Talk:SDK Docs
The idea of having a 'community area' for the documentation index seems redundant. Over time, I wouldn't want the site to split into the areas that Valve authored vs. the areas that the community authored. Does it make sense to roll this into the rest of the index? Erik Johnson
I agree. I think it will complicate the process of finding the information you want, mix up the Wiki categorization, and make us wonder if it's okay to edit the original documents. And there are already a few documents written that have already been mixed in.
- Mungo
I played it safe and assumed you wouldn't want the two mixed. I'll merge them now. --Tom Edwards 11:10, 28 Jun 2005 (PDT)
OK, problem. We are currently linking to Categories with {{Category:Modeling}}. That displays the description of the category and they've all been filled in to have all the current pages. But that isn't the category, it's just a copy of it. If anyone wants to add to the description they've got to go and manually edit the page, defeating the point of having a category in the first place. We need to be able to list the category contents themselves on the page if we want it to keep itself up to date, or link through to the category pages and lose searchability. --Tom Edwards 11:25, 28 Jun 2005 (PDT)
Doing it this way allows the topics to be manually arranged in a useful order on this page by editing the Category pages. But, yeah, there should probably also be a link to each category page here so you can also jump to the alphabetical lists. edit: I see you added that...I think it's a good solution. It is still an extra step to manually edit the category pages, but that lets us put them in a useful order for this page. -Mungo
TBH I think alphabetically is the most useful. The current setup doesn't solve the problem of getting the self-updating lists onto the main page though, so it's not terribly useful. --Tom Edwards 11:49, 28 Jun 2005 (PDT)
True, alphabetical is very useful. I thought it could be useful to arrange these in tables with headings like Basics, Advanced, Troubleshooting. Then if someone wants an alphabetical list, they can click on the title. I don't know if the software can automatically put the alphabeticized lists on this page. -Mungo
That's a good idea, but a lot of work. It will get forgotten and be worse than useless because everyone will assume what's there on the page is all there is. --Tom Edwards 12:14, 28 Jun 2005 (PDT)
True...it's already too much work to manually add new topics to their category pages so they appear here. But I don't know if there's a solution to that. Maybe it would be best just to put a small note after the big categories like Level Design and Coding that links to the Category page. Otherwise, this page is going to become an enormous, unorganized, incomplete list. -Mungo
Or go back to descriptive categories with titles as links. ;-) --Tom Edwards 12:23, 28 Jun 2005 (PDT)
Okay, I like this: Do what you said, but type the descriptions directly into this page. Then on the category page, we have the option to put an organized short list(s) of some of the basic articles that beginners would want to look at first. The alphabetical list automatically appears below. --Mungo
Isn't AI just part of Level Design? -Mungo
Aren't materials too? It's signifigantly different and in future will likley contain coding material too. --Tom Edwards 07:58, 29 Jun 2005 (PDT)
gotcha -Mungo
I'm wondering if a single-player HL2-specific category would be useful. Stuff like basic map design often covers other mods such as CS:S, but in-depth HL2 articles and associated entity documentation could probably go in their own area. Like the excellent Assaults article. :-) Cargo Cult 05:37, 30 Jun 2005 (PDT)
...Merging may help even more if there are some Mod specific categories. As an example, an on-going problem in the Source SDK Chatbear forums is knowing what members want when they ask questions or are searching for solutions. "Will this work in CS:S?" i.e., Ropes, Sounds, Ladders, Entity types. No doubt there will always be some repetition. --Mark WiseCarver
- I gather that MediaWiki allows articles to appear in multiple categories, so a basic article on, say, vertex manipulation could appear in all appropriate sections - e.g. 'HL2 Deathmatch', 'CS:Source', 'HL2 SP' etc, while more mod- or game-specific articles could appear in just one. Something like that, anyway! Cargo Cult 06:55, 1 Jul 2005 (PDT)
The Tutorials category is not linked from anywhere, shouldn't it be added to this category page? --SubKamran 09:15, 4 Jul 2005 (PDT)
Article page renaming and linking
Renaming a page is really crappy. I created a entity description for ai_battle_line. I clicked the link in the Entity list and started editing an article called "AI Battle Line". I tried to rename it to ai_battle_line after I've finished, but it didn't work. And the bigger problem was the linking to such a page. When typing ...wiki/ai_battle_line in the address bar of the browser you'll get to the AI Battle Line page. But an internal wiki link to ai_battle_line appears in red (and with action=edit), because the name of the article is "AI Battle Line". Can anyone (maybe an admin) rename the "AI Battle Line" to "ai_battle_line" so the ai_battle_line internal links work correct. --King2500 16:04, 21 Jul 2005 (PDT)
- I'm not sure how you did this. The link in the entity list is "ai_battle_line", not "AI Battle Line". The initial capital letter is irrelevant, but the caps on "Battle" and "Line" are important and will point at a different page. Clicking the any of the red links in the entity page creates the correct page name. You must have created "AI Battle Line" by editing a url directly or moving/renaming after you created the page. I fixed it by moving it to a temporary name, then moving it to the correct name, "Ai battle line". --JeffLane 21:21, 21 Jul 2005 (PDT)
- Thanks Jeff. I tried the same, but it didn't work to rename it back, because of the redirect.--King2500 06:01, 22 Jul 2005 (PDT)
Logic gates
Unless I'm being stupid there don't appear to be entities for any of the standard logic gates. There's no AND, OR NOT, NOR, XOR or any of the others. It's probably possible to emulate all of them (certainly AND) but that's not a very good solution... --TomEdwards 04:34, 27 Jul 2005 (PDT)
How do you use maplist.txt?
im trying to make a short single player mod and cant figure out how to make levels appear when you click 'new game' right now the menu is blank, and i assume it has something to do with maplist.txt, the console informs me it cannot find the file