Speculation On New Hl2 Valve Hammer

blue2k · May 2003

<div class="IPBDescription">see above</div> ok looking at the newly released hl2 screenies today i came across a couple of shots of the new valve hammer for hl2. it seems from these early screenies that the old .rmf format is gone and is replaced with a new .vmf format (valve map format) the editor is basically the old hammer/worldcraft in appearance all the regular options appear to be there except a couple of new ones. there is an animation window (for viewing model anims in editor?) there are options after the cordon tool which look like advanced geometry tools. and there appears to be a new grouping panel that has new options of "groups","objects" and "solids".

there are reports of a realtime "ineditor" render of level lighting so no more compiling to see if your lightmaps look ok (similar to unrealed2) and the levels are initially made using a variety of same colour orange textures with no noticiable difference except they contain a small amount of text in the corner denoting the name of the texture that it will be later replaced with (eg : rail 32) why orange though? i assume it is because orange seems to display lighting falloff's better than any other colour in editor.

there also appears to be named sections in each of the 2d windows (like the helpers in 3dsmax) denoting various sections of the wireframe map view and the names of the enitys eg: info_node. selected objects appear to have a scale and rotation gimbal (like 3dsmax) too.

if anybody has any more speculative info please post here as i assume other mappers are also curious as to the latent capabilitys of the new hl2 hammer editor.

here are the screencaps i have to show you incase i missed anything.

<a href='http://www.blue2k.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/images/Halflife04.jpg' target='_blank'>http://www.blue2k.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ima.../Halflife04.jpg</a>
<a href='http://www.blue2k.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/images/Halflife05.jpg' target='_blank'>http://www.blue2k.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ima.../Halflife05.jpg</a>

crode · May 2003

From what ive read, a lot of the engine is based off of XSI www.softimage.com so i hope they allow mapping in XSI too. XSI also has a free copy that has watermarks on the renders.

Sandrock · May 2003

I'm not too sure the animation toolbox is necessarily for viewing model animation. Notice the "Create Keyframe" button. I'm thinking its more for making scripted sequences and the like...

blue2k · May 2003

originally posted by crode

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>From what ive read, a lot of the engine is based off of XSI www.softimage.com so i hope they allow mapping in XSI too. XSI also has a free copy that has watermarks on the renders. </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>

i know that valved switched from using 3dsmax to softimage but it was for making model content i belive, i know you can map in 3dsmax for hl1 but im not sure if valve will release a hl2 xsi map exporter. im assuming they will want you to use the new hl2 hammer for that.

originally posted by Sandrocky

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>I'm not too sure the animation toolbox is necessarily for viewing model animation. Notice the "Create Keyframe" button. I'm thinking its more for making scripted sequences and the like... </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>

well as far as valve has revealed there will be <b>no</b> scripted sequences in the entire game. this is probably due to the havoc code they incorporated into the new build of the source engine. havoc is a physics engine used by a lot of games. valve have tweaked the AI considerably to achieve a near autonamous level of interaction with the player (from monsters other AI's ect) according to the press. maybe the animation button is for the vehicles or machinery that performs a specific function or follows a specfic path in map, or maybe its just a way to animate any world object into performing a desired motion like the path of an exploding barrel.

wrongwaygoback · May 2003

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>well as far as valve has revealed there will be no scripted sequences in the entire game.</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>

I'm not that's quite right. There will be no cutscenes, there will be scripted sequences that you can "esc" to skip, though whether you will want to will be another story.

blue2k · May 2003

in hl1 the cutscenes were merely scripted sequences not the cgi we've all become acustomed too. but whether they have included true scripted sequences in hl2 remains yet to be seen, but i hope they do add some as the intro map (on a train) was pretty cool (when i first played the game) it gave a real sense of scale ingame and immediately made the game appear more interesting (for me anyway)

ive been thinking what that animation/keyframe button is for and it may be to give gentle animation to various map objects (ive heard that powerlines and such sway in a virtual wind) so maybe its for that? or as ive recently found out, the new version of hammer doesnt just make maps <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'>

ChromeAngel · May 2003

On the object properties window you can see each object has a tab for input and outputs. It looks like each object will be able to trigger a particular input of another object when a specific event happens to it. This would be much more powerfull than the current 1 target, 1 targetname system.

blue2k · May 2003

surely hl2 version of valve hammer will rox0r big the possibilities (even if half the rumours are true) are practically endless. to finally have maps with a rendered background level of detail.

NerdIII · May 2003

Yeah, new trigger-system! Looks like future map-designers could benefit from some courses in technical informatics <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'>
Will they include AND, OR & INV gates as well? Me wants to have full boolean algebra in HL2!!
Would be so cool to have any combination of events trigger something else. Like: Have at least two generators running to open the door or complex quests...

leifbj · May 2003

Did you see the displacement paint geometry? <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wow.gif'> Seems like a lot of cool new features. Can't wait for this editor. Half life 2 as well.

blue2k · May 2003

originally posted by NerdIII

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Would be so cool to have any combination of events trigger something else. Like: Have at least two generators running to open the door or complex quests... </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>

you can do that in the hl engine now.

Wolv · May 2003

Ah, more speculation of HL2 editing. There's a similare post at the <a href='http://forums.gamedesign.net/viewtopic.php?p=35787#35787' target='_blank'>Rust Forum</a>, containing some more speculations.

[edit]Here's a post at the <a href='http://collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?news=1052441121-23200400' target='_blank'>Valve-ERC</a> and <a href='http://www.joshbeeler.com/ramses/vhe2.html' target='_blank'>Ramses' Artwork-Archive</a>.[/edit]

blue2k · May 2003

yep and they all appeared after this thread started, its amazing how fast an idea can get around. but this is teh original thread.

Parasite · May 2003

<a href='http://www.hl2forums.com/index.php?act=ST&f=2&t=125' target='_blank'>Here are my concerns for HL2 mapping...</a>

My main concern is that it appears the we may still need to compile maps in the same way as we do right now, meanwhile nearly every other next-gen editor is set to be wysiwyg. I can deal with 2-3 minute compiles if this is the case, but I'd hate to think of re-compiling for several hours just to set an overlooked func_wall to 255.

As far as the new trigger system, from the looks of it, this will be awesome! Far more powerfull than what we have now...and I can only imagine we will have that level of control over every element in the new Hammer. Notice in one of those screenies they are manipulating geometry with another brush, like Ive seen from many terrain editors.

BTW...Why does the flashlight still look that bad?

Asraniel · May 2003

well... perhaps HL2 looks so good because we need to compile.. all other engines do that on the fly, wich takes CPU power.....

im looking forward for a new zhlt .. ;-)

NecromanZer · May 2003

THe animation bar is interesting.. the keyframe idea is good, as a mapper can have a boulder on a hill or something, set it's initial place, hit keyframe, move the boulder and hit keyframe again, and then the game will work out what happens in between.. interesting

Mendasp · May 2003

I don't really know, but using the same editor (an updated version of it) doesn't mean that we'll have to compile like we've been doing on the actual engine, or that we'll be using the .bsp format. We'll see.

I mean, if there is dynamic lighting (am I right?), then we don't need to pre-calculate it with RAD... :\

I'm just speculating, like everyone else... <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'>

Speculation On New Hl2 Valve Hammer

Comments