What are some good approaches to learning the Half-Life 2 SDK?

Question

I have been a Half-Life lover for years. I have a BS in CS and have been informally programming since High-School. When I was still in college I tried to become a mod programmer for fun..using the first Half-Life engine...didn't work so good. So i figured after all my great college learrning :-) I would have more insight on how to tackle this problem and could finally do it. So here I am..finally out in the business world programming java...so I downloaded the HL2 SDk and started looking through the class structure. I feel like I did that last time I tried this...dazed and confused. Sorry about all the back ground.

So what is the best way to systematically learn the code structure? I know java and I know c++..i just dont know what any of the classes do...the comments are few and far between and the documentation seems meager. Any good approahces? I **don'**t wanna start my own mod... I just wanna maybe be a spare-time mod programmer on some cool MOD one day...to keep the fun in learning programming along with the business side.

Answer 1

the comments are few and far between and the documentation seems meager. Any good approahces?

Welcome to the wonder that is the Source SDK. No, it's not documented. Experiment, hack, place breakpoints and see what happens if you change bits of code.

There is a wiki you may find helpful in some cases, but it's filled in by the community, and not by Valve, which means that you won't find any actual documentation there, just explanations of how previous modders have hacked the engine.

Honestly, it sucks. The only way around it is to dive in. Try to achieve various changes to the game and don't be afraid to rip the existing code apart. It won't be pretty, but if it works, who's going to complain? Their code is pretty horrible, and most likely, yours will be too.