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This article relates to the software/tool "Source SDK". Click here for more information.

Source SDK Base

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Revision as of 09:56, 16 October 2025 by Sniffy194 (talk | contribs) (Expand the documentation of the Alien Swarm SDK, generally clean up page. The MP branch and the TF2 branch are generally the same thing now, no need to overcomplicate it for readers.)
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Source SDK Source SDK Base is a game/tool available to all Steam users which is locked to a particular engine branch. Compared to basing your mod on a "real" game, use of SDK Base massively increases your potential audience and prevents incompatible engine updates from making your code or the mod unusable.

Source Engine Test (sourcetest)

All Source SDK Bases comes with Source Engine Test, which contains the stripped down version of Half-Life 2: Lost Coast for benchmark purposes (Video Stress Test), reduced to only the preprogrammed camera following a path that leads the viewer up the mountain. After the sequence completes, the user is presented with a dialogue showing their system performance & framerate and an option to upload them to Valve (which requires sv_cheats to be enabled, and likely no longer works since the old Steam servers used to upload benchmark result has been shutdown).

Versions

There are currently five versions of the SDK Base: the original Source 2006 Source 2006 version (AppID 215), the Source 2007 Source 2007 version (AppID 218), the Alien Swarm - SDK Alien Swarm - SDK (AppID 640), and two Source 2013 Source 2013 versions - SP (AppID 243730) and MP (AppID 243750).

In most cases, it is recommended to base your game on Source SDK Base 2013, as it's the only branch that Valve is intending to provide ongoing support for. Source SDK Base 2013 has two sub-branches, with the multiplayer branch having some additional features such as BSP compression, static prop lightmaps, bicubic lightmaps, radial fog, and more major changes. The singleplayer branch has not been updated since 2015, and is likely meant to be merged into the multiplayer branch, however it is still required for most singleplayer mods due to bugs in the multiplayer branch that break saving and loading.

The Alien Swarm engine branch Alien Swarm engine branch contains all of the heavy refactoring, optimizations, and new engine functions introduced in Left 4 Dead which are generally not present in Source 2013, however it may be more difficult to use for mods of other games, as third-party ports of Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 to the branch must be relied on instead. It is no longer being developed or supported by Valve in any capacity beyond essential security patches, it receives little community attention and most community tools (such as Hammer++) do not support it, it is still 32-bit only, it omits some code that was released in other SDKs, and it does not have a Linux dedicated server for multiplayer mods. Generally, it's inadvisable to use this engine branch directly unless you rely on something from it that can't be easily ported. Caveat emptor!

Older version of SDK Base (2006, 2007) are provided in order to play older mods.

Setting up Source SDK and Source SDK Base

Install Source SDK Base 2006/2007 from Steam->Library->Tools or from the links below:

To get the SDK source code, download Source SDK:

Source SDK Base 2013 SP / MP (TF2 branch)

For Source 2013 Source 2013 version of SDK Base, see Source SDK Base 2013 page.

Content

  • The stock gamecode is a duplicate of Episode One's or Episode Two's, depending on which version (see below) you are using. But the only content available is that of Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Lost Coast: while Zombines and Hunters exist in the code and can be spawned, they appear as errors because their models are not included. If you want to use episodic things, you will need to mount the appropriate game.
  • SDK Base might provide mods with Lost Coast's content, but dedicated servers do not. Multiplayer mods should either not use anything from Lost Coast, or include what they do use in their dedicated server download.
    Tip.pngTip:In Source 2007 or later you can remove the sourcetest SearchPath from gameinfo.txt and Lost Coast will disappear. Unfortunately, doing this under Source 2006 (Episode One) will make the game crash immediately!

Bugs and Fixes

There are two small glitches and things that need to be changed:

  1. The main menu has a "Visual Stress Test" option instead of anything useful. Copy resource\GameMenu.res from another suitable game into your mod.
  2. Episode Two's flashlight and weapon pickup icons do not appear. Open resource\ClientScheme.res and add this to the Fonts section: 
    		WeaponIconsSmall
		{
			1
			{
				name		HalfLife2
				tall		32
				weight	0
				antialias 1
				additive	1
				custom	1
			}
		}

In addition, Source SDK Base 2007 is unable to mount Half-Life 2: Episode Two content from provided depot VPKs, because of a missing config file and the VPKs being switched around with Base 2006.

See Fixing VPK mounting for older Source SDK Bases in order to fix it.

Content (2007)

Note.pngNote:Source SDK Base 2007 depot also includes "Source 2007 Binaries 2" (depot 317), which is actually Source 2009 binaries. These can be only obtained through Steam developer console (using download_depot 218 317 command).

Content (2006)

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