Engine Components

Engine Components

This document details various components of the engine.

Component	Purpose
tier0	Low-level platform abstraction library. Includes low-level vproc impl, threadtools and a general platform abstraction API
tier1	Higher-level data structures and containers. Things like vector, binary trees, hash map, normal map, red-black trees, key values parser.
tier2	Used by appsystems. Provides filesystem globals and some other things like that
tier3	Similar to tier2, don't know what it does really
tier4	extremely basic UI library for multiple platforms
vstdlib	NOT an impl of the standard library. Implements convar system, keyvalues cache system, process tools and uniform random streams
mathlib	Implements various math functions and classes like matricies, vectors, angles and quaternions.
appframework	Implements Source's app framework system that allows for dynamic loading of modules and interfaces
vtf	Library for working with VTF (Valve Texture Format) files
bitmap	Includes a loader for TGAs and PSD files
inputsystem	Implements the inputsystem interface for..input..
vphysics	Implementation of the physics interface using bullet physics in this project
raytrace	Simple raytracing library used by vrad
launcher	Implementation of the launcher DLL, which is loaded by the launcher exe
launcher_main	The launcher exe itself, which loads the launcher DLL
filesystem	Implements the filesystem interface. There exists filesystem_stdio and filesystem_steam. We use filesystem_stdio only
particles	Particle rendering library
fgdlib	Library for loading FGD files, which are used by hammer to load entity definitions
dmxloader	Loader for DMX files
materialsystem	Implements the rendering system on a superfical level. This calls into the various shader APIs
shaderapiempty	Empty shaderapi implementation used by the dedicated server
shaderapidx9	Shaderapi implemented using DirectX 9
shaderapidx11	Shaderapi implemented using DirectX 11
stdshaders	Project that contains all the shaders
shaderlib	Library that shaders use
studiorender	Rendering library for MDL files
vgui2	The GUI library that source uses
vgui2/vgui_controls	Higher-level controls for VGUI
vgui2/vgui_surfacelib	Implements surface rendering for fonts and stuff
vgui2/matsys_controls	Higher-level controls for VGUI that focus on materialsystem stuff
vgui2/game_controls	Controls for VGUI that focus on game systems
vgui2/dme_controls	Controls for VGUI that focus on Datamodel stuff
engine	The actual engine
game/server	Game code that runs only on the server
game/client	Game code that runs only on the client
game/shared	Game code that runs both on client and server
networksystem	Abstraction of platform-specific networking libraries. Implemented using winsock on Windows and Unix Sockets on POSIX systems
soundsystem	Something to do with the soundsystem
mdllib	Simple library for working with MDL files
utils/vbsp	Compiles VMF files to BSP files
utils/vrad	Valve RADiant. Bakes lighting into maps
utils/vvis	Valve VISibility. Computes visibility in BSP maps
utils/hammer	The hammer map editor source code
utils/shadercompile	Shitty tool for compiling shaders
devtools	Various scripts and programs that help with development