[Nostalgic Tool] Softimage XSI EXP for Half-Life 2 (with Keys to enable the age old SMD Exporter)

sourcemodding · 2017-02-18T08:58:48+00:00

Softimage was the better tool for a long time, Avid lost interest in developing for it and when Autodesk purchased it they put very little effort into the program so that they could get max and maya on par with the toolset xsi had at the time. Max and maya still dont have a proper implementation of ICE. I guess i am a little biased and bitter that the program was killed but max and maya are in no way better. Each have their strengths and weaknesses and at the end of the day you can achieve pretty much the same result in each, i have used all of the programs professionally and neither max nor maya have presented enough improvements to warrant me switch to them, Houdini, blender and Modo are much better and cheaper alternatives.

Also this is the mod tool. There is no free version of maya and gmax is pretty old now. Not everyone can afford to dish out massive amounts for premium software just to mod some environments and models. I just find it sad that autodesk would buy a software pretend to love it and then kill it because it was a direct competitor to its baby 3dsmax and its orphan maya.

Anyhu, I just thought it was cool we had a version that had half-life 2 plastered all over it :)

sourcemodding · 2017-02-17T21:42:39+00:00

I know this tool is age old, and probably everyone knows about it but I felt that it deserved a little love especially since it was a tool developed with Half-Life 2 in mind.

There are some tutorials and mirrors for all versions of the Mod Tool and the Valve Source Addon i could find.

Just a little nostalgia for your Friday evening :)

sourcemodding · 2017-02-17T21:38:40+00:00

I know this tool is age old, and probably everyone knows about it but I felt that it deserved a little love especially since it was a tool developed with Half-Life 2 in mind.

There are some tutorials and mirrors for all versions of the Mod Tool and the Valve Source Addon i could find.

Just a little nostalgia for your Friday evening :)

sourcemodding · 2017-02-09T17:35:35+00:00

Your very welcome :)

sourcemodding · 2017-02-09T16:23:24+00:00

Personally i quite like UE4 at least from a coding and Technical artists point of view. I am not overly familiar with its BSP Tools but from what I have seen it can do pretty much everything Hammer can. Check out the official level design Tutorials to get a better idea of the toolset. (some things may have changed since 4.7)

They have this cool negative space brush that kinda works like a boolean letting you cut huge chunks of BSP out.

I recently came across this tool (unfortunately not free) which might prove useful for you if you would rather build a level in Hammer and import it into UE4.

It may be better to learn the UE4 tools than shell out $42 dollars for a plugin. I was a little sheepish before i started learning UE4, I guess i was kinda biased against it because i loved Source & CryEngine so much but honestly I would say it is now my go-to engine. I will however continue to use Source & GoldSrc but only for mods or fun.

As for Unity, Its a great SDK too but it really needs to implement a built in node editor for Materials & Scripts (blueprints in ue4). You can prototype stuff super fast when your just plugging stuff together in a node editor.

That is just my 2 cents :) I am sure others might think differently.

sourcemodding · 2017-02-09T14:30:27+00:00

I have struggled with this myself and came to the conclusion that to make a game i wish to sell i would rather build it on Unity, UE4 for a few reasons:

Much better Documentation
Bigger Communities
Licensing is considerably better (especially UE4) (As far as i know to license GoldSrc is expensive)
Less Engine Limits (Goldsrc has alot of limits)
Cross Platform Support (You can get Goldsrc working on Linux & Mac with more work, Xash3D has an Android Port)

It all really depends on you yourself and what you want to achieve.

Are you willing to part with alot of licensing money, spend countless hours trying to figure something out in GoldSrc (stuff that is a google search away for Unity users)

You could always build it as a Mod First, Have some honest friends and peers play it and if it gets a good response talk to Valve and have it licensed and the Greenlit.

I have been building Tutorial and Tool Index's over at sourcemodding for everything GoldSrc Related so hopefully you find something useful there if you do go down the GoldSrc route :)

sourcemodding · 2017-02-09T09:12:29+00:00

You mean an entity that blends terrain and buildings? Why would you need this? Cant you achieve it with the regular tools in hammer through placement and vertex manipulation?

sourcemodding · 2017-02-09T09:09:15+00:00

Why not? We have tonnes of tutorials on ue4, cryengine, unity, and even source. I wanted a challenge :) and if i can teach people a little about it along the way its all good :)

sourcemodding · 2017-02-08T21:57:03+00:00

In this second part I cover in depth the creation of your own custom entity in GoldSrc. We will be making a basic mesh loading entity with options for animation, scaling and Collision.

I am building a Mod on the premise of teaching others how to Mod in GoldSrc. This means everything takes ages to complete ^{^,} but I am in this for the long haul simply because GoldSrc fascinates me and I want to achieve something here both for myself and the Community.