Source Entities:FAQ

What is Source Entities?
Source Entities is a wiki created by Pinsplash documenting the Source game engine. The wiki was created after conflicting ideas arose for the future of the Valve Developer Community wiki. Without an administrator to mediate, we were at an impasse. Someone had to walk away, and it was for the best that I did.

Why we're better
Alright, let's be honest: SE is not a replacement for VDC in its current form, but each day we get a little closer. What we have currently outshines VDC, nonetheless:
 * Class pages: Are you annoyed with every damn page telling you what a targetname is? You've read "'name other entities refer to this entity by'" a thousand times, and you don't need to read it again! And what are Left 4 Dead 2 keyvalues doing on Half-Life 2 entity pages? What if that info was on a single page, once, instead of adding clutter to every page? Clearly, we should strive for a system closer the reality present in the engine's code. Say hello to pages that document entities by their C++ classes!
 * Rewriting everything: Do you ever read the description of a keyvalue in Hammer, not understand it, find the same hieroglyphic sentence on VDC, ask around in chat rooms, and still never figure out what "when the button is door" means until you see for yourself what happens? Forget about doing all of that; we saw it for ourselves for you, and wrote it in more-comprehensible language.
 * New FGDs: As you probably already know, we've rolled out new custom FGD files for each Source game which are up to the new set standards.
 * Admins: Unlike VDC, we'll have consistently present staff to keep things running smoothly.

Adjusting to the new format
When you go to an entity or class page, you'll see a new box the right. This lists every class the entity/class is inheriting, in the order it's inherited in. If you're familiar with the concept of inheritance, learning how to navigate SE's pages should be a breeze. How does every entity have things like a targetname or the Kill input available for it? Did Valve copy and paste the same block of code hundreds of times? No: things such as that, which are useful for many entities, are stored in classes, which can be inherited by other ones. Classes feature the same abilities as the ones they inherit and can tweak them as needed, or add their own. An entity which has been tied to a class  may inherit from many different classes, each more general-purpose than the last i.e. an NPC class might inherit from a class related to choreography, which inherits a class concerning basic AI functions, then animations, then the root class,, which contains functions that exist inside every entity. Think of it like how the branches of a tree split off to various directions, all of them taking a unique path away from the trunk and ending with leaves (entities).

This wiki overlooked something important!
Well, just like with VDC, anyone can edit! In fact if VDC taught us anything, it's that everyone should; without your contribution, a page might always be incorrect. Making an edit is typically a straightforward process, and you don't even have to make an account. Look through Help:Editing first so you're familiar with how things work. Even if you're an editor from VDC you might want to look, because a lot has changed.

This site says an entity is available in my game but it's not in the FGD and there's no FGD code posted. What should I do?
That probably means it's in another game's FGD, and Valve didn't include it in your game's because they didn't think it would be useful. Put the name of the entity into the search bar, and click the bottom option that says "containing..." to search for mentions of that entity in the FGDs of other games. Copy and paste that code (from the  to the last  ) into your FGD, and be aware that what you just copied may be missing features available in your game, or list ones not in your game. Also see Non-FGD features.

Why are Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Episode 2 referred to as if they're the same thing?
Aside from the content/assets/config settings, they are. This branch of Source is called the Episodic branch.

Where do I speak to an admin?
Category:Administration