Greetings! I've been (mostly) lurking here for a while, but I expect to be more active now that I have my hands on the SDK. And my generic question regarding that is, when will the SDK be out of beta? Do we have any kind of general estimate? Any news from Valve people on how long it's going to take? Many of the SDK's current issues, like not being able to hear most sounds in the sound browser, are extremely troublesome. (Am I just not supposed to use sounds I can't hear?)

And the SDK Wiki, what's up with that? There are many obvious holes, like missing function lists and instance descriptions, how do do things like layered music and making GLaDOS talk. There's even a GLaDOS link on the wiki that's red, because it doesn't link to anything. And it's been that way for a while. Is it being actively updated? Can I expect to see a more complete wiki in weeks? months?

Now this isn't a WHINEWHINEWHINE thread, I do understand about the whole beta thing, and how we're lucky to have as much access as we do. But I'd like to know the timeframe. something along the lines of "Oh yes, <insert dev name here> knows about the sound playback errors in Hammer, they're working on it and we'll have a fix sometime next week" would be fantastic.

How often does the SDK get patched/updated anyway?

First of all, God knows when the SDK will be out of beta. There are a lot of issues, but I expect VALVe may fix them gradually, which makes the line between beta and final rather fuzzy.

Second, yeah, everyone's working on the VDC pages. I actually started the instance list, and awesome people have been helping with documentation, but there's still a fair amount left. As is the case with other pages. There are still updates, it's just a little unpredictable and sporadic.

Finally, I'm actually not sure how often the Authoring Tools are updated.

Thanks for the reply. I've been spoiled lately by games with extremely open dev cycles like Minecraft and Terraria. Not only will the people making the game actually come in IRC and chat with you, they'll tell you when the next patch is, what's going to be in it, and blog all about what they're working on from here to the moon. It'd be nice if Valve did that too.

And aha, I did not know the wiki was being edited by the community, I figured it was only official Valve people. That's very interesting, maybe I'll even add to it myself someday.

One further question, in regard to IRC. Well, is there one? An official one, for those of us puzzling out the SDK? I did a search here and found a post from 4 years ago mentioning #thinkingwithportals on EFnet, but I went there and it was an empty room. Was it discontinued? If so, are there any other IRC channels devoted to Portal 2 SDK goodness?

We never really reached a critical mass on IRC, so asking a question was always crickets, then "post on the forum?"

I love me some IRC, but usually good questions don't have simple answers.

As for the VDC wiki, yeah, it's mostly community driven. If you use it a lot, contribute back, y'know?

Nacimota used to more or less keep the IRC chat running single-handedly, I think. At least for TWP. Not sure if one for general Authoring Tools exists or not.