Hammer isn't detecting my modfolder Created 15 years ago2009-08-08 16:05:48 UTC by 23-down

Hi people.

I've got a huge problem.. And when I say huge I mean it. This is the 4th Hl site where I'm posting this problem. So far no one was able to help me or give me any recommendations. I hope you people here might be able to help me.

Please read the entire post. I will try to explain the problem as detailed as possible.

The problem is that I can't hear my own custom voices I recorded in Half-Life1 after I compiled my maps for testing.

I allready became help by a very experienced mapper called Neclipse author of Half-Life The Infected.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-infected

He checked all my things over crossloop (a program with that you can take access to another computer.)

He checked my sentences.txt within my modfolder - he checked my mapping preferences. He said everything is allright and those sounds should work. He also tested them on his own computer and they worked fine for him after compiling a test map.

I however found out that Hammer Editor is ignoring my modfolder in which is my custom sentences.txt and my custom wav files. Hammer or the compiled maps are allways looking for the sentences.txt in Pak0. Gearbox folder.
Do you have any idea how I can get Hammers attention for my modfolder only?

I extracted all files from pak0 gearbox folder into my modfolder and deleted the original pak0 file within the Gearbox folder. But it's still not working. Hammer or the map still try to gather access to pak0 in gearbox.

Is here any Geneius who might have some ideas for a possible solution?
The strange thing is that I linked Hammer to look into my modfolder. But it wont look in there or it's just ignoring my files I don't know. The file structure however is in the right format (It's the original pak0 just in open source format within the modfolder.

Please help me guys spell any ideas out you might get. I will try anything to get this working. Without custom sounds my mod will become very boring and I have to change the entire story I planed for it.

You can find my mod here:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/hl-opposing-force-firestorm

Greetings 23-down

Well first of all you dont need to extract the entire pak0 file into your mod folder in order to get custom sounds to work. The sounds other than the custom ones will just be called upon from the original valve (or gearbox if this is an op4 mod) folder.

I guess my suggestion would be to take a look at your mod set-up. Make sure the folders are arranged properly.

And get a 3rd party compiler. It'll make everything a shitton easier. Might i reccommend the compilator. It's made in-house by THE MIGHTY ATOM and i've been using it since it's debut.

Then you wont have to deal with hammers schenegans.

Just export to .map, load it up with the compilator, and have a go.

Thanks for your answer this compilator looks interesting I give it a try.

As for my folder everything was fine with them. After several weeks I fixed the problem that cost me so much brain damage.

Like I said i copied the entire pak0 file into my mod.. Then I just changed the Start parameter instead of -game gearbox I replaced it with -game Firestorm my modname.

My sounds are working now. It really was the case that Hammer ignored my modfolder. It's still strange normally Hammer should detect it automatically. Now I had to improvise to get it working and have every single monster in the mod which is taking a lot of space. Well at least it's working now but to a very high prize.

The mod is now 325mb huge. Any recommendations how I can still fix it on the normal way. I don't intent to have a mod with a bunch of crap that I don't need for it. As soon as I want to delete things I don't need like models for example I'm getting model errors.

The problem with the sounds was that they needed a custom sentences.txt but Hammer never looked into my sentences.txt it only looked into the pak0 sentences.txt in gearbox folder.

Yes, just delete all the redundant stuff that already comes with HL anyway.

It seems you might have some large misunderstandings about the way Hammer operates.

First of all, Hammer doesn't autodetect anything, especially not mod folders, so whatever it was doing, it was what you told it to do. Second of all, Hammer never looks for sentences.txt, that's not its job. Sentences.txt exists only to store the names and file locations of audio files so they can be quickly accessed by the game engine. When a character is told to speak something, the engine references sentences.txt so it immediately knows where to look. Hammer has nothing to do with this.

I'm also not entirely sure what you're trying to do with this mod. I sort of get the impression that this is an Opposing Force mod, but if you're simply trying to get Opposing Force content to work within Half-Life as a mod, that too is possible. For that though, you will require the entire contents of Opposing Force's PAK file to be extracted into your mod folder, because regular Half-Life doesn't contain that stuff. If it's just a mod for Opposing Force though, you won't need any of the redundant content you extracted from its PAK.

Oh, and by the way, if you permanently deleted your PAK file from the Gearbox folder, you're kinda screwed. That's the entirety of the game files right there.

Thank you for those detailed explanations..

But when you say it's for Op4 only and that was my target in the first place (without having to copy the pak0 files into my mod)

How do I link my sentences.txt to my mod without copying all the files?

I tried to run my mod first with the game parameter -game firestorm but then half-life gave me model errors. Because the Gearbox folder was now ignored logically.

That was the reason why I copied the entire pak contents after that into my mod.

It works now but my mod is too large. The only negativ thing about it so far.
But I would prefer my mod as a mappack for the gearbox folder directly.

Sentences.txt doesn't require any linking or anything of the sort, it just goes in the mod's base sound folder ("firestorm/sound" in your case) and therefore, while you are playing the mod, it overrides the sentences.txt that exists in the PAK file. The way the Goldsource engine handles mods, it looks to see if the files exist in the mod directory first, and if it can't find them there it uses the default ones in the main game folder ("gearbox" or "valve" depending on the game you're modding for.)

As far as gameplay goes, it won't make any difference if you copied all those files into your mod directory or not. That's why if they're the exact same files that came out of the PAK, they're just wasting space and can be deleted.

I think I know where your troubles might be coming from though. I noticed you're mentioning PAKs instead of GCFs. That means you're still using WON Half-Life and Opposing Force. Back then, if I'm not mistaken, Opposing Force was technically treated as a mod, and occuppied its own mod folder within the Half-Life folder. This would explain the problems you're having, because in this case you would need all those files from the Opposing Force PAK to get the mod to work (Half-Life wouldn't know where to look for the default Op4 files.) I suggest upgrading to Steam, because it handles these things much more intelligently with each expansion pack getting its own game folder. Then again, I could be totally wrong about this, since I've never used WON Opposing Force.

Srry is correct. Op4 was technically a WON mod. So my suggestion would to hit up steampowered.com, grab the steam install, get ur old WON cd key and re-download it. Then everything will be up to date and hopefully you can just do a drag/drop of your mod folder.

Thank you very much guys... With your help my mod is now a working mappack.. It seems that I used the wrong settings all the time when I tried it earlier.. The custom sounds are working..

Still as soon as my mod is finished I will release a stand alone version which requires only Hl1 and a Op4 mappack maybe not everyone has Opposing Force. I know at leat 2 people that don't own it. So everyone with Hl should be able to play it.

As for Steam I'm avoiding it. I remember me on a drama that accourt once. After a SDK update on steam many mods were screwed up. Don't want to risk something like that.

Ps: When I'm finished with the mod I will make it Steam compatible.

Thanks again.

That was probably the SDK update where they changed the app id that mods should use. That was a quick 2-character edit in a notepad file to fix. No big deal. And, that doesn't matter anyway because that concerns Source mods, not GS.

As for your "Op4 mappack", don't do that. Distributing content that you don't own (i.e. not made yourself) is illegal.

Hm I don't see a big problem here.

1. Opposing Force + Blue Shift are now free for all to get via Steam.

2. The mods Nuclear Winter & Under the Black Moon did the same.

And you still need Hl1 in both cases to play it after all it's not like I take the goldsource engine and use it to build my own game and then say I'm the creator of everything it's also impossible.

Op4 and BS are definitely not "free". You have to buy them just like any other game. Valve are selling content and you're giving it away for free? How is that not a problem? Also, just because other people did it doesn't mean that it's right.

Ah you're right I checked again.. Both games aren't free. They were just free for those who owns Half-Life Premier Pack, the Half-Life 2 Silver package, or the Half-Life 2 Gold package.

The only thing what was free for all is the High definition pack which features high def models for all 3 games.

which you can get here from Steam:

steam://installaddon/halflifehd

Well in this case you're right then. I still don't think that even if I would now release it as a stand alone mod for hl1 that I would getting into any trouble. Valve's modding support was allways great. Best example is the mod Svencoop. If it would be illegal in any way then mods like this one would have been stopped a long time ago.

As for gearbox they lost all rights for Opposing Force & Blue Shift valve is now the owner.