Template:Archived Page History/Sledge/en

Deprecated:Sledge is no longer being actively developed, and is rather incomplete and buggy; consider using J.A.C.K., TrenchBroom, or NetRadiant-Custom.
Sledge may still be occasionally useful for generating certain geometry with its advanced primitives, but should not be used as one's primary map editor.

Sledge was a free and open source level editor which supports the GoldSrc engine. The original scope of Sledge was to offer advanced editing features from later versions of Hammer and other editors and make them available to all users, regardless of which engine they choose to use. Sledge uses the same file formats as Hammer does (RMF, MAP, VMF) and maps are compatible between both programs. The editing process is almost identical to Hammer, the hotkeys are the same, as well as many of the screen elements and dialogs. Switching to Sledge will not be difficult for users who are familiar with Hammer.

Requirements

Important:Sledge does not currently have many compilation options and an external compiler such as The Compilator or Nem's Batch Compiler is recommended.

• Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8)
• Microsoft .NET 4.0
• OpenGL-compatible graphics card

Advantages

• Sledge included many editing features available in Hammer 4.x in the Goldsource editing environment.
• It was built using modern frameworks and libraries, and is tested on modern operating systems.
• It was constantly being enhanced and new features are always being added.
• It is open source, which means the source code is available to everybody to modify and improve. ( Even though it is no longer being actively developed its source code is available )

Features

• Runs on modern operating systems and graphics cards
• Full support for GoldSrc editing
• Capable of Reading and writing RMF, MAP, VMF files, as well as its own SMF format.

Bug:RMFs written by Sledge can become unreadable by other editors. Prefer saving in VMF or MAP instead.  [todo tested in ?]

• Complete compatibility with Hammer maps
• Proper decimal precision for sub-grid geometry
• Support for larger maps
• Support for multiple visgroups per object
• Automatic visgrouping
• Displays models from unextracted PAK files
• Improved texture browser filtering and display options during its lifetime

Sledge Public Beta missing content

Note:Sledge is no longer being actively developed, however, some features that were planned before being cut

• Model loading
• Cordon clipping during compile
• Built-in support for prefabs/instances
• Automatic detection of game configurations

Source Support

Note:Sledge is no longer being actively developed, however, its 2.0 version was planned to have Source compatibility

The current milestone is to fully support Goldsource editing. Once the alpha test is complete, work to add support for Source will likely begin. Full Source support is expected to be released in version 2. But official development was discontinued. So it's unlikely that it's would be added in the future. Many Source editing features will be available in Goldsource as well, such as displacements and instances.

Possibilities suggested during lifetime

Note:Sledge is longer being actively developed, however some features that where planned before shutting down

These features will convert to Goldsource-compatible brushwork when a map is compiled. Future Possibilities Because Sledge is open source, the possibilities for future expansion are endless. Some popular ideas include the following:

• Collaborative editing and multi-user support
• A plugin system and support for scripting
• Built-in support for version control systems like SVN and Git
• Powerful displacement editing tools
• A complete 'Sledge SDK' containing other editing and creation tools based on the Sledge code base...and anything else you can think of!

Media

• 

  GUI

• 

  Texture application

• 

  Texture Browser

• 

  Create a Brush

• 

  Model Rendering

External links

• Website at GitHub
• GitHub Repository
• HammerTime (active development fork) at GitHub