Alien Swarm as modding base

[Saxon]

Source is just massively outdated for modding.

why are you even here? what you say might be true if all you are interested in is art creation.

On my mod team we have problems in almost every facet of Source. SMD exports don't always work as they should (my poor animator ), coding has been incredibly slow because of the C code, then theres Hammer.
We're sticking with it because we started using it, and it's better to finish what you've started without switching to a different engine (who wants to redo all their work?).

So yeah, Source is very outdated in pretty much every respect.

[omnicoder]

Yeah I agree Source is outdated and if it wasn't for the uniqueness of Portal I'd have switched by now.

[Mighty Monk]

Well I only asked cause I don't see anybody discussing it, or talking about planning/creating mods on that platform.

Because maybe this is a Half-Life/Source engine modding and mapping site and not an Unreal engine modding and mapping site.

Source is just massively outdated for modding.

I'm really tired of seeing these kind of comments. Everyone says that Source is outdated and old, and yes, it is, but that doesn't stop anyone from using it who wants to. The complaints about it being old are obvious, great. Yes the engine came out 2004, and yes it's lacking, we understand that. Go to a community site where they still map for Quake 1 and say that the engine is outdated and old. It's the same thing.

If you're unhappy with the current Source technology, why are you here? I mean, I get that we're a community and you have "friends" here, but when someone wants to know a serious and genuine answer and all we throw back at them is "Source is outdated", what's that saying about us? We might as well just shut down the site and move Interlopers to some other domain like http://www.skaarjmapping.net or something.

I really don't care if I'm looking too much into it, this is just my opinion, but the whole obvious "getting old" thing is doing just what it's saying. Getting old.

So can we stop that please? Thanks.

Wow. Someone's a little overprotective of their buggy and broken software, aren't they.

I was asking a general question, out of curiosity. There was no need to make that pitiful attempt at sarcasm towards me. See, this is an underlying problem with forums of any kind; people like you, who make pointless attacks on other users because they say something you disagree with.

This a community, not a prison where all you're allowed to do is discuss Source and talk positively about it.

Get a grip.

[Mr. Happy]

Not everyone has problems building things with source. I think I haven't had a bug I couldn't fix in a few minutes, or a model that it didn't take me less than a minute to get in game in many moons.

[marks]

You're pretty lucky then =/ try doing anything remotely complicated and the shit just hits the fan hardcore. The SDK doesnt even work properly - surely thats indication enough?

Source is just massively outdated for modding.

why are you even here? what you say might be true if all you are interested in is art creation.

I'm interested in making games; now we COULD write whole games in notepad, but I'm pretty sure people would rather use tools which make their lives easier. Using newer engines than Source makes your life a hell of a lot easier.We use Source at work and its like ... horrible and stuff.

[Groxkiller585]

You're pretty lucky then =/ try doing anything remotely complicated and the shit just hits the fan hardcore. The SDK doesnt even work properly - surely thats indication enough?

Source is just massively outdated for modding.

why are you even here? what you say might be true if all you are interested in is art creation.

I'm interested in making games; now we COULD write whole games in notepad, but I'm pretty sure people would rather use tools which make their lives easier. Using newer engines than Source makes your life a hell of a lot easier.We use Source at work and its like ... horrible and stuff.

Odd, I don't think Source is hard to work with.

While I cannot model for my life I know how to import models to Source; I can make textures , I can make maps, I can even code a little. Plus Source is old-computer friendly. My computer is not good, even poor, and I get 90% of the features you can get, excluding HDR lighting. I can deal with baked lighting; I don't care for epic graphics unlike some people (noone here though, I hope) I just want a game that works, is fun, and in my preference customizable. Portal was fun, worked on my labtop, and you can't get much more customizable then completely custom levels.

Granted this is from a mapper's perspective; that's my main outlet in Source. I've learned Hammer's bugs on my comp and avoid alot of them now, though very occasionally it crashes, it happpens less now.

Just my 2 cents here...

[Gary]

Hammer is loving to crash randomly for me. I think Hammer is a live and is toying with me. "Oh, having fun mapping? Well, not anymore! *Crash* "

[Kremator]

Source is for masochists - and I do love THE PAINNNN.

[Groxkiller585]

Hammer is loving to crash randomly for me. I think Hammer is a live and is toying with me. "Oh, having fun mapping? Well, not anymore! *Crash* "

Number 1 rule: always save every 10 minutes or it will, almost garenteed, crash the next time you add an entity to the map. At least for my Hammer. Luckily the crashes always occur after atuosaves so I never lose much when it does crash.

Another thing you can do is visgroups; Hammer is less likely to crash if there's less stuff it has to check on. VIsgrouping and hiding bits of your map will not only speed Hammer up but help prevent crashes.

[omnicoder]

Hammer is loving to crash randomly for me. I think Hammer is a live and is toying with me. "Oh, having fun mapping? Well, not anymore! *Crash* "

Number 1 rule: always save every 10 minutes or it will, almost garenteed, crash the next time you add an entity to the map. At least for my Hammer. Luckily the crashes always occur after atuosaves so I never lose much when it does crash.

Another thing you can do is visgroups; Hammer is less likely to crash if there's less stuff it has to check on. VIsgrouping and hiding bits of your map will not only speed Hammer up but help prevent crashes.

If you get over 128 visgroups hammer messes up.

[Smurftyours]

You guys totally derailed this thread. If you want to speak about the source is outdated bullshit take it somewhere else.

[Mighty Monk]

You guys totally derailed this thread. If you want to speak about the source is outdated bullshit take it somewhere else.

I disagree. The OP asked why people haven't been using/moving over to the Alien Swarm version of Source and he's more or less got his answer, now. Hah!

[atrblizzard]

Because it's a buttload more work than modding for hl2 or orangebox. For a start you have no materials, models, NPCs, or any assets at all to base yourself off.

The Gear team is currently in the process of converting City 17: Episode One (so pretty much all of the orangebox assets and entities) to the AS codebase seeing as Valve fucked the 2009 codebase for us.

Ouch. I'm sorry to hear this. This is one reason why it would be best to move out to the latest engine, because not only the engine has improvements and code fixes, but also it's tools are updated as well. I had no problems with any of the AS tools, not Hammer, not studiomdl, not it's compiling tools. It would be great to have a lite AS source code skeleton, so that anyone could base their mods off (without having those AS related game mode entities and functions), so it would end up something like a regular Half-Life 2 mod but only on the AS engine. And I wish the best for you guys on porting your project to the latest engine. I'm afraid that's the only choice to get away from all those bad stuff.

You guys totally derailed this thread. If you want to speak about the source is outdated bullshit take it somewhere else.

I disagree. The OP asked why people haven't been using/moving over to the Alien Swarm version of Source and he's more or less got his answer, now. Hah!

That is correct. My original question was why people haven't been using/moving over to the Alien Swarm version to avoid all those experiences with Hammer, it's source code bugs, and much more. As far as I know, AS also has native support over DMX models (they can be compiled with studiomdl), which from what I've read it's a better and more supported format over the typical SDM format. Simply said, the Alien Swarm engine represents the latest and most up-to-date engine, with new improvements, bug fixes, and updated tools.

You're pretty lucky then =/ try doing anything remotely complicated and the shit just hits the fan hardcore. The SDK doesnt even work properly - surely thats indication enough?

Source is just massively outdated for modding.

why are you even here? what you say might be true if all you are interested in is art creation.

I'm interested in making games; now we COULD write whole games in notepad, but I'm pretty sure people would rather use tools which make their lives easier. Using newer engines than Source makes your life a hell of a lot easier.We use Source at work and its like ... horrible and stuff.

Odd, I don't think Source is hard to work with.

While I cannot model for my life I know how to import models to Source; I can make textures , I can make maps, I can even code a little. Plus Source is old-computer friendly. My computer is not good, even poor, and I get 90% of the features you can get, excluding HDR lighting. I can deal with baked lighting; I don't care for epic graphics unlike some people (noone here though, I hope) I just want a game that works, is fun, and in my preference customizable. Portal was fun, worked on my labtop, and you can't get much more customizable then completely custom levels.

Granted this is from a mapper's perspective; that's my main outlet in Source. I've learned Hammer's bugs on my comp and avoid alot of them now, though very occasionally it crashes, it happpens less now.

Just my 2 cents here...

You are right about that. One of the reason why I would prefer the Source engine on creating a new game is because of it's old-computer friendly, which other modern engine's won't run that good as Source does. And I don't think working with Source engine is hard at all. I can do the same as you posted above, except the coding part. The rest are easily editable outside the codes, thanks to the scripting support. If I would create a shooter based game, I'd choose Source engine over UDK for example, because I already know what the Source engine can provide, and I am familiarized with it for quite a long time. First time I've tried Hammer 3.4 was more than six years ago, and when I had my first Source game bought, after seeing what Hammer 4 could do in the Source engine, I couldn't go back anymore to the Goldsrc engine ever again.
And of course, I would create a game using the latest engine, which is Alien Swarm. It's free, and you can have your mod for free without the need of another Source game to be played. I think this is really a nice feature. It kind of makes the mod more standalone, more flexible and of course, free. All you need is Alien Swarm installed, and you can already play the game. And of course, Steam, how can that be missing? It's really a great thing to play your mods for free, over Steam, and if it's a multiplayer game too, play easily and again, for free, with your friends or over online.

[Welsh Mullet]

I think we might end up having the Open-source mod in AS. If we do, we'll have to work out the first person stuff and post it up, so everyone can make a fps in AS easily.

[Gary]

I assume making AS a fps would be far more difficult then making HL2 a top down shooter.

Edit: I was right.