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Source SDK: Mastering the Source

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Welcome to Source SDK: Mastering the Source, a featured wikibook that will help you understand and master the difficulty that is the Source SDK. This book will guide you through all aspects of Valve's Source: Software Development Kit, and help you across the road to designing, modeling, and creating new games with Source.



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Overview

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Welcome to the wiki book Source SDK: Mastering the Source, and most importantly, the Source SDK itself. This chapter will teach you the very basics of the Source SDK and this book concerning it.


Table of Contents

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Section One: The Hammer World Editor

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Chapter 1: Getting Familiar

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Navigating your way through the Hammer Editor's features will take some getting use to. This chapter is going to teach you where to find all the different buttons, flips, and switches so that you know where to find something when you need it.

  • The Menu Bar
  • The Tool Bar
  • The Four Viewports
  • Selection Box
  • Texture Box
  • Entity Box
  • VisGroups Box
  • Status Bar

Chapter 2: The Basics

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Time to get crack'n, this chapter will familiarize you with all of Sources shapes and editors. Don't worry, we'll only be introducing you to what kinds of materials there are, we won't be getting into any advanced editing and construction just yet.

Simple Meshes

  • Blocks(squares and rectangles)
  • Cylinders
  • Cones
  • Wedges
  • Spheres
  • Arches

Simple Editing

  • Transform Tool
  • Make Hollow
  • Carve

Simple Texturing

  • Texture Tool
  • Texture Types
  • Changing Texture size
  • Multi-face Texturing
  • Nodraw

Simple Entities

  • Spawn Points
  • Simple Lights
  • Basic Props
    • Prop Statics
    • Prop Physics
    • Prop Dynamics
  • Doors

Saving and Compiling

  • Saving your Map
  • Compiling Basics
  • Making a Skybox
  • Common Compiling Errors
  • Creating a Prefab

Our First House

  • Making a House
  • Making the Land
  • House Basics
  • Texturing
  • House Advanced
  • Furnishing our House
  • Compiling our House

Chapter 3: Entities

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This chapter will familiarize you with all known entities in the Hammer Editor. Entities are a critical and necessary component in all forms of Hammer level design and construction.


Point Entities


Brush Entities

Chapter 4: Advanced

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Meshes and Editing

Lighting

Textures

Entities


Chapter 5: Going Pro

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Half-Life 2 Mapping

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Tools and techniques used specifically when mapping for Half-life 2 or it's episodes.


Entities

Counter-Strike Mapping

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Tools and techniques used specifically when mapping for Counter-Strike.


Left 4 Dead Mapping

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Tools and techniques used specifically when mapping for Left 4 Dead, or Left 4 Dead 2.


Common Errors

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Other Help Resources

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Valve Developer Community

World of Level Design

ModDB



Section Two: Other Applications

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Chapter 1: The Model Viewer.

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Chapter 2: The Face Poser

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Chapter 3: ItemTest

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Section Three: Documentation

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Release Notes

SDK Reference Docs


Section Four: Create a Mod

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Photos for this book

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Photos

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