We're launching a new site and we need y Created 6 years ago2017-10-01 15:32:51 UTC by ValveDevUnion

Apologies if this seems a bit spammy. We do have a good reason for coming here, and I'll try to keep it brief.

We're in the process of launching a new site, one we're calling the Valve Developer Union. In the process of doing up a custom map for Quake (and then looking into Half-Life 1 mapping), I noticed that a lot of the sites with modding tutorials are either outdated, no longer being updated, are dead or are in danger of disappearing (the former Half-Life Editing Resource Center is a good example of this), are just plain poorly written, or any of the four. Sites like Gamebanana are more focused on hosting user mods than the know-how. That's perfectly fine, but these engines deserve better.

Given how Half-Life and Half-Life 2 jumpstarted some of the biggest phenomenons in PC gaming, we decided to create our own site to make sure modders in the future aren't lost digging through the Internet Archive or guides across YouTube and Google. At the same time, we're not quite sure where the community itself is at this point. They seem to be splintered all over, on lots of little fansites.

Here's where you all come in. TWHL has a wealth of information and talented people still doing their thing after all these years. We have a lot of ground to cover. We're hoping people here can look through the site, suggest major topics to cover, and maybe catch any inaccuracies we missed. We're new to this website stuff and how to get people's attention, but TWHL seemed like a good place to start. Apologies in advance.

https://valvedev.info/

Your solution to "tutorials are splintered across so many sites" is to create a new one?

Can't agree with the notion that it isn't possible for information to be too scattered and disconnected there Crypt. I also don't understand the gilbert grape "I work in a grocery store so I can't shop at the supermarket" mentality. We can be constructive and open to other communities and still be friends with people at twhl, no need for hostility.

I don't think people would have imagined that goldsource modding/mapping would remain as active as it has, and there's certainly going to be tutorials/other resources that are inconsistent with [relatively] more modern techniques and workflows.

Hell, just recently we had Dr.Cola and all but a few people (who responded) confused about how level changes work in regards to npc persistence. The Level change tutorial here on TWHL makes no mention of npc persistence.
It's great that people donate their knowledge to a free community, but confusion about basic things like level changes shouldn't be possible in an engine that's been around for 18 years. That's older than some of our members.

I can't personally comment on the state of the 'community' as you call it since I'm a 3D artist not tied to any particular engine, but if you can pull this off I think it'll do a lot of good for newcomers and I commend that. Just make sure you're ready to do a lot of research and triple-checking for accuracy or you'll just end up making things worse. It is a massive undertaking that will require not only that but also updates as the community releases new tools, discovers new tricks or finds out that previously held beliefs to be incorrect and so on.

This engine never had much in the way of documentation, it's pretty sad that we have to reverse engineer the code to get some of that info.

That said, if there were a place to put documentation i'd contribute some, some people have asked for guides on working with the SDK and there are some pitfalls that can be avoided if you only have a way to know about them.

Yeah I’d be interested in editorial roles of a programming related website, for engine documentation.

To answer a few things, yeah, the focus here is on preservation. This is a really massive undertaking, and it's gonna look kinda sad and silly until we get further in. The site's only been up for literally a month, so as far as content goes, we have a decent amount of it.

I don't see the issue with "all these sites have tutorials of varying accuracy, timeliness, and completeness, so let's create a central, fact-checked resource for it all". For now, linking to other sites is good enough, but I think we can do better, to make sure it's still around in the future. I can't guarantee TWHL's continued existence, or Interlopers, or the SC forums. I can guarantee our own site.

And so far, we're really only touching the stuff documented elsewhere; there's plenty of cracks in the documentation, like the aforementioned NPC persistence issue. It's stuff we take for granted, but would confuse anyone just starting out. I want our knowledge of GoldSrc and Source to be airtight one day.

GoldSrc, by nature of its documentation being so spotty, is a key focus of mine. This site came out of my own personal need for it, and I figure someone else could get something out of it too. If not now, then at least in the future.

I personally have been writing daily for the site, but my knowledge only goes so far. If you're interested in helping, I'm far more active on our Discord server, which I'll leave here. I'll be working on coordinating some way for other people to contribute. Right now, it's literally just "send me a text file and I'll edit it and put it up". Maybe I can get our webmaster to code in user roles or something (weird custom NodeJS install), or at least a submit content page.

I don't have any issue with your endeavour - I've seen way too many resource sites disappear and their content lost forever and that sucks. But I see a bit of a flaw in your argument:

I can't guarantee TWHL's continued existence, or Interlopers, or the SC forums. I can guarantee our own site.

By the same logic, I can't guarantee the continued existence of your site, but I can for TWHL. What makes your word more reliable than mine?

twhl is pretty good it actually has preserved articles of VERC (though those articles quality vary wildly)

Well, for one thing, they’re poorly formatted, and somewhat outdated.

There needs to be updated and improved versions.