Can I use Half-Life SDK to directly edit Team Fortress Classic? Created 8 months ago2023-08-15 22:41:19 UTC by Calamity-Sanity

I wanted to make a TFC mod using modding tools. Is there already a better TFC SDK out there that I don't know about or do I have to use the Half-Life SDK to mod TFC?

The best thing you can do is to decompile the models, its better than using the Half-Life SDK. That, of course, if you want to edit models.
If you want to create a map, read this. If you want to edit a TFC map, you can decompile the map but its very unstable and very buggy, so its not recommended.
If you want to edit sounds, its very easy to do, you just need a program like Audacity to convert files. Here is a detailed tutorial:
Lastly if you want to code, there is not any TFC source code available, but you can read this thread on steam.

Thanks for the help, I ran into some more problems along the way:

1. How do I access Hammer through Source SDK? Would you recommend something like Sledge or J.A.C.K. over Hammer for Goldsrc? If so where can I download them?

2. I decompiled the Civilian model from Tfc using JHLMV and imported it into Blender with an addon called "Blender Source Tools" that gave Blender support for Goldsrc, Source, & Source 2 games to test if I could then edit him, because I was then going to insert the older versions of the Tfc mercs to then edit them with blender to then use as new classes, how would I use blender to edit them?

3. I would like to add my own models via Blender & export them to my Tfc mod. That same Blender addon also gave engine support for exporting Source & Source 2 Models, but for Goldsrc ones you have to do it manually. I created a .smd model file with the help of blender & created the .qc script file together in the same folder. I tried compiling the .smd & .qc file with JHLMV but it wouldn't make it into an .mdl file like I was hoping. Was I scripting the .qc wrong? Another problem could have been me incorrectly structuring the files & folders directory, do I have to set up my folders like this to do it?:

<mod_folder>/

- models/

| |-- mrcube/
| | |-- cube.smd
| | |-- cube_texture.vmt
| | |-- cube.qc
| | |-- cube.mdl (Compiled model)

- materials/

| |-- models/
| |-- mrcube/
| |-- cube_texture.vtf

- <other_folders_and_files>

-Or am I doing something else wrong?

4. Regarding Metamod, how exactly do I install it? Do I need to install any other programs along with it to help me mod Tfc? I am also against the idea of using or requesting other peoples plugins since I would like it to be my mod entirely. For the coding aspect, I just have to learn C++ to operate the modkits, or do I need to learn another programming language?

Sorry for the extreme delay:

1. Preferably use J.A.C.K. You might also want to try Trenchbroom if you are more familiar with Quake mapping.
2. You´ll probably want to look up some tutorials, i cant help you with that. Blender has its own documentation and tutorials, they can be found here. If Blender proves difficult to use, try simpler programs like MS3D or FragMotion.
3. You are trying to export the model as a Source model rather than a GoldSrc model. Check this and this.
4. I haven´t used MetaMod, but they have a guide for this. Keep in mind, you do need a little bit of C++ knowledge to use it. You might want to check out some tutorials on C++. I recomend this (1, 2, 3) pages for learning.

Would this help me Mod Tfc? It's a Playlist of how to program in the Half Life SDK.

It teaches you about programming map entities, weapons and such. It will help you if you know C++ programming fairly well from the start.
You can also check out programming tutorials here on TWHL.

Also hi, I made that

Strangely, ChatGPT was telling me that the Goldsrc Engine was written on a Programming Language called "Squirrel" so I accidentally assumed that you needed to know it instead of C++. Thanks for clarifying the confusion.

LLMs such as ChatGPT should only be used as entertaining novelties, not as actual sources of information.

They don't know anything, they don't provide any guaranteed correct information. All they're good for is making convincingly enough human-like text.

Yeah, I would advise against using ChatGPT for GoldSRC-related stuff, because there isn't much information about it. It has worked okay for doing my brother's Bosnian homework (writing little poems etc.), but I'd definitely not use it for this.

Are people still even playing Team Fortress Classic? Because I might actually make a Tf2 mod instead if no one is going to even play the Mod, or are there people out there who would be interested?

ChatGPT was also telling me to look somewhere else for help after I started asking it more advanced Goldsrc questions, so I came here

But wait, would Valve not approve of me making a Tfc mod though? Or is it okay as long as I don't steal any of their code & make the game free to play? But am I required to "steal" code to make my mod work? Or could I just write my own Code but it does the same thing? Or should I just make my mod unique in general? I was going to add different maps to it.

TFC is still being played. It's not as popular as it used to be, but there's at least a couple communities still around with regular players.

I'm not sure if there's any game code available, and engine code is definitely off the table, but if all you want to do is add new maps then all that isn't needed. If you're not changing anything code-wise you can just use TFC as the base game (iirc you can put "fallback_dir" "tfc" in liblist.gam), but if custom maps is all you're planning on making you don't even need to make a mod for that. Just publish those maps on their own and anyone already owning TFC can play those without getting a separate game/mod for it!

The making of and publishing of custom TFC maps is over two decades old and I'm sure the remaining players (including me) would be very grateful to try out new maps 😊

As for Valve's approval, don't worry about that. I don't think they even acknowledge TFC anymore, and even if they did they'd just be positive about it as they've always been about mods*.

(*except for HDTF, but you can't really call that a mod, and besides we don't talk about that dumpster fire anyway)

I wanted to add new Classes to my Tfc Mod, Could I do that? Same goes with Weapons, and this idea where any class could pick up a Keycard to unlock a door.

New classes and weapons sounds like code territory. As far as I know we only have HL1, Op4 and BS code SDKs but none for TFC and I'm unsure what options we have there.
Perhaps something like Metamod could be used? I've never messed around with that sort of stuff myself so can't really tell how much it could help you here.

Doors and keycards (regardless of class) is vanilla goldsrc so that's definitely doable.
Making it class-specific, on the other hand, iirc the TFC entities only had logic for team-specificity so might need code work to get that.

Do I need access to the Source Code of Tfc (Which there is none available I think) To add something like New Classes though? Or is it where some Code is visible & you can edit?

How I was going to do it where the player would press "R" or something to change the Classes instead of adding new numbers, as that part could be locked? Idk. For "0" instead of a Random Class I was going to make it a Commander Class.

I was going to make the Keycard part where any class could pick it up & use it, I was going to add new colors as well.

Do you know of someone else who knows about Metamod I could ask this to? Could the Valve Modding Community Discord Server give me answers too?

The source code of TFC is not available to the public and I heavily doubt Valve would agree to release it as they made crystal clear that they would stop doing so in response to the various leaks in the past years.

There are some TFC elements in the HL source code like the player and class selection panels and minor things but the rest such as weapons, game modes, player classes themselves and many more will have to be re-programmed by yourself.

As for Metamod, AFAIK, you will only be able to change existing stuff so forget about adding new stuff like classes.

I won't use Metamod that much then if it won't give me full access to full modding of Tfc.

So what would I use instead of Metamod to re-program Tfc? (So I could add new things like Classes)

Because I had this idea where the Player could press some key like "R" to change the existing class selection panels to change out the Classes instead of me adding new panels altogether.

Since there's no publicly available game code for TFC, there's likely not much you can do other than recreating the mechanics in HLSDK as its own mod as Shepard says.
There's an open source fork of the original Team Fortress which may or may not come in handy.

If this is going to be tough, would a Better route to be recreating Team Fortress but in Half-Life? They both use the Goldsrc engine, theres an official SDK, and doesn't half-life have source code available? Why does this remind me of creating a roblox game?

What is Open Source Fortress? Does it run on Source, Goldsrc, or the original Quake engine? Could I make a mod of that instead?

So Far I like the Quake option better, but I could be wrong. This is giving me vibes of making a Roblox game lol.

TFC did start out as a HL1 mod, a port of the original Team Fortress from Quake, and later released as a standalone game (although pretty much still just a HL1 mod, which becomes fairly obvious considering all the shared assets and the Hunted map being modified parts of a section of HL1's campaign).

So the timeline of the games goes something like:

• Team Fortress (Quake and later QuakeWorld)
• Team Fortress Classic (Half-Life 1 mod and later standalone GoldSrc game)
• Team Fortress 2 (Source)

Although the name "Team Fortress" might be used to refer to any of these, disambiguating by using the full name matters when talking about modding these as there are major differences in the approach due to the different engines used.

So if you want to make a mod that's similar to TFC in terms of gameplay and feel etc, starting out with HLSDK and recreating the mechanics would be the way to go.

As for FortressOne, it's just an open source version of the original TF using the QuakeWorld engine (which has better networking than Quake) and would be the easiest base game to mod, but its code could possibly be used as a guideline on how to implement certain mechanics into your own mod.

Would the Playlist I mentioned Before help me with the HLSDK coding?

Why would FortressOne be easier to mod? How would I mod that?

Dang I tried running FortressOne but my Windows 11 said this:
"Microsoft Defender SmartScreen prevented an unrecognized app from starting. Running this app might put your PC at risk."

Do you know of how I can solve that error?

Yeah, Admer's playlist, and this series of tutorials are of great help when learning to use the SDK.
You might also check out this tutorial for setting up a HL mod as well.

As for why FortressOne would be easier to mod, it's because it's open source (the game code is publicly available and free) so you won't need to go through recreating anything as you would need to with HLSDK.

Lastly, the Windows Defender message is likely because of a missing app signature on the executable. Apparently Windows requires this sort of signature on applications now for Defender not to alarm you about it. But since it's open source, you can look through the code yourself and even compile it yourself to make sure there's nothing nasty in there, and then if you trust it click on Advanced (or something like that) and click on Run It Anyway (might say something else along those lines).

Actually, I will ditch the Half-Life Mod altogether to make a mod of the OpenFortress, as that seems way easier to do. After all, it's what the Original Devs had to work with, and weren't they just everyday people sharing a Quake Mod?

Do you know of any Tutorials on how to mod Quake Fortress? I can't seem to find any links to tutorials.

How would I even look into the Code of the file? I may know some Coding but I still struggle with using Windows in terms of advanced things.

Wait, do I need to Buy Quake off of Steam to have FortressOne Work? Because I ran it and it's stuck when trying to join a new server

FortressOne should be standalone. As for getting it to work or modding it, your best option there is to join their Discord server and ask there instead.

For the code there's a link to their GitHub on the website. As for which repo is relevant for modding, again the Discord server should be the place to ask or look around in (they likely have channels and pinned messages for this already).

Thanks for your Help.

(When I get my High-school diploma I will begin development. I'm in 12th grade so I will begin asking questions on their Discord this Summer)