Source Code (about source code in general)

[willyd]

What is it? I mean why cant people access it if its on there computer. Like someone said the original hl source code was not hacked. I mean can someone not say okay view file on there computer. Techie please explain this. I dont know much about software.

 

[OCybrManO]

The source code is the human-readable version of the software... in the case of HL 1 & 2 it is written in C++.

You then take the C++ code (text) and use a compiler to turn the code into executable files (often referred to as "binaries" because they are in binary).

It is very hard to look at the final exe file and see how the program works even with a little program that does one function.

Imagine trying to interpret one huge string of hundreds of millions of ones and zeroes... close to impossible.

 

[KiNG]

Originally posted by qckbeam
The problem is that we have all of Valves source code for the source engine, the game code for HL2, and TF2 (there are spoilers in there), and the code behind Havok physics and DX9. That's stuff Valve would want to keep secret, very secret. A hacker could use this source code to create cheats for multiplayer, a shady developer could dissect the engine code and use it for their own game, for free, someone could take advantage and exploit Steam. This is not stuff Valve would have given away in the SDK, it's stuff one would have to license from Valve for a very large amount of money.

Edit: While you can build the HL2.exe and the TF2.exe, you can't actually play the game since no content (sounds, maps, models, sprites, etc) came with the source. Thank God for that.

Originally posted by OCybrManO
The source code is the human-readable version of the software... in the case of HL 1 & 2 it is written in C++.

You then take the C++ code (text) and use a compiler to turn the code into executable files (often referred to as "binaries" because they are in binary).

It is very hard to look at the final exe file and see how the program works even with a little program that does one function.

Imagine trying to interpret one huge string of hundreds of millions of ones and zeroes... close to impossible.

good explaination cybrman, and the one above also should help.

EDIT err post in wrong forum, u might see this one in general too

 

[vissione]

Originally posted by willyd
What is it? I mean why cant people access it if its on there computer. Like someone said the original hl source code was not hacked. I mean can someone not say okay view file on there computer. Techie please explain this. I dont know much about software.

Click view>source right here on your browser and you'll see source code for this website. With that code you can modify anything you want from this website, modify it to your liking, or try to "run it." (which would be the equivalent of looking at in IE) You'd need the picture files for it to "run" though... without being able to tell the source where the pictures are, they won't show up...

Well what got leaked was what kinda what you're seeing, and it's missing the "pictures" so that it can run. Everything else works, and it's a hell of a lot of stuff.

As HTML(really a scripting language) may seem hard to understand, the HL2 source is even harder, yet there's people that read it better than they read English. It's a computer language, you're talking to the computer and telling it what to do. Your source code is a written contract with the computer that once you compile, should be executed always the same way it says on the "contract." All languages work that way, whether they're high-level(C++) or low level(ASM).