Mods give new meaning to `hello, world!'
In the late 1980's, Jaron Lanier coined the term virtual reality. To many doing VR research in that era, any association with games was taken as an insult.
Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony... *
Today, serious research takes a back seat to entertainment, as the game development industry drives the technology.
But that's old news.
Now that the "hard" parts are essentially solved, we may focus on story, content and the next big thing.
To that end, here's a great place to start:
Modify Half-Life2
Having won big at the 2005 Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco, starting with a mod to Valve's Half-Life2 couldn't hurt.
HL2 MOD tutorials
- Start here: SteamPowered
- Buy games directly from
Valve and get more for your
money (while getting more cash back to the creators!)
Once installed, launch STEAM. Select "Play Games". Then pick "Source SDK" from Tools section of menu (scroll down to bottom of the menu).
Follow instructions given during installation. But if you went too fast, you short-attention-span child, here are the links again: Source SDK Documentation and My First MOD.
Next stop: developer.valvesoftware.com then Valve ERC for the Half-Life 2 / Source Mod FAQ
- Edit Life's The Simplest Possible Introduction to Hammer
- This is a must for those new to HL2 mods!
- HL2 Source mapping
- HL2World Knowledge Base - HalfLife 2 Knowledge Base
- Interlopers.net's tutorials and forums
- News & Design Resource - 100+ Tutorials
- Halflife2.net -- The Definitive Source For Half-Life 2
- 3D Buzz
- Half-Life 2 Files
- mallos world's articles
- Creating Worlds level design, map making, tutorials, links, guides, maps, tfc, hl, cs, mohaa, rtcw, q3, ut, hammer, radiant, quark
- Google Search: tutorials hl2
- MODSonline.com Tutorials
- Half-Life 2, HL2 mapping, editing and modding tutorials. Written and video tutorials to teach you how to do everything.
Steam SDK
Want to add your own code to an HL2 mod? Follow Valve's easy instructions, but first here are some tools you will need:
- Purchase Visual C++ .Net 2003 compiler & IDE for US$100
-
You'll also need: Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 .NET Framework and the
XP SP2 Platform SDK
[Alternatively for the budget-minded, Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 is the free, downloadable version of microsoft's compiler. It's just the compiler and linker, so you'll have to use another editor and probably other tools, and you'll still need to write your own makefiles.]
- How to Setup a Visual C++ Environment for Linux folks
- Building Half-Life DLLs with Microsoft Command-Line Compiler
- Steam Users Forums
- Wavelength | Your Game Editing Resource | Section Listing
- Google search: tutorials steam sdk
Other game engines
- Unreal Engine
- various versions of Quake
- Doom engine
- Crystal Space
- A free 3D engine
- Garage Games
- Wild Tangent
- Build your own 3D game-- royalties for use of the engine only apply when you see revenue
Content
- Turbo Squid
- Buy/Sell/Browse/Get Ideas: Game Levels, General Media, Materials, Shaders, Models, Meshes, Motion Capture, Plug-ins, CG Scripts, Shapes, Vector Graphics, Stock Photography, Texture Maps, Tutorials
- Millennium 3D Textures
- Textures, models, tutorials and lots of other free stuff
- Foto Search Stock Photos
- Stock Image Club and Footage
- SketchUp
- sketch as you would on paper to create 3D
- LinuxCAD is a functional replacement for AutoCAD