Half-Life Tools Backup Created 6 years ago2018-03-04 16:37:00 UTC by Solokiller

I've made a website that hosts backups of old Half-Life tools. Most of this is from Slackiller and a Gamefront mirror, but i'll add more stuff as needed. All files are hosted on Github.

https://samvanheer.github.io/Half-Life-Tools-Backup/

Credits to Shepard for making the HLEnhanced website, which i've used as a base for this.

Currently hosted are the Slackiller HL Programs page and all the Half-Life SDKs that i could find.

This includes SDKs 1.0, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3, including separate releases of files.

An interesting thing to note is that the early SDK releases required the signing of an NDA prior to allowing the creation of a mod. Mods also had to be hosted on an FTP server in order to be made visible to the Custom Game browser.

I'm currently going through the list of utilities on the Gamefront mirror (https://gamefront.online/files/listing/pub2/Half_Life/Tools_and_Utilities) to mirror anything useful.

I also took the various SDK source codes and made branches that show the evolution of the multiplayer and single player codebases:
Multiplayer codebase: https://github.com/SamVanheer/Half-Life-Tools-Backup/commits/hl1_src_mp
Singleplayer codebase: https://github.com/SamVanheer/Half-Life-Tools-Backup/commits/hl1_src_sp
Difference between the multiplayer and singleplayer codebases in 2.3: https://github.com/SamVanheer/Half-Life-Tools-Backup/commits/hl1_src_2.3_diff

I didn't catch most of the file removals (if any), just the removal of the "dedicated" directory in 2.4 (Github release).

Oh thank god, I've been thinking someone should do this for a while now before all the older hosting sites disappear but haven't had the required webhost or server space to do it myself.

It's too bad Vladitude has been down for years now, I think there were a couple things there that Slackiller's site didn't have.

Anyway, really happy to see that you've gone and set this up for future generations - game archival is undervalued and ensuring tools continue to exist alongside them is a vital part of keeping games like HL fully preserved. Keep up the good work!

Do you mean things like this: http://web.archive.org/web/20010308202415/http://www.vlatitude.com:80/resources.php

That might still be recoverable.

Yeah - though looking at the cached page for downloads there doesn't seem to be much that you haven't already gotten your hands on - Tool Box Lux RAD and Gen Surf are the only things that pop out at me as not having a mirror or an easily accessible alternative, though snapshots from '08 also have Radiant, QuArK, and a mess of FGD files that might come in handy for someone and are a bit harder to find these days.

I found Tool Box Lux RAD here: https://gamebanana.com/tools/5591
Gen Surf here: https://gamebanana.com/tools/5589

The website for Radiant is here: http://radiant.robotrenegade.com/
The website for QuArK is here: http://quark.sourceforge.net/infobase/index.html

FGD files i'll need more specific info on, afaik the latest fgds are still around and support Hammer 3.5 era features.

I'll get mirrors for these tools up later on.

It may be useful to make a new version of Tool Box Lux RAD that's integrated with a set of tools that can work on GoldSource as a whole, like the Source SDK lists all the tools.

Since rad file editing is so straightforward it may be easier to have one main tool that has the utility stuff built into it. I've thought of doing that before, so it may be useful.

Oh yes, this is real good. Legacy SMD exporters I take it would be good to have on here too?

have you seen these as well? https://sites.google.com/site/gshltools/system/app/pages/sitemap/hierarchy

I have some Half-Life utilities and tools hosted on my website, most of them I downloaded from Slackiller over ten years ago so most of it you'll probably already have, but feel free to take anything that's worth keeping a copy of. The cached.wad and gfx.wad SDK for instance is a rare download, at least it was back in the day. I also have some old fgd files for use with WorldCraft, Hammer's predecessor.

http://www.themightyatom.nl/downloads.html

Nice work.
Good to have all the SDKs there easily accessible.