Alien Swarm as modding base

[dark0r]

Windows' kernel was written in Java then?

Yes.

[Dr. Delta]

All good engines are written in assembly.

Never heard about companies doing that. Only small parts of operation systems are written in assembly, so didn't expect they're writing whole game engines in assembly, but it's very efficient, so you might be right. However, you can't just revise assembly code.

small parts? Windows' kernel was written in Java then?

Apparently in comparison with the amount of code which is not written in assembly, it's 'just' small parts.

[Mr. Happy]

I was joking but actually I read once that carmack wrote an entire game engine in assembly...not sure if it is true though.

[marks]

that was probably in the 1990's :p

[Noka]

Who cares, if Source is outdated?

I mean, there are still people working on mods for HL1 by the way...

I also think it's more interesting to see, what modders can create by working with outdated stuff, than with next-gen engines and tools.

On moddb, I am skipping any Unreal 3 and CryEngine 3 mods nearly by default, because it doesn't impress me in any way, while great work for the Source engine always gets my attention!

I alse read, that Valve is working on updating the SDK tools!

[Valar]

When coming to decide on an engine for my game i'm trying to look at it from a player's prespective and NOT that of a dev's.
How easy it is terms of instalation and distribution. How lo-end friendly is it...etc

[Mr. Happy]

People still use Quake!

[[Steve]]

This guy seems to have got some features ported from hl2 to asw

Would be useful to have some kind of asw template that has some of hl2 features in it, would be a great starting base for mods.

edit
i did a bit of searching and i found this thread on steam forums, where they tell you what changes to make to make the player first person and other bits.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/s ... ?t=1434425

Here they talk about getting viewmodels to work correctly, and it seems they are quite close.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/s ... ?t=1913983
This video shows the viewmodels not working correctly

[Welsh Mullet]

Was sure i posted in here...... :S
I'm working with Psy_Commando to make alien swarm viable as a first person base.

Also, if this gets deleted again, message why plox?

[atrblizzard]

It's nice to see the thread is being revived. It's sad to see that Source SDK didn't had any updates for more than a year, and I believe that once they've released the SDK for Alien Swarm, that it would be the ideal solution for modding. Unfortunetly it isn't, because of the vast dependency in the codes, not having any sort of sketelon base to code on top.
I've tried to make a skeleton for Swarm, without any Swarm dependency, but a regular HL2 codebase, but I've only succeeded on the server side of the project. The client one is a hell to work with. As the GameUI is moved to the client side, along with its full source code, it also contains Swarm related classes and such, and it requires a lot of classes to be removed in order to have a base GameUI skeleton.

Here's the stripped skeleton of the server side, mainly inspired by the Source SDK Skeleton code base, which can be found here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3712839/asw_skeleton_server.rar

[Sandern]

I've tried to make a skeleton for Swarm, without any Swarm dependency, but a regular HL2 codebase, but I've only succeeded on the server side of the project. The client one is a hell to work with. As the GameUI is moved to the client side, along with its full source code, it also contains Swarm related classes and such, and it requires a lot of classes to be removed in order to have a base GameUI skeleton.

I also made a "skeleton" version for it a while ago (January), but didn't finished the weapon/thirdperson part (or at least I'm not satisfied with it). However I did strip all Swarm dependencies and moved the modified gameui into the sdk directory, since I didn't need all the Swarm code for my mod.

I also think it's not really interesting to make an exact port of the sdk template. I would rather make an updated version, which is less bloated and uses particle effects for weapons.

However if you are interested you can download the code from here:
Code: http://sandern.com/downloads/AlienSwarmCodeScratch.7z
Game: http://sandern.com/downloads/scratch.7z

I do like the alien swarm engine: the model rendering is much faster (can run around 100 infected with hardly a decrease in performance, the 2007 engine really sucks at this) and it allows for more network optimizations. However the big downside is the lack of hl2 content and no custom shaders. And even if you could mount the content, a lot of the hl2 models are not compatible with this engine. It just crashes when you try to load them (mainly the player/npc models seem to have these problems).

[Mr. Happy]

I think people should stop wasting their time on updating their mod to the latest engine and implementing new fancy tricks and start programming gameplay systems.

Unless of course engine code is what you want to do as a programmer and you are really fast at it, but there will always be a new engine released just as you finished updating your code!

[ScarT]

I also made a "skeleton" version for it a while ago (January), but didn't finished the weapon/thirdperson part (or at least I'm not satisfied with it). However I did strip all Swarm dependencies and moved the modified gameui into the sdk directory, since I didn't need all the Swarm code for my mod.

I also think it's not really interesting to make an exact port of the sdk template. I would rather make an updated version, which is less bloated and uses particle effects for weapons.

However if you are interested you can download the code from here:
Code: http://sandern.com/downloads/AlienSwarmCodeScratch.7z
Game: http://sandern.com/downloads/scratch.7z

I do like the alien swarm engine: the model rendering is much faster (can run around 100 infected with hardly a decrease in performance, the 2007 engine really sucks at this) and it allows for more network optimizations. However the big downside is the lack of hl2 content and no custom shaders. And even if you could mount the content, a lot of the hl2 models are not compatible with this engine. It just crashes when you try to load them (mainly the player/npc models seem to have these problems).

Oh, thanks for posting this! I just messed a bit around with it, and I can't even seem to figure out how to edit the main menu
This isn't exactly ideal for a singleplayer game, there just seems like there's way too much you have to strip out.

[atrblizzard]

Thank you Sander for posting this! I've been eagerly waited to be able to move my mod to the Alien Swarm engine, and it was quite flawless so far thanks to your scratch code. I've tried many times before to strip out the Swarm codes before, but I had no success at all, since I don't know proper coding, it's not really an easy task for me to be able to strip them out.
I've been messing around in the code and made a few progress and was able to completely change the main menu and the loading screen. I find it easier to modify the GameUI panels in Alien Swarm and it was really easy to achieve good results with it.

All I have to do is to implement the tip section for the loading screen and I think it's all done. I wonder how easy is to add an animated video as a background, such as in Portal 2.

Here's a small test implementing npc_kleiner into the code and playing a choreography scene:

Everything works fine, choreography plays fine, facial expressions work fine.

Oh, and here is the problem I've strumbled across. For some reason, the player animations do not play properly when moving to left and right. I believe the models are still using the old move_yaw blending instead of move_x and move_y. The console prints out Unhandled animation handle 2052 and 2053 (ACT_WALK) sequences. If I'm not mistaken, it means that the playeranimstate code uses the new 9 way animation blending instead of the traditional 8 way? Since the DOD Source models are using the move_x and move_y blending method, I believe the code found in this scratch code is also the same as from the SDK template, meaning that it's the new 9 way animation blending method as well.

I believe this thread should be in the Programming forum instead. Would a moderator kindly move it to the proper thread? Thank you.

[CB1993]

I think creating mod based on the AS engine would be a fantastic idea, because it supports VPKs and an AI Director.