It’s been an interesting eight years. I started playing Half-Life Deathmatch in 2000, and picked up Counter-Strike 1.0 in 2001. From 2002 to 2003 I ran a few servers and did a little scripting. The serious projects started in 2004.

What began as a craving to take part in open source software ballooned into something that has consumed the past four years of my life. Certainly I have gained a tremendous amount of experience, and for that reason alone I do not regret the choices I’ve made. Unfortunately I’ve also had to make sacrifices. The details are boring, suffice to say — it is taking longer for me to graduate, and I don’t have much of a social life. Ah — youthful optimism, blind dedication, and a strong sense of commitment.

With no regrets, I have come to the realization that it is time for me to move on.

I am going to try and slowly drift out of the gaming scene. I’ll keep most of the reasons to myself. They fall out of this discussion’s scope, and I don’t want to burn too many bridges. There is one reason, however, which will strike home to a few people. The world of server-side Half-Life development is just too limited.

Valve is part of the problem. Releases are almost never tested, and there is little warning before frequent compatibility breaks. The API is poorly documented (if at all). Arbitrary limitations in the SDK severely limit creativity. Debugging crashes is difficult; there are no symbols. Trying to coerce Valve into making even minor changes is impossible. After all, Valve wants developers making full games against the SDK. They want the next Counter-Strike. They want a game that can make money. A server-side plugin can’t do that directly.

Although my open-source fanaticism has lightened over the years, I am still very much an open-source appreciator at heart. Valve tends to not be friendly toward open-source. They write shoddy platform code that barely works on Linux. They don’t even allow redistribution of derivative SDK works in source form.

While I like to blame Valve for everything, the fact of the matter is that it’s just the nature of game development. It’s an extremely competitive and proprietary environment. Server-side developers are forced to hack against a black box, fighting an uphill battle against the very games they’re trying to promote.

Alas, what it comes down to is that the game isn’t my product. No matter what I think may be best, it’s someone else’s game. It’s a closed system, run by a closed company, and that’s their decision. I can lament about it, but I can’t fault them for it — they spent their time and money to make it.

By moving on, I can explore areas of software engineering where there are less, if any, limitations.

Where do I go from here? I don’t want to be too specific publicly yet, but my next project will involve programming language implementation. You can ask me in private if you’re interested.

In the meantime, I will keep maintaining the projects I’ve started, albeit at a lighter pace. AMX Mod X will get one last planned bug-fix release from me. I will maintain things that break from Valve updates. SourceMod, for the most part, is already released in trickled updates, although I will certainly continue to improve it as I have the time and energy. Other than that, I’ll continue to hang out in IRC and post here. It’s just not my style to completely abandon the community.

Although I have made some negative remarks about server-side game development, I would like to say that it’s still an excellent and often fun way to learn programming. I hope that people have and continue to enjoy working with AMX Mod X and SourceMod as much as we have enjoyed developing them.