Inspired by Pi Mu Rho’s article SDK – Soul Destroying Kit? , the community of the popular Source Modding site Interlopers.net have began to organise a movement to highlight to Valve the current issues plaguing the Source SDK. It’s no secret how outdated the tools that Source mod developers use are. The Unreal Development Kit has been blazing a new and exciting trail for mod development, while the core features of the Source SDK have lain dormant and unchanged.
Needless to say, this isn’t the first time this has come to light. There are countless posts and blogs online that have highlighted the flaws of the SDK, which have persisted throughout each version. Previously, little effort had actually gone into encouraging Valve to pay a little more attention to the SDK, but this has now changed. Several community members from Interlopers leaped into action, creating a thread to organise the movement and setting up a Steam Group to attract more members. Within a matter of days, there were threads requesting support across some of the major Source Modding communities and the movement was on its way.
Despite its momentum, there were still some naysayers among the comments, and it’s important to realise that there are two sides to this movement. On one hand, the SDK is already horribly dated in comparison to its competition and has a fair amount of bugs that have caused a considerably amount of headaches for mod developers everywhere. On the other hand, however, Valve have been very good to the community in plenty of other ways and it’s quite easy to see why updating the SDK isn’t on the top of their agenda.
Regardless of how dated the SDK is, it’s still very obviously a popular choice for mod developers with a plethora of released mods for the engine along with plenty more in the works. This shows that despite its flaws, mod developers are still willing to grit their teeth and get stuck in with creating the next big Source Mod, though I’m sure they will welcome any updates that will improve the SDK.
