Talk:Valve Hammer Editor

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Hmm, this seems to be a good way of getting some VALVe attention. Do you guys ever listen to the community about changes that could improve Hammer? Cause there are some serious things that can improve the editor A LOT. I have three things right on. /hipshot

Updates and Bugs

Ran into an issue with the latest update of hammer, it crashes on exit and 2d/3d grids don't render correctly. Build 4933. May/5th

Face deletion

Is there a way to delete indivudual faces? Cfive 14:18, 15 Oct 2008 (PDT)

Texture browser.

  • How about making categories that one can browse through, still keeping the fast search function of course.
    • Solution: use keywords, filter for folders

Customization.

  • Colors? Hey, this is 2005, why is it that I'm still bound to the black palette? I know I can invert the scheme in the options menu, still, no good.
  • Customizable keyboard shortcuts for every feature in hammer, please.
  • Set group's colors manually
  • I'd like to be able to change the "void" background color again. I remember this feature was in VHE 3.5, so why was it taken out? :( --Campaignjunkie 13:06, 25 Jul 2005 (PDT)
YEAH! I use that for finding leaks when I map for HL. It would be extremely useful. --JeffMOD 13:54, 7 Sep 2008 (PDT)

Navigation.

  • Why is it that you are bound to use either the scroll-buttons, or the arrows on the KB? Both these are slow and bad ways to scroll, how come I can't just click-hold down the right MB and scroll, like in most other editors and many (strategy) games?
    • Solution:
      • 3D: enter camera mode with the camera button, shift+C, or Z
      • 2D: Hold space and drag the mouse
  • Add a ruler to the sides of each view so one can know where on the map he is? When I made my first WC/Hammer based map (ever) a couple weeks ago, I found that I was mapping far out the edge, I still find this annoying even if that never happens. Its very good for measurements of brush based structurs.
  • A speed slider on the 3d-viewport? Like a smaller scrollbar, but it regulates the speed that the player flies through the world in 3D. Its way slow now, and annoying going into the editor-settings to change this every now and then. You can make huge maps with Source, still you need to move really slow when it comes down to local detail. Therefor some better flexibility here.
    • Workaround: scroll with mousewheel to move forwards/backwards, drag with both mouse buttons in camera mode, or teleport the camera wherever you want with the camera tool and the 2D views.
  • A hotkey for centering an object in 3d view? I know there is ctrl-e for 2d centering and an option to center in 3d view off of one of the dropdown menus, but a hotkey for centering in 3d view would make navigation faster and easier. --Hyperion2010 09:11, 1 Aug 2005 (PDT)
    • Solution: Ctrl-shift-e will center the 3D view on the selected entities.
  • Is it me, or is the wasd-key navigation removed? For some reason, my d and c keys act as forward and backward, but there's no strafe keys right now. Smells like a bug to me - the z doesn't work either anymore. --Captain P 16:28, 3 Aug 2006 (PDT)
    • I've been noticing Hammer do that to me a lot, it jsut randomly decides to take a different keyboard layout and sue that instead. Everything works, just its switched your keyboard input to a different layout. I thought i got that because I had Us English and UK Englsih on the same system. Restarting hammer fixes it for me. --Angry Beaver 10:43, 3 Aug 2006 (PDT)
      • Solution: Hover your mouse over the 3d view and try again.

Views

  • Why is the Textured view not shaded? It seems odd that every other rastered view is, and even the Textured view in the old VHE was shaded, so why go back a step?
Actually, I prefer it unshaded. --Campaignjunkie 13:47, 20 Jul 2005 (PDT)
I think it should be a option, I like a shaded 3d-view also, much easier to see elevation differences --Hipshot 09:30, 24 Jul 2005 (PDT)
There is a solution if you want shaded previews, just use Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop and layer the Smoothing Groups view (Multiply Blend) over the textured view. I think the merit in no shading is to see the textures unaltered, since different shading can make textures look different. --Zevensoft 15:48, 2 Aug 2005 (PDT)
  • How about a wireframe depth cue based on the camera's position in the 3D view? It could be controlled from the toolbar with on/off and a scrollable number for distance. Anything outside the max distance would fade out from 2D views. It's a lot more elegant than using visgroups. --TomEdwards 04:35, 25 Jul 2005 (PDT)
    • Workaround: Temporarily use cordon bounds.
  • It would be nice to manually configure the "zoom" factor in the 2d views, and customize the zooming with the '0'-'9' keys
  • Lighting preview in 3d view

Functions

  • Displacement maps, currently, their only usage is for terrain, everyone that says that they are good to use for arches are so wrong, why, because they are just way to advanced as for now. A power value of '.5' and also 1, would be much appreciated. I've tried making these stugff, with manual editing of the vmf file, this works, and it looks good in Hammer, but it's not possible to compile, since VBSP doesen't handle this. Please make us use simpler displacements.
Solution: make multiple displacement brushes
  • Vertex editor of displacements, it sucks using the geometry editor if you are going in really detailed, please valve, please, make these changes. Q3 had a great mesh system, Source can also, if we get these two functions.
Solution: Use DispEd to make precise displacement geometry.
Solution: Uncheck Spatial, move the mouse over the vertex of choice and hold shift.
  • using the clipping tool with the grid at 1 unit makes the tool snap 1 unit next to the one you click on. now i know this is not used many times, but there are people out there (like me) who use this pretty much so a fix for this would save us a lot of time.
  • Carving Tool: carving has always been known as the "evil" in the editor and many people suggested to remove the tool.

however, in hammer 3.5 i took use of this tool when creating arches. when i created a 90 degree arch i would always create a block around it and then carve the arch out of it so that the outer portion gets filled up (deleting the inner brushes) now when i do this in the new hammer it totally f*cks it up. or even crashes my machine (and so i have heard im not the only one who has this) fixing this would again speed up work big time.

Carving can splinter a brush and make a big mess but it is safe for many simple tasks, should be allowed to remain in Hammer.
  • Numerical input values for brush locations and dimensions: It would be nice to be able to type in values for brush sizes (width, height, depth) as well as values for their respective x/y/z locations instead of having to drag them to the desired width, height and depth, or nudge them to an x/y/z point. Right now, in order to place a brush exactly where you need it, or drag it exactly to the desired value, you need to scroll a lot in and out. With numerical input the process of creating brushes, editing and positioning them would be much swifter.
  • Snap-to grids other than powers of two. Specifically, a grid 12 units in size would be nice. If 1 unit is equal to 1 inch, then having a grid equal to a foot would make sense. —MightyMooquack 00:30, 10 Oct 2005 (PDT)
  • Snap-to-vertex in vertex-manipulation mode (toggle-able). Also, lock selection of objects in vertex-manipulation mode so you don't accidentally clear your selection while trying to select vertices.
  • Selection groups should have an origin used for transforming; like an origin used in the brush entities.
  • Referencing objects and entities. Useful for similar posts/poles or for curved hallways. For example, an office room with similar-looking poles. The group of brushes (the pole in this case) is a selection group with a defined origin in the center of the brushes. The other poles would be a point_reference that would reference the one group. Before compiling, a pass will convert all point_references to the appropriate brushes and entities (and make the appropriate transformations). The point_reference should have transformation keyvalues.
  • Inches and units don't translate to each other very well, so 12 units wouldn't be a foot anyway. Powers of 2 are easiest to handle for computers, and with a grid size of 4 you can cover a 12-unit brush pretty quick. Selection dimensions are shown in the bottom right of Hammers interface bytheway so if measurement is a problem, look there. Captain P
  • Transformation dialog more keyboard friendly. Example: type in "rot z 45" instead of clicking "rotate", then typing "45" in the z edit box.
  • It would be nice to have a "select visible" button on the face edit sheet. It will select every face the 3d view can see, at that moment. (For r rows and c columns in the 3d viewport size, make r*c raycasts from 3d camera and select those faces)
  • Manually edit u and v texture vectors for brush faces.
  • Sure its fun to carve out blocks and such, but wouldn't it be better if you could import block structures from .dxf files made in for example Bryce?

Selection Problems

  • The selection handles and various other selection tools are extremely fickle when used in the 2D views. With HL1 Hammer/Worldcraft, I rarely encountered problems while resizing brushes and dragging selection boxes. Hammer for HL2 is very inaccurate in this respect. One can try to resize a brush and put the cursor on the selection handles (causing the mouse cursor to change into a double headed arrow to indicate it's accurately placed for resizing) and then drag, only to find that one is now dragging a selection box instead of actually resizing the brush (i.e. the selection "missed"). It's very irritating indeed, especially when one has auto-select enabled and consequently selects half of the map upon releasing the mouse button.
  • Another curious bug occurs when selecting objects in a 2D window and being zoomed out a large(ish) amount. Attempting to drag a selection box that starts nowhere near a brush will result in the closest brush to the pointer being selected.

Misc Bugs and Issues

  • Changing a prop's model to something else, then undoing the action will actually revert the prop's model back to its original state, but the 2d/3d views will display the model selected before undoing the action. If one saves the vmf and reloads the file, the correct model is displayed, so it definitely does revert properly -- it just doesn't update hammer's views. E.g. If one has a pipe model and changes it to a telephone pole, then hits ctrl-z to undo the property change, hammer will continue to display a telephone pole, but the model is actually a pipe once more.
  • A similar issue exists with the fade distance helpers. Sometimes one will find that when cloning a prop, the newly created prop will appear to possess different fade distance properties to that of the source prop. Save, close and then re-open the file, and the original prop will now display helpers that match the cloned prop (i.e. the helpers are not being updated correctly in the 2d/3d views). *edit -- I've tracked down exactly why this happens: Change a helper's settings and then hitting ctrl-z will cause the helper to revert back to the old properties in the 2D & 3D view, but it does not revert the actual settings. Viewing the entity's fade properties will confirm this. This bug is effectively the reverse of the model bug, as the undo action updates the 2D & 3D views but doesn't update the entity's properties (whereas the model display bug updates the entity properties but doesn't update the 2D & 3D views).
  • Some of the tool textures in Hammer are non-functional and should be removed for simplicity's sakes.
  • The brightness of sprites in the 3D view is way, way too bright. I can only assume Valve employees wear sunglasses and have good eyecare plans :P Please reduce the brightness of sprites in the 3D view or give some kind of control to users. I get a headache. Some level designers (mod work) I work with actually have a sprites visgroup as they are so bothersome.
  • Deleting a brush that is associated with an overlay or decal, then undoing the action, causes the overlay / decal to no longer be rendered. This is obviously very annoying if one accidentally deletes a brush that has several overlays or decals associated with it, as one must then undo the action, then manually re-add all of the faces to the overlay properties. Decals are less bothersome, as one can simply 'nudge' the non-working decal using the arrow keys, and it will re-appear as normal. This is just another niggly problem that could really do with being fixed. There's more stuff but I can't think of it all right now. Having the above issues fixed would be nice --Defrag
  • The internal accuracy of co-ordinates is not very good, and often the 2D views look messy because of lines that dont fall on the grid. VHE was very good in this aspect, so why does Hammer 4 have the problem? Is it a rounding error?
  • Group carving seems to be broken, as it will engage in an infinite loop or only one of the selected objects would be carved.
  • Multi-monitor support must be improved. I cannot see the texture browser on my laptop after it was previously shown on a previously connected, secondary monitor.
My saving grace was using the keyboard shortcut: Alt+ down key to open the window's menu and selected the Move menu item. --Molaughlen 11:27, 11 Aug 2008 (PDT)

Open source

With this wiki, you (VALVe), have a great opportunity for collecting ideas and improvements suggested by the very (large) developing community that you helped creating since late '98. The professional developers, that every day comes and works at a office, might get a bit 'walled-in' (no offence) weather their editor is good or not. Their agenda spans over like 3-4 years, and they are so used to the work and the 8h workday phase that they might not notice and feel like changes in the GUI could speed and help thier work. Example, iDs Doom3Edit, that is built-in and comes with Doom 3, the editor sucks so incredibly much compared to GTKradiant when it comes down to everything, even speed, the only thing it does good is the realtime light and sound the editor features since its totaly native with the Doom 3 Engine. Everything else, from texture (and 'ing'), navigation, selections, render speed (large maps), shortcuts, menus and functions is far better in GTKr (1.5). If VALVe should release the source for the VHE to the community, I think we could see the same story for hammer, since more outside mappers and developers starts improving the editor 'beyond the year 2001'. Or, take suggestions and implant them, It can't be that hard to change improvements in the GUI, and you sure would make alot of us happy. /hipshot

Releasing the source for Hammer might cause a lot of different versions to pop up, each having a thing of it's own. Perhaps allowing a plugin system, adapting Hammer to accept plugins and giving some documentation about how to create these? --Captain P
I've E-mailed Valve before and gotten the response "A Plugin feature is one we would like to add but its not an easy feature to add". Its hopeful, like "When its done" is hopeful. --Angry Beaver
The Dark Messiah beta includes a large number of licensee binaries that aren't in the public SDK, which include plugins (in a folder called 'plugins') for Hammer like VMPI. Sounds like they aren't so far off after all! --TomEdwards 10:59, 3 Aug 2006 (PDT)

Hammer Editor Improvements

I've sent a message once to Garry Newman, maker of the popular sandbox mod Garry's Mod. I was asking of the possibility of creating map content in Gmod for multiplayer and single player mods for Half-Life 2 and it's kin. The map itself would be created from Hammer but the placement of items, the point and click system of creating triggers and basic interactions like elevators and transports on rails is very intuitive if it were done the way Gmod users do their experiments. Granting nothing quite complicated can be done with regards to scripting or coding in Gmod, to even present the option of doing a vanilla type of mod would do wonders to the first time modder. I remember how much fun I had in messing around with a track editor in an unknown game such as Revolt for the PC. The prospect of having to learn programming is quite intimidating and discouraging for people with no background in the field. Every one of us has a basic understanding of logic, cause and effects, triggers and events. I am sure a lot of people have a grasp of what's it like to set a trap for someone in real life. This is how Garry's mod works. What you see is what you get. And you walk around like you're setting up things in real life first person point of view. Inputs of codes might be the way computers understand us humans but do you remember how intuitive clicking icons and buttons were when they were first introduced in the Mackintosh and then on the Windows operating systems? Soon enough, a lot of people were using computers and not only the geeks and technicals. Opening the interface up to the artistic masses will give a boom in more beautiful maps and imaginative games. Artistic people prefer the intuitive tools like paintbrushes, pencils, pen tablets and hopefully in the future, Hammer Editor. Technology may be bridging the gap between art and the digital world but the nature of the right hemisphere of the brain remains the same.

Mark

Crashes when I edit anything but Team Fortress 2

When I open Hammer after selecting anything buy team fortress 2, and then try to put an object of any kind (bursh, entity) it crashes with no error message except window's "we have encounted a problem" message. A friend told me it probably had to do with configuration, but I have already reset the configuration once. I can't find what is going on anywhere on the internet. help would be really appreciated since I'm tearing my hair out over this. I know I was able to edit Half-life 2 maps before, though I'm not sure what changed (I got HL2 and TF2 together in the orange box.)


(Leopardson): Try this: If you are running through the Source SDK, create a shortcut on your desktop, go to properties, and add the line to "Target" -engine ep2.

System freezes during brush sizing/resizing

Frequently, when I'm moving the bounds of a brush to line things up, my entire system completely freezes, and I'm forced to reboot. This can set me back if I've been working on it a while, and to be honest it's not worth using Hammer if this happens so much. My computer is an HP Pavilion dv9000 laptop running Windows Vista (but I've used Hammer on my other Vista machine without any such problems). Twisol 15:24, 1 Jan 2008 (PST)


(Leopardson): I also have this problem. The freezes last anywhere from 10 seconds to reboot level. I am running on a PC (From various parts, I put them together): AMD Athlon x64 2800+ 1gb Ram 256mb DDR2 Geforce 6200 (Most likely irrelevant) Windows 2000 Professional OR Kubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon (Via WINE). Problem persists on both operating system.

It happens a bit different. I think it happens while selecting or moving/changing anything.

Can you change a map's 3d view settings without opening it?

  • Up until today, I have had absolutely no problems opening, editing, and compiling maps with Hammer, but suddenly there is a big problem. When I open either of my two primary maps, Hammer starts to load them, but right when it should start rendering the 3d view, it closes the program with no error message.
  • When I opened the same maps on my XP machine, they opened just fine, but were working in 3d wireframe mode. When I switched them to 3d textured mode, they worked fine, but as soon as I tried 3d textured and shaded, Hammer crashed the same way.

--RigorMortis 19:39, 7 Jan 2008 (PST)

Solution

My solution came to me through the SteamPowered Forums, this thread.

If you open a new map, set your 3d viewport to the desired setting, then close Hammer, it will keep that setting the next time you open a map. My regards to OneElitePenguin for figuring this one out! --RigorMortis 22:35, 7 Jan 2008 (PST)


Stupid 3.4!

Wow... someone spammed the page good. I took care of it. I hate those %$#@!%$#! Anyway, why i came in the first place... My version of SDK Base has'nt downloaded fully yet, but I found version 3.4 already on my computer! i thought cool... then saw it only had primitives, no entities, not even a playerstart or func_breakable. I realize its for HL1, but come on! anyone remember how to import entities and models? --JeffMOD 18:01, 8 May 2008 (PDT)

Okay, I took a long time to update this, but, here goes. Turns out its 3.5, and for some reason I didn't have an .FGD. So, no, Im not a COMPLETE moron. --JeffMOD 06:27, 27 Jul 2008 (PDT)
You need 3.4 to install 3.5 correctly, because it has to be installed on top of it. Then you need to create game definitions. Solokiller 06:52, 27 Jul 2008 (PDT)
Yeah, my brother (it's his old computer im using right now) had 3.5, so I assume he had 3.4... For some reason, though, we had no FGD files. (He never was good at mapping, he only tried a few maps before quitting and using another editor a few years after. he can't even set up hammer 4 to compile a small box he made to test a mod he wanted to make) I also did'nt have any models in my Valve/Models folder, so it acted like 3.4 unless I was using monster_generic or monster_furniture for a while there. like I said, im not a COMPLETE moron, just halfway there. --JeffMOD 14:04, 7 Sep 2008 (PDT)

Hammer resetting itself

I have Hammer 3.4 and have been using it since August of this year. As of late I have taken over finishing a map for a friend of mine. Yesterday when I started Hammer it told me that there is no configuration file, it basically had been deleted. I never deleted such a thing. Also, hammer somehow deleted my rmf files from the /maps folder... Luckily I had backups saved of these maps and a few minutes ago got everything up and running, but now my maps are trashed. And some textures when I choose them crash hammer, yet they didn't crash it before.

I'm a bit upset about this. I now have to explain to my friend that his map that I have worked on for three days straight, is ruined because of this "bug" with hammer. Just wondering if this has ever happened, and if there is a way to prevent it from happening again. --Skorpion

Stop...Hammer Time? (Seriously)

Screenshot proving "Hammer Time" joke.

The other day I was messing around with the Half Life 2 leaked beta (don't worry Valve I didn't even touch the source code ;) I just like unfinished assets) and I opened the Hammer editor out of curiosity to see how it was during that point in development. After I opened it I was greeted by a short clip taken from "Hammer Time" by MC Hammer and the title bar changing to "It's Hammer time!" while the brief clip played.

XD I cracked up right there. What a great programmers joke to just toss in there. I'm curious if this might be present in the current version's code and can be turned on so I can show my friends. At the least, would anyone be willing to see if there's certain conditions that must be met for the leaked beta version to do the joke? So far I've yet to be able to reproduce it but my eyes and ears didn't deceive me so I know it's real. --TheByrus 05:10, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

UPDATE: Ah HA! Got a screenshot from my hex editor with proof! --TheByrus 05:52, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
It might have been the devs trolling each other, but discussion of the leaked beta code is a mostly forbidden (ban-able) topic here, I wouldn't prod. Discussing it with the Valve staff would be akin to telling someone about the great joyride you had in their stolen car. However, if you wanted to ask them about their taste in music , there's always email. --brandished 13:03, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
Well I've also bought nearly every Valve game I've come across and heavily support them. I actually didn't get the beta with the Source code out of respect for them. I was only interested in seeing some of those old assets (such as the cremator). So I know where you're coming from and I hope no Valve employees think bad of me for diving into beta assets. ^.^; if so I'm sorry guys. In any case it would be funny to see if the Hammer Time code was still in the current release of Hammer but I went through it with a hex editor as well and don't think I saw anything. TO BE CLEAR: That screenshot I took is NOT the source code but the compiled binary of the beta Hammer Editor during the beta leak. --TheByrus 13:47, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
I understand what you're saying, but pirated assets (whether they be source code, compiled exe's, or material files) are all looked upon in mostly the same light. The other thing with leaks is there's no way to know 100% that what you've downloaded wasn't altered some way in between the theft and the release (unless you were the one that stole them or the victim). If you really want to know about a game's (or its' development tool) history, the best bet is to try and contact the original developer, a lot of the devs at Valve do try to answer emails. --brandished 17:34, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
True I suppose. At the very least I certainly don't plan on keeping these assets. This is just a one-time fling since I've had a history of enjoying beta research across many games. How could I pass up the chance to look at one of my most favorite games made by the most influential in my educational life and quite possibly of our time? And yea, I know I sound like I'm trying to butter-up any possible Valve employees that could be reading this (and maybe I am a little), =P but like I said, I DO have a very strong appreciation for Valve. Seeing a little bit of how Valve is internally or during development was just too good a chance.
On another note, I'm actually curious how much of that leak would be considered piracy considering the only thing I downloaded was mostly the same assets as that were in the final game (which I legally own of course). Granted I'm far from trying to justify the act of downloading those assets but it's an interesting thought. Anyhow I'll probably drop an email or two out there for some Valve employees to ask someone about the game's development (or if it's possible still to activate "Hammer Time" assuming it wasn't modified in as part of the piracy. Though doubtful to me.) as you suggested.--TheByrus 00:48, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
I think that, while the non-source code content is useful, unless VALVe announces the content free to use in any VALVe-created Source engine game and mods based on it, you can't use the content. This announcement would ideally be paired with an update for HL2, adding the content. (perhaps in a seperate GCF file?) Solokiller 12:04, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
You see, I agree on this, but what I find ironic is if beta content is illegal (because it hasn't been announced available to use) then why is Synergy allowed to use a few of the beta weapons? The ironic thing with that is Valve even acknowledge Synergy by giving them SteamWorks, but they're using illegal content. How do you work that one out? --DannyS 18:19, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
Well Valve is also letting Black Mesa Source live even though it's basically going to be a free version of Half Life 1. Plus I think Synergy re-created their content like the old AR-2 rather then copied it from the beta, which would be more legit. But it is a strange legal gray-line I suppose. But generally speaking I think they care about use of the source code most. Otherwise you're not really using Source engine content far beyond what you're allowed to do officially. Had the beta content been available in the final game, you'd get to use it just as we use the content we actually have. --TheByrus 16:55, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Hey..

When i start hammer it says "No game configurations available.." If i press yes at this message it opens "Configure Hammer". when i enter the game name and press "OK", Hammer editor stops working .. Any ideas ?

Objects In Black...

ok honestly, wth???? i have been using Hammer for a while now and now out of nowhere the objects start looking black! when i get close up they get back to normal, but other than that they're black! please help... --dillodude94 - 04/30/10 5:10pm (est) Hammer1.jpeg

Valve's recent update broke hammer. --Omnicoder 22:45, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I think it broke ALL of Source SDK. because neither face poser and model viewer work. is thre any way i can fix that? --dillodude94 - 05/1/10 2:18pm (est) Not until Valve takes pity on us and fixes it. (Unless you want to revert to the old sdk version) --Omnicoder 18:38, 1 May 2010 (UTC)



Revert? How? Please help a newbie if you can. Much appreciated! -persephonae

I think all we can do is to wait until a new release. Mine is also stopped working about a week ago. I have found this bug here: Source SDK SE2 Bugs under Hammer Issues/General. I also use win7 and an NVIDIA graphics card: maybe this could be a clue --Adhie 13:15, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

I use Vista and i have an ATI 3650, and on my other pc, an ATI 4890, both have this problem. Solokiller 15:24, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Workaround (not perfect, but better until we get our update.) Check this page: User talk:Adhie

How to get 3D View's current X,Y,Z coords?

Sort of like pushing a 'Point At...' button, is there a way to retrieve the 3D view's X,Y,Z coordinates? --Mattshu 23:22, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Hammer hangs during play testing

This may have been brought up before, but whenever I leave Hammer open (without the material browser open) during play testing, or even if I manually run the game and use the command 'map [file]', Hammer seems to hang and become unresponsive. Are there any fixes for this or do I need to up my memory? —Mattshu 02:32, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Same problem here. On an i7 box with a Radeon 6950 and 2 GB of ram. Just a little L4D2 map with a player_start, a fog_control entity, and one cubic mesh for the ground and a skybox. That's weired. —Bln 18:52, 27 August 2011 (PDT)

Update : I've added 10GB of ram to my PC, for an overall total of 12GB. I still have the same problem, so I guess it's not memory related. I'd add that even with this configuration, hammer takes A LOT of time to load. —Bln 18:01, 8 September 2011 (PDT)

Hammer Editor Improvements

  • Improvements
   ** BUG Fix: "env_embers" "Parent" option as it don't work at all. (Parent option is broken)
   ** Option for "env_embers" to have a working "enable" and "disable" on trigger. (As they can't be turned off and on)
   ** Option for "point_message" to show/work in multiplayer. (only works in single player)
   ** Option for "func_illusionary" to have "Start Fade Dist/pixels" and "End Fade Dist/pixels". (will help optimization)
   ** Option for "func_physbox" to have "Start Fade Dist/pixels" and "End Fade Dist/pixels" (will help optimization)
   ** Option for "funcreflectiveglass" to have "Start Fade Dist/pixels" and "End Fade Dist/pixels" (will help optimization)
   ** Option for "func_brush" to have "Start Fade Dist/pixels" and "End Fade Dist/pixels" (will help optimization)
   ** Add "Infolightingrelative" LINK http://www.halfwit-2.com/?page=tutorials&id=152 (only can do with smart edit off)
   ** "tools/toolsblockbullets" or a new Func_... to Only block bullets and not clip physics and player to. (useful)
   ** BUG Fix: when too many things that are grouped sometimes become ungrouped for no reason and hammer has to be restarted to temp fix this BUG.
Only the last one is directly related to hammer (the others are fgd and/or code related issues), and you should check your grouping settings, they may be set to ignore them. Solokiller 11:08, 29 September 2011 (PDT)

Preview .MP3 sounds in Hammers "Sound Resource Browser"

The "Sound Resource Browser" can only "Preview" .WAV sounds and not .MP3 sounds.

A question about Models

Hi everyone. I'm not sure that I'm asking in a correct place, but me and my friend faced a problem while working with VHE. We don't know... well, how to explain that?

For example, I have a lot of different models (with extra materials) in different folders. Can I put all of these models in one folder without losing their materials? How to change the addresses installed in the model?

Hope for understanding and answers. Skimbleshanks 08:06, 28 November 2011 (PST)

Hammer's Broke

Can anyone help?

TF2 lockup

I can't believe this isn't here yet, as I've seen it on many a forum. When I run Source SDK and open Hammer for TF2, I get about 30 - 90 seconds of operation and then Hammer just locks up. This only happens to me for TF2. I've tried defragging, resetting, verifying the integrity of, deleting and reinstalling SDK, and still no change. Whether I'm creating a new map or editing an existing one, it's always the same. The only indicators I have of a problem before anything happens is this in the messages window:

hammererror.png

Article issue

So when I peek into the bin of Garry's Mod there is the Hammer editor, but the article states that Hammer editors are distributed with every Source engine game, except mods. I wonder if this is an issue with the mod or issue with the article. Unsigned comment added by ‎Evanultra01 (talkcontribs). Please use four tildes (~~~~) to sign your username.

Garry's Mod is, despite its name, a full game and not a mod. — Dr. Orange talk · contributions 19:48, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

More recent changes, hammer 5

There have definitley been some changes to hammer past 2005, the most recent I can think of is the ability to scale models in CSGO hammer. We should also add information on hammer 5, which is the source 2 tool.9yz (talk) 18:07, 31 March 2021 (PDT)