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SDK question

Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2002 7:32 pm
by Innkeeper
I may be wrong but it sounds like to me that everyone that wants the "SDK" really wants the source code to the game. Rarely does an SDK include the source code to a program. Generally it is source code to develop a '.dll', or other, which allows the use of hooks in the program.

I hear that those interested in doing ?total conversions? are the most interested in the SDK. What exactly is it that they want to do that would require the source code to the game?

I?m not surprised that they don?t want to give up the source to the game. I sure wouldn?t. I have worked on added functionality for commercial products before and our team was not granted access to the source code to the program even though we were all in the same company. We had an SDK that had the hooks we needed to write our ?.dll?, that was all.

It sounds to me that what is promised is not an SDK but map development tools.

Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2002 7:57 pm
by Teck
I think that with the source code they could completely rewrite the game on the engine, turn it into a CS style game, or could update MOH by rooting out the bugs and possibly fixing them.. I could be wrong though ;)

Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2002 8:04 pm
by Surgeon
People often confuse the source code with the ability to create a .dll.

What I would expect in an SDK is:

Enough source code to create a different .dll file
Plugins for the relevant modelling program
Map Editor
Maybe a few helpful tutorials outlining the basics....

Even Valve didn't give out the full source code to Half-Life, neither did Epic for Unreal, but they did provide enough code for TC's to code changes to the relevant .dll's.

See this thread at TMT

Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2002 11:30 pm
by Slyk

Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2003 3:02 am
by mohaa_rox
The meaning of SDK is that the source code for C++ is for building MODS or Total Conversions. How the Half-life MODs are made is because the modding people use the source code and together with map editors and 3d Modelling tools, they can develop a great MOD like CS. Milkshape is used to make Half-life weapons and models.

Here is an example of the SDK for Half-life:

http://www.planethalflife.com/botman/

Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2003 6:35 am
by Innkeeper
Surgeon I agree. But I still haven't read what it is that people really want to do. Animation is the only thing I have seen yet. Yes there should ba an exporter from MAX to support this. But this is really not an issue for a true SDK. While working on ambient sounds, I would love to have access to source to fix the way that works!

There are more than 30 exports in MOHAA.exe. Documentation on those would be nice. I could reverse engineer the '.dll' files, but for what need? I am still confused. :?