game devs you really hate!

Quote from e-freak

ya - you just have to send an email and there you are - at least that's what it sounded like.

I was sure hoping it would be that way

2 emails, no response yet.

I bitched about Valve's tools all the way through making FF, but ultimately Valve is one of the coolest companies out there when it comes to support. Moreover, they are constantly upgrading the source engine so they have to support multiple versions which makes things more complicated. I spent about 5 hours a couple of weeks back trying to get shader compiling working, but I would fix one problem (such as the aforementioned sourcesdk/bin/ep1/bin problem) and then encounter another one. I'd then try and fix it myself despite having zero python experience, turn to the web for help and find nothing. Nothing in the wiki, either. It's incredibly frustrating, but you really just have to look at the complexities of supporting modding these days and cut them some slack IMO.

Also: Rule #1 of development: Everyone hates the tools they work with*

*May not strictly be true. However, when it comes to general usage, people are more inclined to find things to complain about rather than praising the things they take for granted.

all i'd like is to be able to just run the thing, not much to expect i think

Well I dunno, I certainly see why they had to split the SDK tools in half, and it caused problems for some people, but really all the problems and issues and fixes are out there on the mailing lists, VDC, and forums. I don't think I've ever had an error that wasn't my fault, and if you keep up with what's going on, then you shouldn't have any problems.

It would be nice if they would release some more of their in-house tools, like the act busy editor, or in-game material editor, and distributed compiling tools, but alot of their stuff is built on top of third party code so I guess they can't. Still, theres alot of wonderfull third party wrappers, things like nem's photoshop plugin and batch compiling gui, wunderboy's guistudiomodel, that make everything alot more easier

As for Hammer, I think it's the best editor I've ever used. Maybe it doesn't have thousands of advanced thing you can do, but that's more a limit of source. You gotta look at it on how well it does what it's trying to do. For example, UnrealEd's brush construction and editing is completely retarded, the editor is really messy and the workflow isn't at all streamlined in anyway. Sure, you can do alot more with it, but that's because of the unreal engine, not the unreal editor.

Everytime I've shot an email off to someone at valve I've gotten a nice, long, helpful, and nice response.

But I don't tottally disagree that their support and involvment in the mod community has been dwindling. it has, and it's a shame.

Quote from Fletch

1999: OMG! Worldcraft crashes all the time. Valve has shitty tool support!2000: OMG! Compile tools suck. I'm using Zoners instead. Fuck valve!

2003: OMG! Hammer is such a memory wasting hog! Valve hates modders!

2004: OMG! These are the texture import tools! Does valve hate us?!

etc etc etc

2000: OMG! Compile tools suck. I'm using Zoners instead. Fuck valve! ... .... ... i think what you meant to write was DAMN these zoner tools are great ... all around this generation just rocks !!!!!! woooooot !