Forum posts

Stu: Looks like your graphics card might not support OpenGL 3.3, what GPU are you using? Are you on a laptop? I might be able to downgrade the shader version with a few changes, I will need to investigate. The easiest fix is if it is possible for you to update your drivers to a version that supports OpenGL 3.3 which has been supported in drivers since about 2010.

Rim: Did you check that 'show 2D grid' was turned on? I don't have a Radeon graphics card to test, does anybody else with an ATI card have a missing grid?

To set up textures, open the game configuration, click the 'textures' tab, and add your WADs there. All the other missing features have been noted

Thanks Kraken. To move the 3D camera, hit Z to go into freelook mode and use WASD. I'll probably add in the other camera controls in the 3D views soon (left click = look, right click = move around, etc) so people who use those controls instead of free look can use controls they are comfortable with.

You do have to press enter to create a brush and select objects with a box, that's the same as Hammer's default settings. I know Hammer has an option to automatically select as soon as you draw the box, but I don't know if it works for brush creation as well. I will investigate how that setting works and see how I can implement it in Sledge

Labels in the corners can be done, however I will add them later as rendering text is a whole big problem that I have managed to avoid so far

As I get suggestions and bugs I'm adding them all into the GitHub issues register so I can keep track of them. Keep the bug/missing feature reports and feature suggestions coming everyone! I have just finished implementing autosave for the next release, so look forward to that coming soon

Stu: Yes. Every release also has a standalone zip for those who don't want an installer. Download the latest version from the GitHub release page.

Hey all, I've fixed most of the bugs and missing features that you guys have reported. Just start the app and it should ask you to do an update. If the updater screws up just download the installer from the website and reinstall. Let me know how you go!

Change list:

• Space+mouse drag movement in 2D views
• Drag-scrolling in 2D views
• Fixed some errors in the settings form when there are no builds set up. Fixes #4, fixes #5
• Set parent properly when creating a brush group. Fixes #15.
• Torus tool was generating invalid solids. Fixes #7.
• Only clip valid solids. Fixes #6.
• Include manifest file to request admin access on start. Fixes #3.
• Wire up steam game directory browse button in settings form
• Added more hotkeys

Thanks for reposting that Archie, I hadn't forgotten about it but this is a good reminder and I'll post it to the GitHub issues list as a feature request. The question is, where to put it on the Sledge texture dialog? I might need to add some tabs...

Edit: Requests added!
https://github.com/LogicAndTrick/sledge/issues/8
https://github.com/LogicAndTrick/sledge/issues/9

Edit 2.0: Been working on fixes, but now it's time for bed. I'll put an update out tomorrow that should stop those errors in the settings window, plus add spacebar+drag movement and drag-scrolling into the 2D window.

@Stojke: Could you please clarify this bug? I'm not sure what it means: "Once an object is out of the 2D screen view it can not be selected."

Atom, that's cool but if you do want to release it publicly but Sledge is using a GPL license so if you do provide me any code I will only be able to use it in Sledge if you give it a compatible license

@Stojke: C# is good for Windows stuff, and with Mono I hear it works pretty well for Linux/Mac as well. I haven't tried Mono yet but ideally in the future Sledge might work with it. I wonder how platform-independent the compile tools are, would be neat to do GS mapping on a Unix platform

Atom: Thanks. All my 3D knowledge is self taught, but most of the stuff I learned the hard way through trial and error and a lot of Googling

Is it possible that you could release your C# version of Compilator under a GPL compatible license when you get around to doing it? I think that I could merge it into Sledge's code base, it would save me a lot of work Regardless of what you plan on doing, hit me up if you have any questions about C# or Sledge's programming. I would love if you wanted to contribute to the Sledge code base!

If you're interested maybe we could integrate all or part of The Compilator into the Sledge repo and offer it as part of the package? Only if you're interested of course, I will get around to implementing that kind of thing myself otherwise. I'm focusing on other stuff atm because good compilation programs like The Compilator already exist

Thanks guys, I wasn't aware of the space movement in the 2D views. I'll work on that plus the missing hotkeys and the errors in the next update

Stojke: Extra file formats are very possible. The code is very flexible in that area
For the delete key not working: I've gotten that before, the hotkeys seem to stop working sometimes. Close and re-open the map, that usually fixes it.

CapT: Due to my incompetence in the graphics department, Strider is making some nice icons for me. He's the one who made the fancy tool icons on the left. Hopefully he will make me a nice desktop icon too

Ok, looks like running as administrator is the work-around for now. I will work on trying to get it to prompt for the proper credentials so it works nice with UAC.

@Scotch: Well, right now, only a few things like:

• Multiple visgroups and automatic visgroups (from Hammer 4)
• 3D clipping (instead of just drawing a line in 2D)
• Better decimal point / floating point handling (think HLFix or the various hammer patches for this)
• Native support for big maps (use the source min/max commands in your FGD)
• Renders textured decals in the 3D view
• Various UI improvements in places

You can see the features that need to be added before it's out of alpha, some of these are not in Hammer 3:

• Good compile support (full batch compiler UI)
• Autosaves
• Works nice with Steam
• Automatic configuration (looks in the registry and Steam for game configs)
• Transparent rendering of tool brushes (trigger, clip, etc)

Once out of alpha I'm looking at adding the following:

• Native displacements that compile down to brushwork (say goodbye to triangle terrain)
• Native instances that compile down to brushwork (for those unfamiliar, think prefabs that reference an external map. Update the map, and all instances are updated)
• Plugin support (e.g. built in Twister, add your own features)
• Collaborative mapping over network/Internet
• Built-in support for version control like SVN/Git/etc and maybe synchronisation of files using dropbox/etc
• Tools for creation of models, textures, etc without needing to leave the editor

Those are just some ideas, there are plenty more possibilities. Goldsource (and eventually Source) will always be first-class citizens, I wont ditch improvements for Goldsource once Source support is added.

Rim: How far does it get before it crashes? Do you get any sort of crash information after the crash or in your Windows event log? Can you try running it as admin to see if that's the cause?

I'm very pleased to announce that Sledge, my open source alternative to Hammer 3.5, is now available as an alpha build! Download here. (Requires .NET 4.0, download here)

I've been working on this project on and off for about 5 years now - some of you might remember my journal about Thor, which I had to abandon due to an unstable code base. I started work on Sledge about 2 years ago, and it only contains very small portions of the original Thor code.

The current Sledge release is an alpha release, which means that there are still some key features that need to be added and the features that are there may be unstable at times. However I think that right now it's at a point where people can start trying it out to see what they think (and hopefully report some bugs! ).

Alpha means stuff is missing. The important missing things are:

• Support for opening multiple maps at once
• Advanced compile options (I recommend you use a batch compiler for now, current compiling support is very primitive)
• Rendering models
• Autosaving
• Prefabs
• Cameras
• Automatic detection of game configurations (for now, configure it manually like Hammer 3.5)
• Transparent tool brush rendering (think trigger brushes in Hammer 4)

Once the missing features are added, then I will start on Source support for version 2. Right now, it only works with Goldsource.

A few screenshots:I'd love to hear your thoughts on the program and if you do try it out, please submit bug reports! When you find a bug (there are plenty), let me know by posting it here, or if you have a GitHub account, you can register an issue on the Sledge repository. And if you get the error reporting window, please click the submit button so I can see those bugs as well

That download link again is: sledge-editor.com.

Please turn on anti-aliasing, Dimbark.

After several countries had been established, a group of enterprising citizens of Archaean went exploring to the much larger continent to their south. After finding it completely uninhabited, they quickly discovered a large, rich seam of Unobtainium running through the middle of the continent. After getting support from wealthy businessmen from around the world, they claimed the land around the ore seam and starting mining. They called their claim "Synergy", because one of the investors thought it sounded cool. The factory-country generates 500M T of toxic waste, 2000M BCM of mining waste, 1000M T of refined ore, and $600B in revenue each year. Some people think what they're doing is wrong, and against the spirit of establishing a country. The executive managers of Synergy call those people idiots. Also their flag is a swallowtail because market research shows that quadrilaterals are for chumps!

Perhaps, but those are relatively small steps in technology improvement and aren't really worth remembering. They're incremental additions to the engine that is actually worth noting: Quake. Outside of niche communities like TWHL, Goldsource is already forgotten, and many gamers these days wouldn't even be aware of its existence.

Quake and Unreal are probably the only 3D engines worth mentioning on the subject.

Half life engine will always be remembered as one of the turning stones in gaming history.

It really won't. Half-life is notable for the game, not the engine. The Quake engine, on the other hand...

It's not dead.

Wow that's an awesome shelf zeeba. Nice work!

TF2 and some of the other multiplayer games have a hammer.bat file in the common[game]/bin folder which launches Hammer without needing the SDK, any luck for the EP2 folders? I haven't converted yet so I can't check. The TF2 Hammer actually asks for a game profile on startup, maybe try selecting EP2 from the list in the TF2 Hammer? Might not work though.

They're phasing out the Source SDK launcher because of all the issues with it. Check out the news post: http://store.steampowered.com/news/10962/

Alright, I'm in. Enjoy buying lunch with my money
Congrats on your successful Kickstarter, I bet you're all super happy with the result. I'm looking forward to playing the final version. Looks like it'll be good fun.

I meant the concept of dismissing something scientific because "it's only a theory". However I noticed that you were correcting somebody else, so never mind.

Don Punch: Please stop spreading that ridiculous concept. The scientific definition of Theory is very different to the word you're thinking of. Wikipedia puts it very well:

Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge. This is significantly different from the word "theory" in common usage, which implies that something is unsubstantiated or speculative.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory

Uhh... do you mind keeping the discussions PG rated please?

In six months you will look at that screenshot and hate it
That's just the way it works - you keep improving and your older work doesn't, so when you look back, everything you do looks bad! Happens with the code I write all the time.

Not bad though! I would definitely recommend some trims between texture transitions - the floor change is sudden and unnatural, the corners where the walls meet the floor look very plain, the top of the entryway as well.

Hammer uses floating point types for coordinates, this includes the points used to define planes. The "rotation around the origin" algorithm uses the sine and cosine functions (which often depend on PI and are fractional) as well as translation to the zero coordinate before the rotation is performed. (This can also be done with matrix operations which is similar, but can be done in one operation instead of three.)

Because the floating point data type has unavoidable rounding issues that accumulate over time, each operation adds tiny variations to the final value that make the value wander a little bit each time the value changes. This can often be avoided by adding some rounding to the values every time the value changes, however I don't think Hammer does this.

In your example above, the transformation that's applied makes some of the the vertex values change just enough to show in the VMF, but only by 0.00000559506. Which obviously isn't much, and will probably round to zero when you compile. When saving the VMF, Hammer just uses the first three points in the face to define the plane and it applies no rounding, which is why you see the rounding errors appearing in the VMF.

I would suspect that Hammer might do a bit of rounding when loading VMFs, because the only way to reconstitute a solid when loading a VMF is to perform the plane intersection algorithm which introduces a whole bunch of floating point rounding issues by itself.

I don't know the exact behaviour of Hammer in regards to rounding, but some interesting experiments you might want to try include:
1. Try Tetsuo's snapping to grid method (however I believe that this snaps on the brush level rather than the vertex level, which means it might not change the plane values)
2. Open your second VMF with the tiny rounding issues, resave it as a new VMF, and compare the two (to see if any rounding values change when the plane intersection is done)
3. Move only one vertex in the cube a bit to force it back on the grid (if Hammer does absolutely no rounding at all this would create an invalid solid as one point in the quad is ever-so-slightly off-grid) and do a "check for problems"
4. Save the map from test 3 to a new VMF and compare it to the original

And so on. Rounding in general is much better in Hammer 4 - if I recall, it was much more of an issue in Hammer 3 (which is why HLfix exists).

That's cool if you want to stick with it, but remember that there's a 90% chance that you will be using a mini-mod format anyway, meaning that using SOHL is no issue. It's just a simple dll that you include in the mod, not a separate install or anything like that. As far as I know, the only difference is that you just need that one dll file in the mod's folder structure and one line in the liblist.gam file.

@CapT: It sounds like Moaby did, but he might have had another reason. I can understand the whole GS vs Source thing, because they are quite different. I can see both sides of that argument.

What do you really expect the mods to do? This is a project initiated by the community, none of us are about to barge in and steal the thunder. If you want somebody to tell you which mod to use, I can do that:

Vanilla.
There's no reason to go SOHL.
Not everyone has it, not everyone has mapped for it.
Let's keep things simple.

Quite the opposite, actually: there's not really any reason NOT to go SOHL, because it should be entirely backwards compatible. If you want to use vanilla, go ahead and use it, and it'll work fine in any SOHL mod. Seems pretty simple to me.

So your answer is:
1. Decide on a SOHL version (say, 1.8)
2. Everybody either uses that version of SOHL or regular old vanilla HL
3. Get somebody who doesn't hate SOHL and is willing to take 5 minutes to create a mod folder and Hammer config to package the mod and do the final compiles.

Of course this isn't my project so feel free to disregard this and go back to arguing over which is better. I know Hammer configs are a bit annoying but surely it's not so bad as to hate SOHL just for that. And on the other hand, it seems pretty childish to insist on SOHL for one or two tiny little effects, and then quit if you don't get your way.

Yeah, sounds like you just need a basic guideline for size and shape. Something like:

One floor per map
4096 x 4096 box centered on the origin
No more than 512 units high
Allow a 256 x 256 space on the east and west sides for an elevator construct

Or someone could make a template and you could use that. Either way at the end somebody will need to connect them all together with changelevels.

It's definitely worth watching the other Ghibli films, then, TJB. Howl's Moving Castle, My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, and the various others are all worth your time.

I haven't seen a lot of other standalone anime films (ones that aren't associated with a series), does anybody have any more recommendations?

Heh, the hard mission I'm talking about is against the great big tank in the desert. I failed twice because I didn't know what I would need until I did it. I got almost all the way through last time, so hopefully the next time I try I can beat it

I've been playing Valkyria Chronicles, which is a turn-based strategy game on the PS3. It's quite good, though I've just reached a mission that is very frustrating because it just ramped up the difficulty a whole lot.
I also started playing Fire Emblem on the 3DS, which is another turn based strategy game. I've been replaying Golden Sun, so I'm alternating between the two on my train rides to work.

There were submissions, but unfortunately Grim has been very busy with work and hasn't had time to do the judging yet. He'll get to them as soon as he can.

Exactly. Most maps just use the content from the game and include a couple of custom-made textures and models. Packed BSPs only include custom content that doesn't already exist in the game.

That section you copied is specifically talking about using the gameinfo.txt system to play content from other games that the player owns on steam. That should be okay, but it is pretty clearly stated that you need to be using Steam's content loading system to ensure that you're using content that the user has the appropriate access to. That is: if you don't own CSS, none of the CSS content will appear.

Ignoring the fact that the VDC is user-generated content and is by no means approval from Valve, the section directly after yours forbids extracting content from a game and redistributing it.

"Note:If you are thinking of extracting content from a GCF and distributing it yourself, see the next section."

...

"Simply don't do it without a proper permission.

The copyright discussion above is just as much in effect with commercial games, and you are also under an End User License Agreement(EULA). EULAs usually forbid decompiling/modifying/re-distributing the game's content."

Valve's EULA is no different. Redistributing copyrighted content without proper permission is piracy.

Hmm, I haven't seen anything along those lines. Can you give me a link to that?

Copyright is a serious issue and is not to be taken lightly. We don't support piracy at TWHL.

Err, so I should cancel the elaborate April Fool's event I had scheduled for TWHL?

I tried the demo for Monster Hunter 3DS, and I really didn't like it. I guess it's just not the type of game for me.

On the other hand, Fire Emblem comes out in Australia in a few weeks and I think that'll be a massive time sink

You're more tolerant than I am, I would have just called him a jerk

You don't wanna see those photos. They're too blurry

Exactly. We have plenty of storage capacity, I just need to work out a way to do it properly.

In the near future I will be setting up a proper backup of map files. I already have database backups, but didn't think to back up the maps as well.

I have a similar setup CapT, but for the low-priority sites I tend to use a pattern based on the site name so it's not exactly the same. It's still not all that secure, but at least it's safer against automated tools.

No, if I knew about it then it wouldn't have been there. The code is a mess, so it's not surprising that there were a few holes. I should have thrown it all away ages ago, but I just haven't had the time to do a rewrite.

There are certainly better ways it could have been done, but as far as I'm concerned this was almost the best outcome. We fixed a major security hole while only suffering a small amount of damage. If the hacker was malicious then we would have been in a lot deeper trouble. But yes, I would have been a whole lot happier if I was notified a bit more discreetly

I'll say again that using the same password in multiple places is a really bad idea and you should change them even if the site hadn't been hacked.

Yes, Maiku was the one who hacked the site, then he was nice enough to let me know what the exploit was, help me to get it fixed, and then test the fixes to make sure the security hole was properly patched. We're lucky that it wasn't somebody who wanted to do more damage, as they certainly could have caused a lot more havoc than what ended up happening.

CapT: I think you changed the location of the map download rather than the screenshot. If you try and download your map now, it goes to the screenshot hosted on imgur.

In the map page you get two inputs, the first one is for the map download (which supports links and uploads), the second one is for the screenshot (which only supports uploads).

No, once you change your password, the old one is no longer stored in the database.

Use this thread for discussion of the recent hack. See the news post on the front page:

I have some unfortunate news, TWHL was victim to an SQL injection attack yesterday which compromised the database. The attack was by a grey-hat hacker who is assisting us with plugging up the security holes. While we don't think data was stolen for malicious purposes, it's still quite possible that your TWHL password has been compromised.

If you're using the same password elsewhere, you should change it. I would recommend changing your TWHL password as well.

Some basic info on this:

• The attack was an SQL injection. Usually, these are prevented with proper database access code and paying careful attention to security. Unfortunately when the TWHL code was written, I wasn't so careful. Most queries are escaped properly, but a few were not.
• After the SQL injection was discovered, an unknown method was used to extract the database password from the mysql configuration data. I don't know how this was done. After the password was extracted, he gained full access to the database.
• Usually database passwords are encrypted in a way that cannot be reversed. TWHL was using a hashing method, but one that was cracked a long, long time ago. It's no longer secure and not much better than storing passwords in plain text. Because of this, you should consider your TWHL password to be compromised and if you use this password anywhere else, change it now.

How we are working to prevent this issue moving forward:

• We are working on plugging up the current security holes so that they are no longer a valid attack point. I've run through all the pages and fixed any issues I could find, however I'm still waiting on some extra tests to be done before I can give the all-clear.
• In the longer term, we'll be working on making the password storage secure to avoid this thing happening again. Migrating passwords like that isn't exactly easy, so please give us a few weeks to try and get a mechanism in place.
• We're also making an effort to stabilise the code base to prevent attacks like this from being possible in the future. This will take a while, so please be patient.

If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to ask and I will try to answer them as well as I can.

That's not a decal Stojke, that's a regular transparent texture. Decals are greyscale textures where white is transparent and black is opaque, and the greys in between represent the alpha channel. The final colour in the palette is the colour of the decal in-engine.

I checked out the code, and it looks like the 5-unit box is for testing against something else (my best guess would be perhaps decals showing on models), and then it sends the decal across to the engine regardless of whether that test succeeds or fails. So it looks like the engine itself determines what faces the decal is visible on. I'm going to stick with the 4-unit radius because that's how the engine is behaving in my tests.

@Daubster: Awesome, that makes a lot of sense, the engine behaviour does seem consistent with your explanation. I don't even know what Hammer is doing, but what the engine does is the important thing in the end. Is the decal code you mentioned available in the SDK? Can you point me to the file so I can take a look?

Edit: I tested this theory and it seems correct, except it looks to be an 8x8x8 box rather than a 10x10x10 one. This screenshot has a bunch of brushes with a decal applied to the bottom side of each brush. The decal is applied to the floor for the first three, but doesn't when the distance from the floor is >= 4, which suggests a bounding box of 8 units.