Getting Started

Most of the Source SDK applications including Hammer are found in the game's bin folders, following the SteamPipe update for Source engine games.

• Go to Steam’s Library tab (1), right click your game (2), hover over Manage to expand more options (3), and click Browse Local Files (4).
• From there, double click your game's /bin folder to view it (5).
• Find hammer.bat (or run hammer.exe if the latter doesn't exist) in this folder and double click it (6). This will launch Hammer, the level editor for Source.

Note:Do not launch hammer.exe directly (unless if hammer.bat does not exist), as it might fail to detect the game automatically when launched for first time.

• From the File menu, select New:

• An empty map will appear.

Bug:You may find that Hammer’s viewports are all totally black. This is because Hammer is running with a different branch of Source from the game you are working on.  [todo tested in?]

Note:On Left 4 Dead engine branch and later, you might need to run "Hammer Editor" through it's SDK/Authoring Tools Launcher, as it may not open when running hammer.exe directly.

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Your First Map

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