Merry Christmas.
December 25th, 2004
in
Archive
Ho ho ho.
And soforth.
I’ve been looking at the HL2 SDK for the last hour or so, and I’ve come across a number of things that have made me laugh. So, I felt like sharing them with the world. (If the world is about 5 people a day.)
To start us off, I’ll present the un-official hack count. This is where I search the SDK to find every instance of where a Valve coder has marked something has being a hack. The issue is complicated by the fact that there exists an NPC called a ‘Manhack’ in HL2, so to get around it I searched for ” hack”, with the preceeding space, followed by “/hack” to catch those without spaces.
Hack count: 344.
This includes such gems as:
// EVIL HACK: Force these to appear as if they’ve changed!!!
// This is a hack to solve players (Erik) stacking stuff on their jeeps in coast_01
// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I’ve ever seen. kjb
// FIXME: HACK!!!! The code above doesn’t quite make the tip end up in the right place. but it should. So, we’re gonna hack it the rest of the way.
// My hack :[ (sjb)
// hack - this needs to go away.
// FIXME: Brutal hackery to prevent a crash
// FIXME: BUG BUG: HACK HACK: okay, you get the point
There’s other humour within the SDK, too. The NPC code files often have a witty header, meant to describe their purpose but often giving us a little bit of amusement. Here’s some:
// Purpose: Ichthyosaur - buh bum… buh bum…
// Purpose: Dr. Kleiner, a suave ladies man leading the fight against the evil
// combine while constantly having to help his idiot assistant Gordon
// Purpose: The G-Man, misunderstood servant of the people
// Purpose: Implements d0g, the loving and caring head crushing Alyx companion.
// Purpose: Alyx, the female sidekick and love interest that’s taking the world by storm!
//
// Try the new Alyx Brite toothpaste!
// Alyx lederhosen!
//
// FIXME: need a better comment block
// Purpose: Dr. Breen, the oft maligned genius, heroically saving humanity from
// its own worst enemy, itself.
// Purpose: Giant walking strider thing!
// Purpose: Dr. Eli Vance, earths last great hope, single-handedly fighting
// off both an evil alien invasion, as well as trying to stop
// that idiot lab assistant from putting the moves on his daughter.
I’ll do a volume 2 if I find any more comedy gems in the near future.
