Tools and utilities for the Valve GoldSrc SDK, Half-Life and Half-Life based games

The following is a small application I wrote to help with content creation for Half-Life 1 and mods based on it. This includes Day of Defeat, Counterstrike, Opposing Force, BlueShift, etc.

Having used computers for a long time, using a command line tool isn’t and issue for me, however I noticed more and more people getting into Half-Life model making but coming unstuck when trying to use the model compiler. To this end I’ve written a small Win32 Gui front end to the compiler called, oddly enough, GUI StudioMDL. It provides access to all the same functions and parameters as the DOS based compiler, but through a simple, lightweight user interface.

So why use it?

Well I cant force anyone to use it but it does save some of the hassle of starting a DOS window and typing long pathnames in! It does however give you the following:

  • Windows interface – no more MS-DOS!
  • Works in just about any 32-bit version of Windows (9x, ME, 2000/XP)
  • Lets you use any version of studiomdl.exe
  • Lets you set command line parameters through simple checkboxes
  • Ability to drop QC files onto GUIStudioMDL and have them automatically load, or set up a file type association.
  • A Shortcut can be set-up with the -autocompile parameter and you can drag-and-drop compile models!

Download

Place GUIStudioMDL.exe in a location of your choosing, although I would recommend placing it in your Source SDK “bin” folder along with the rest of the SDK tools.

If you create a desktop short-cut to GUI StudioMDL you can drag QC files onto it and they will be automatically opened and loaded.

Instructions / How-To

Run the installer and GUI StudioMDL will be installed for you. It will associate itself with QC files and create two shortcuts on your desktop – either one will start GUI StudioMDL or you can drag a QC file onto the icon to auto-load it. Draggingg a file onto the Auto Compile icon will open and compile the QC script for you.

GUIStudioMDL includes the default Half-Life SDK compiler. If your mod requires a different version, replace the compiler in the GUI StudioMDL install folder.

Known bugs / caveats

The output window doesnt show the output of studiomdl.exe until after the compile is done, so if its a large model your compiling you might not see anything for a while.