[TUTORIAL] TF2 and Steampipe: How to get mapping again

[Will T.]

As you know, Team Fortress 2 was recently moved over to the Steampipe content distribution system, which means that the files have been repackaged in a more efficient format and moved to a new folder in an effort to improve load times and make the game run smoother overall. So far, it seems to have succeeded at these things, but it has also had a nasty side effect: the tools within the Source SDK are no longer compatible with TF2. This includes the Hammer editor, meaning that mapping for the game is no longer possible.

Until now!

Sometime late yesterday, Valve created a new opt-in beta in Steam for TF2 which includes a "very early build" of a revised Hammer editor. It's virtually identical to the old one, except it works with the new Steampipe files. As it is at an early stage, however, there are a number of steps that one must take before it will work properly. I'll do my best to outline them here, but please note that there may be errors or unintentional omissions...

Note that you will still need the defunct Source SDK installed when following these steps, so don't uninstall it!

UPDATE 5/5: Added a new step between 4 and 5 which fixes Hammer being unable to edit displacement alphas.

STEP 1: Opt into the Beta

Right-click on TF2 in your Steam library and select Properties. From there, go to the Betas tab, and in the drop-down list select "sourcesdk_beta." TF2 should download a small update after you do this.

STEP 2: Set up the VPROJECT variable in Windows

Right-click on Computer in the Start menu (or My computer on slightly older Windows OSes) and go to Properties -> Advanced -> Environment Variables. Find the entry for VProject and change the path to your TF2 game directory (for example, [...]Steam/steamapps/common/Team Fortress 2/tf. This file is created by and used solely by the Source SDK, so as long as that's the only thing you touch, you aren't actually messing with anything your computer needs to run.

STEP 3: Editing Gameinfo.txt

Gameinfo.txt is a file in your TF2 directory (in the tf folder typically). You should see this near the top:

Code: Select all

	FileSystem
	{
		SteamAppId				440

Change it to match this:

Code: Select all

	FileSystem
	{
		SteamAppId				440
		ToolsAppID				211

Adding the ToolsAppID 211 line prevents certain critical crashes that otherwise render Hammer unusable.

STEP 4: Configuring Hammer

DON'T use the Source SDK frontend to open Hammer - it no longer works properly, no matter what you do with it. Instead, there should be a new version of Hammer located within your steamapps/common/Team Fortress 2/bin folder (or the bin folder wherever TF2 is installed at - NOT the bin folder within the Team Fortress 2/tf folder, but the one in the Team Fortress 2 folder itself), simply called hammer.exe.

Once in Hammer, go to Tools -> Options. In that window is a box with buttons that say Add, Edit, and Remove. This area is where you tell Hammer where to find the .FGDs for the game you're mapping for (TF2, obviously). The .FGD allows Hammer to find all the materials, props, and entities used by the game, and Hammer is quite useless without it. Even if there's already an entry there, it's probably best to remove it (I'll bet you can figure out how with the buttons there ) and re-add it. For me, the .FGDs I needed were located at steamapps/[username]/sourcesdk/bin/orangebox/bin. I loaded in tf.fgd and base.fgd. If you have the Ultimate Mapping Resource Pack from TF2Maps.net (I highly recommend this package as it includes a ton of resources that make TF2 mapping infinitely easier, including game mode prefabs, an easy-access prop library, pre-built doors and complex Payload track segmenits, and in-editor icons for a number of entities that otherwise render as gray cubes), you will also want to load in tf-abs.fgd. Otherwise, the other two files are all you should need as far as I know.

STEP 5: Re-add the displacement-painting brushes

Find the folder steamapps/[username]/sourcesdk/bin/orangebox/bin/filters, and copy the folder itself (not just the files inside it) to steamapps/common/Team Fortress 2/bin. This will fix Hammer being unable to edit the alphas on displacements. (Displacement alpha painting allows for the fancy blending of textures, as well as the 3D-looking detail elements that appear on the ground in certain maps, such as the flowers and tufts of grass in alpine maps.)

STEP 6: Restart Hammer and test things out

Restart Hammer so that it will load up those .FGDs, and then check to make sure that things are running properly. As best I can remember, these were all of the steps I had to take to get Hammer back up and running. Hopefully I didn't miss anything - please let me know if something is wrong when you follow these steps!

Common Problems

There are a few issues that may/will come up when doing this. Here are some of the ones I encountered and was able to fix:

"The default scheme file could not be loaded."

This is the most common error that pops up when doing this. If it crashes Hammer, chances are something down the line wasn't configured properly - the most likely culprit is step 3. If it doesn't crash Hammer, keep going and see if things still work, because there's a chance that it isn't worth worrying about if Hammer is still running.

Models and/or entities show up as yellow circles that say "Obsolete" beneath them

Your .FGDs aren't loaded properly. Re-check step 4 to find where the error lies. Maybe you didn't delete the original .FGD entry that was there when Hammer was opened?

Models show up as giant red "ERROR" letters, and textures are just varying shades of solid gray/white

This happened to me whenever I tried to run Hammer through the Source SDK frontend. Use only the .EXE in the Team Fortress 2/bin folder - the old one that the SDK runs is kaput.

Models in the 2D view have the purple-and-black checkerboard texture on them

This is a known bug in the new Hammer. All we can do right now is live with it. It's annoying, but it doesn't affect the program's functionality in any way, so it's best simply to ignore it.

Maps do not compile properly, despite no errors made when building the map

First, make sure that it really isn't an error in your map itself. If that still doesn't work, there have been reports that the new versions of VBSP, VVIS, and VRAD, the Source compiling trio, flat-out don't work properly. Unfortunately I have no idea how to fix this as I found them to work fine once Hammer was all configured. Sorry I can't really be of help on this one if it's affecting you...

Sources

A lot of this info comes from this Github posting and this thread on TF2Maps.net. Neither of them had a step-by-step tutorial like this one though!


I hope this could help someone out. Valve seems to be on the case with their broken modding tools, and this is a big step towards a properly-working TF2 Steampipe SDK. Happy mapping!

[Daryldime]

Sweet. I have been meaning to start work on a pl map for months.... mayhaps I will....

[NerevarineKing]

I've always wanted to take another shot at mapping. Maybe I'll give it another go sometime soon....

[Checkm8]

I am not into mapping. But, I would think situations like this what have been more thoroughly thought through when updating to make it less complicated for their primary users. I like the gameplay aspects but there have been some simple silly things I thought they'd have worked out. Oh well.

Thanks for sharing, Will!

[Will T.]

I found a couple of additional bugs while toying with Hammer today that are good to be aware of:

Textures sometimes fail to render in the texture browser, and instead show up as black spaces.

This seems to happen after Hammer has been running for a while. Restarting the program seems to fix it. Probably the result of a memory leak or similar problem.

Displacements cannot have their alphas painted.

This one is potentially crippling from a detailing standpoint, as it means that blend textures are currently unusable. (Blend textures are the textures that allow for the apparent mixing of two textures, such as dirt and grass, as well as the addition of detail sprites, such as the pseudo-3D flowers and tufts of grass seen on some alpine maps.) The tool for painting displacement alphas is accessible, but doesn't seem to do anything. Existing displacement alphas still show up, but they cannot currently be altered. Hopefully Valve fixes this one pretty soon. Displacements themselves can have their elevations altered as usual, so you can still build your world completely from a geometry standpoint - it is only the alpha painter that is busted.

EDIT: Good news - the alpha-painting problem is fixable! What you have to do is:

-Find the folder steamapps/[username]/sourcesdk/bin/orangebox/bin/filters
-Copy that folder to steamapps/common/Team Fortress 2/bin
-Restart Hammer if it's currently running

That should fix it! I'll add this info to the OP as well.

[Will T.]

With one of the recent TF2 updates, Valve rendered the new Hammer beta totally unusable. Any maps compiled with it look like this:



There is a workaround using the old SDK, which can be found here. (For this one you will use the old Source SDK frontend - NOT the beta included in the TF2 files!)