Valve Developer Wiki

Via Gamasutra, the news that Valve has opened a Developer Community Wiki. From the post: "The system is intended to be a pool of knowledge that mod authors can contribute to, as well as consult for advice on how to use the robust Source engine. The Community is built using MediaWiki, an open-source GNU tool for allowing entries and posts to be edited and refined by anyone with an account. The same technology powers the popular Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia."

MediaWiki is no GNU tool

[Bulln-Bulln]

It's a WikiMedia tool under GPL.

Re:MediaWiki is no GNU tool

[Bulln-Bulln]

The WikiMedia Foundation?

Dangerous

[rellix]

Wiki anything is a dangerous tool without heavy moderation. With all the young kids who play vavle's games, I wouldn't be surprised if this is brought down if it gets too obscene. What excites a child more than posting dirty words on a page the entire world can see? Good luck Valve, you're going to need it.

Re:Dangerous

[Ford Prefect]

You have to have a Source developer licence, they probably check your registered email address.

The email address does appear to be optional, though - and I didn't get any confirmation email when I signed up.

I've yet to see any vandalism, and it's been public for quite a few days already - but hopefully its mention on Slashdot doesn't change anything... ;-)

It's definitely not the first HL2 Wiki - the HL2World.com Knowledge Base [hl2world.com] has been around for ages, but really hasn't got that much in the way of useful content. Most of the entity documentation seems to have been nicked from the HL2 FGD entity definitions, for instance, and nobody's added too much to it.

However, this new Valve-sponsored one seems to have got past that problem. There's a lot of Valve-authored content in there already, and the enthusiast-written stuff seems very promising. I learned more about the ai_goal_assault entity from this article [valvesoftware.com] than I've done from everywhere else combined, for example.

The site's semi-affiliated with the good old VERC Collective [valve-erc.com] and that's always been very strictly (and fairly) moderated with a good signal-to-noise ratio, so good things may lie ahead...

Re:Dangerous

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Wiki has a lot of moderation throught the way it was designed. Anyone can contribute, anyone can commit vandalisme and anyone can undo vandalisme (it has an undo button in a sense). I contribute regulary to wikibooks and vandalisme turns up once in a while and is fixed practicly immediatly. Till now it hasn't been much of an issue. Ofcourse I'm not going to post a link to any book I contribute too as a large number of people vandalising the same page after each other can be a problem.

Re:Dangerous

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

grammatical? Shouldn't that be spelling rather than grammar? :-D

Re:Dangerous

[DrSkwid]

The plan9 wiki got abused by spammers and page rank boosters. So it was set such that you could only edit it with wikifs [bell-labs.com].

If Valve's gets pwned then they should probably make an editor that requires a Steam login in order to contribute.

Re:Dangerous

[Muvlo Redond]

Replace "young kids" with "Slashdot readers", and that statement would be just about right.

Re:Dangerous

[Chosen Reject]

The unreal wiki never seems to have that problem. Not long ago they were hit a couple of times with spam in some places, but that was cleaned up easily enough. I think this is great. I've loved the unreal wiki and now I look forward to all the tips and hints that can be had from a source wiki.

Re:Welcome to the 2005 games industry

[AlexMax2742]

Wiki was designed to be easy to update, but also easy to rollback vandalism. Don't worry about it.

Wikis for game hackers

[gregor-e]

The wiki is a good tool for collaboration. It's encouraging to see Valve step in with an official one. The flip side is that maybe they'll be reluctant to share any details that reverse-engineer too deeply. Here's a similar wiki for Battlefield 2 [fun-o-matic.org], that focuses on the python code and it's largely unpublished interface. Because it enjoys independence from EA and DICE, the folks there are digging up pleanty of undocumented details.

Re:Wikis for game hackers

[Ford Prefect]

The wiki is a good tool for collaboration. It's encouraging to see Valve step in with an official one. The flip side is that maybe they'll be reluctant to share any details that reverse-engineer too deeply.

Here you go, have some Valve-sponsored Half-Life engine hacking [valve-erc.com] - everything from network protocols to making huge changes to the OpenGL rendering.

I imagine that with the new Wiki, so long as content is useful and doesn't have overtly antisocial or illegal implications, it'll be welcomed...

Half-Life: Scientist

[sproketboy]

The best mod of all: Half-Life: Scientist. You play a scientist and all you do is cower when anyone approaches you. You also have the cool ability to say "Leave me alone" and "I'm too busy" whenever you see Gordon Freeman.

Re:Half-Life: Scientist

[ZosX]

Now that's funny.

Re:Half-Life: Scientist

[Cletus the yokel]

Plus, as a bonus, you get to whip out "Why do we have to wear these ridiculous ties?'.

Re:Half-Life: Scientist

[Jonner]

Now, why are all the scientists you run into such wimps, when Gordon clearly isn't? Apparently he's the only person with an MIT education who can also hold a weapon.

Re:Half-Life: Scientist

[MattWhitworth]

Just like your average Slashdotter at a party :) Just replace 'Gordon Freeman' with 'anyone'.

Hope...

[Cylix]

I do hope this fuels more mod developement.

I fired up my hl2 installation and started poking around for good mods.

From such an amazing engine I just haven't seen a good deal of amazing mods out yet. (I love the grahpical scale down so it ran on my old crap)

I guess I'm really looking for the next counter-strike like success...

Anyone know of anything really good with at least a beta. The hacker one looks neat... but its not released.

Re:Hope...

[jimi the hippie]

Here's one that looks pretty good. Alas, it's not out yet either: http://www.itsabeast.com/cg/ [itsabeast.com]