Talk:Commentary System

- Is it possible for mods to use the commentary system? Or is it another thing we're (im)patiently waiting on a code update to the SDK? --—Fuzzy ^(talk  ) 17:32, 15 Mar 2006 (PST)

I think they're going to give us HDR and the commentary system in their next source code update. I believe I saw this somewhere in the hl mailing list. Canuckian

That one which was going to be out 2 weeks after DoD:S? I'll keep holding my breath.... --—Fuzzy ^(talk  ) 18:42, 15 Mar 2006 (PST)

I guess this wasn't the one :). Currently I'm very into the commentary system (that's also why I put the corrupted commentary nodes for EP1). I'm trying to get the commentary nodes into a Half-Life 2 modification itself, but the option 'enable commentary' on the Audio tab in the mod's options dialog is simply not available... (also I guess there is no console command for it, I only can find commentary_firstrun 1/0 and commentary_testfirstrun at the moment, and in my results there happens nothing). Now my question is; Since Half-Life 2: Episode One was released with the commentary nodes includes, like Lost Coast was, is there any chance that there will be a sdk update (soon?) for Half-Life 2 mods to enable commentary in it? --Jurgen Knops 10:21, 16 Jun 2006 (PDT)

The commentary system would work in HL2 if it had the code for it. Don't expect an SDK update soon—ts2do 13:27, 16 Jun 2006 (PDT)

I did some hacking around with the commentary system a week ago. You can make commentary nodes appear by changing the SteamAppID to 380 in gameinfo.txt. I also threw in a SearchPaths entry for "episodic" to match the Ep1's gameinfo.txt, though I can't remember if that is necessary. Then commentary nodes can be placed using the same mapname_commentary.txt or whatever it is - check the Ep1 GCFs for the syntax. The downsides are that the HUD overlay doesn't appear (I didn't get as far as figuring out what's needed to make this work) and Hammer crashes every 5 mins (but you don't really need Hammer to make commentary nodes). Tom had some suggestions for how to fix the crashes, but I haven't gotten round to following it up yet. --Giles 02:28, 17 Jun 2006 (PDT)

- Nice. This is where I was waiting for.. Short after the release of Lost Coast I had a request for this system at the maillist of Valve ( http://list.valvesoftware.com ) --JurgenKnops 14:36, 4 Nov 2005 (PST)

Thanks for making this look a lot better and complete. I tried the best I could just through reading through the commentary file. --AndrewNeo 17:49, 31 Oct 2005 (PST)

-Any plans or anyway to get this working with Counter Strike: Source maps? Bean

as it may have been stated in this or another article...it's only available for Lost Coast right now—ts2do ^(Talk | @) 16:00, 10 Nov 2005 (PST)

But that wasn't what Bean asked. —Maven ^(talk) 16:03, 10 Nov 2005 (PST)

We are planning to update the Commentary System to handle multiplayer commentary. At this time we don't have an estimate for when that'll be done, sorry. --Robin Walker 22:44, 10 Nov 2005 (PST)

MP commentary will destroy some of the essense of the commentary system though...such as pausing many threats & allowing you to view through a camera without dying in the middle. The best way to do it is to limit it to singleplayer...which they'd have to add capability to play singleplayer, that'd not be too hard though—ts2do ^(Talk | @) 15:14, 11 Nov 2005 (PST)--

Not exactly. I'm guessing you won't have to be playing a multiplayer map on a server to view commentary. I'm sure it can be coded to where you can enable commentary mode and the map will start on your own LAN server so you can run through and check out what the developer has to say. --Bean 08:01, 14 Nov 2005 (PST)

• I would assume they'd remove the camera shift ability for games like HL2DM and CS:S. Just make it so all you can do is listen to commentary bubbles. --AndrewNeo 14:59, 14 Nov 2005 (PST)

• Wait- so if you have commentary enabled you're always semi-god? I thought that was only when you were listening to commentary. --Alph Tech STUART 08:42, 18 Dec 2005 (PST)
  • I thought that too, but then I got to wondering why I wasn't losing health when the Combine was shooting me. --AndrewNeo 16:37, 18 Dec 2005 (PST)
    • I thought it was a bug. Time to delete my stupid "ironic" timedemos. --Alph Tech STUART 19:29, 18 Dec 2005 (PST)

Maybe we can polish off the todo part of this article. I've just documented how to make a brush based solid in that key value format. Angry Beaver 00:48, 5 Jan 2006 (PST)

I don't think that would work for this though... instead of being compiled into the map, the commentary resource files are parsed by the system and entities are spawned...—ts2do ^(Talk | @) 06:33, 5 Jan 2006 (PST)

Manual add?

Is there any way to manually add commentary to a level, and not have to have it enabled? (eg. a tutorial for a multiplayer only Mod)--JeffMOD 14:43, 9 Apr 2008 (PDT)