Includes Source SDK is Steam's label for games built on Valve's Source engine that ship with the engine's development kit, the same set of tools Valve's own level designers, animators and programmers used to make the game. Installing a game that carries this label also unlocks its authoring tools in the Tools section of your Steam library, and from there you get Hammer, the level editor used to lay out every map from Half-Life 2 to Left 4 Dead 2, along with the model viewer, Faceposer for scripting facial animation and lip sync, and utilities for compiling maps, materials and models into a form the engine can load. For a shopper browsing this collection, the practical upshot is that the game is not a closed box: the community can build new maps, campaigns, weapons, character skins and full conversion mods, and in most cases those creations are shared through Steam Workshop or a game's add-on system so you can install them with a click rather than digging through folders. That is why Source games tend to stay alive for years past their release, with new survival maps, custom campaigns and competitive layouts still appearing long after the developer moved on. If you want to make something yourself, the SDK is the on-ramp, and because the Source engine has been documented by Valve and by two decades of modders, tutorials exist for nearly every step from your first room in Hammer to a fully scripted campaign. If you simply want to play, the label still tells you something useful: a game that includes the Source SDK almost always has a deep library of player-made content waiting behind it, and picking one up means buying into that community as much as into the campaign on the box.
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