get it here.
New SourceForts trailer
5 Aug: The SourceForts guys have release a new trailer. The twist: it's on Steam!
SDK update released!
4 Aug: Restart Steam and start doing something! Don't forget to Diff And Patch the new codebase to your mod's code.
SDK update skipping beta
3 Aug: SDK chief Mike Durand says:
We are still testing the SDK so that we can hopefully catch any problems that might cause you guys grief. The plan is to release this week and that's still looking good.
The reason that we are being so careful is that we learned it is not practical to do a beta of the new SDK while leaving the old SDK available. So this new release will not be a beta - it will replace the current version.
Thanks for your patience.
SDK Update Delayed
28 Jul: Mike Durand tells the HLCoders list:
We are having an issue with getting the new SDK to work as a beta alongside the shipping SDK. Since we don't want to cause any problems for MOD makers we are going to delay the release until next week in order to work out this issue.
Sin Episodes SDK released
27 Jul: This seems to be the week of SDK updates. The first SDK release for Sin Episodes is now available from the Tools page in Steam. Currently, it supports the applications available in the generic Source SDK (Hammer/Model Viewer/Face Poser), but game code is not yet accessible. This will be added in the next SDK update, per the release notes.
Ritual has also put together their own editing wiki for Sin Episodes-specific content.
SDK update contents confirmed
27 Jul: The contents of the new SDK update, due out in beta this week unless something goes horribly wrong, have been confirmed by Mike Durand on the hlcoders mailing list.
- What This Release Has
- Lots of source code updates from the Episode 1 production code
- Hammer, Faceposer, Model Viewer updates
- Access to the Ep1 version of the Source Engine binaries
- What It Doesn't Have
- Visual Studio 2005 [including Visual C++ Express] Support (it will be in the next SDK release)
- Improved server plugins for bots (on my to-do list)
- Anything from Episode 2, Portal, Team Fortress [2]