How can I mod the game?

[Rekire]

Hallo,

I'm new with the Source SDK. I've got about 8 years experience with programming. I want to play with the source engine to build a game.

I would like to know how I can manipulate the game in this way I like to. For the moment I want to build a "waepon" which manipulates the 3D models. For beginning I want to deform for example a wall.

What is the best way to beginn? The wiki of the Developer Community don't help me very much. Because I don't know where to start.

The 3D moddeling, texturing and math should be no big problem for me. That means I hope so :)

[Varsity]

That kind of thing tends to be an engine feature rather than something implemented entirely in game logic. I'm confident it will be prove possible, but you might want to start off with a more modest goal. ;)

[Rekire]

My goal is much bigger than that what I was talking about. That manpulating stuff is just my first milestone.

Basically I want to create a whole new game with has no connections to any valve games. For the beginning I belive modding a game is a good way to start.

I found informations how to build a weapon basically here (http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Adding_a_new_weapon_for_your_mod). Now I want to manipulate the modle of that thing the bullet hit. The default way is IMHO that a overlay is painted on the reached model. Or does that the engine automatically?

How can I get informations about that object which was hit and also can I manipulate the 3d model at runtime?

I've got now absolut no idea where I could start...

[Varsity]

That's just where someone dumped a load of source code (which I've just moved here (http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/AK47_weapon)). This is the actual page about adding weapons. (http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Authoring_a_weapon_entity)

Source doesn't have support 3D for overlays. You will have to modify the actual verts, but AFAIK it's not straightforward to get low-level access to them. CMeshBuilder is probably a good place to start however.

By the sound of it, your life will be much easier if you work with an open source engine...