We should send a letter to VALVe

[Shr3d]

I think we should send a letter and/or e-mail as an entire community to VALVe to get them to think about releasing a program of some sort that will help us do distributed compiling.

What do you guys think of the idea?

I mean, it'd kind of be like BOINC in the way that it's distributed but if theirs runs over a lan, we can just get a hamachi server going and then we can compile in a matter of minutes instead of hours (bloody rad).

[Mr. Happy]

You write it, I'll sign it! Thing is, they have an in-house distributyed compiler so I doubt it would be a huge deal to get it working for public consumption, or even through steam.

[Shr3d]

You write it, I'll sign it! Thing is, they have an in-house distributed compiler so I doubt it would be a huge deal to get it working for public consumption, or even through steam.

Yes, an SDK addon. That's excellent

I'm not too good at writing formal letters, if anyone here can that'd be much appreciated.

[undertone]

that would be excelent. if that doesnt work we can write a letter to some hackers asking them to hack valve to get it for us.

[Shr3d]

Let's not do the hacker thing

Anyway, someone plz post, I want more ideas.

[Psy]

Let's get them to use PS3 for horsepower. It's not good for anything but curing cancer anyway.

[ShaDoW]

Let's get them to use PS3 for horsepower. It's not good for anything but curing cancer anyway.

lmao, best thing I've heard all day so far.

I don't really see why you would really need distributed compiling though. If you want to make a final compile just do it at night when your asleep. Make sure you've got a clean brushwork going and the most it will take is 8 hours and thats including HDR). Maybe 4'ish without. And thats for a detailed map.

[Shr3d]

Yes I know, but that's a hassle. Why not utilise what they have if we can? It should help us out with seeing our product develop, and rad is a bitch

[Rustvaar]

Considering I enjoy writing and so on, I'll get the first draft up within the hour.

[Rustvaar]

To whom it may concern;

Our community of developers would like to bring to your attention, the desire for distributed compiling of levels for the Source Engine.

It is understandable that this may not be viewed as a high-priority project for you; however it would certainly prove a useful tool for all amateur developers while also acting as a means of further boosting the reputation of Valve as an innovative and community-oriented corporation.

Based merely on speculation it has been appropriated that Valve currently obtains the ability to perform ‘in-house’ distributed compiling, as an addition to the current SDK this would be viewed as a great step for Valve and its developer community.

In the hopes of affirming that this would be a viable and worthy project the following is a list of signatures of those who are in agreement;

Comments / Opinions please.

[ScarT]

As far as I remember somebody from Valve said this wasn't possible over the Internet due to the lack of fast connection, therefor it can only be done on LAN connections.
If you buy a Source engine license you'd also get access to VMPI (distributed compiling).

The sourcecode for VMPI was leaked with the 2003 sourcecode leak

Last but not least. Try mailing Mike Durand mdurand@valvesoftware.com he manages the SDK

[BinnsY]

I don't see why it wouldn't be possibly, surely it can just temporarily send the entire map file as it is stored on your computer to another computer?

Then just set up a system whereby the computer who is doing the compiling controls which computers connected to it get to compile which sections of the level.

[Sauce]

Rustvaar, that's good. I would just make it a little more clear as to what you mean by "distributed compiling"

@BinnsY: this would require that all custom textures, etc are sent along with it, making it useless.

The way this system would have to work is that all computers are compiling the same process (bsp, vis, rad) at the same time, just different parts. It would certainly be hard to do, and would require the main computer to do a fair bit of pre-thought.

[BinnsY]

I would have thought with todays broadband connections that wouldn't be too much of a problem? But i suppose it depends on the size of the map and textures like you say

With more thought I suppose it probably is harder than it initially seems.

[Rustvaar]

To clarify our understanding of distributed compiling, much in the same way Stanford University has utilised the system for their ‘Folding@Home’ project – The ability to distribute the compilation process to multiple nodes across a network for a faster result.

Added this between the paragraphs 'Based merely on...' and 'In the hopes...'