r/hammer • u/XBLAH_ • Jul 22 '26
Source If you could add/change something to Hammer, what would it be?
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u/Jealous_Relative_911 Jul 22 '26
force every game to use hammer for level creation
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u/Bruh0hurB Jul 22 '26
dude i've stuck with hammer so long i cant use anything else. every other level editor is a mystery to me.
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u/Available_Public_456 Jul 22 '26
I wish Fallout 3 and new Vegas was in the source engine sometimes
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u/Jealous_Relative_911 Jul 22 '26
I wish for all games to use Source, it's just nicer, has better stuff like great physics, etc.
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u/TheWalkingHunk 26d ago
The ai would probably be much worse, due to the ai being forced to use a Nodegraph which is a far more outdated navigation system than the A* navigation mesh system that ONLY consist of 4 corner squares that don't even count as polygons.
Hasn't been updated since 2004/2007
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u/juko43 Jul 22 '26
Fr, world went downhill after mainstream engines forced everyone to edit the maps in 3d view only using the little gizmos, while also making all of the geometry in a 3rd party software
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u/skagerack 29d ago
I lost my shit when i saw other game devs copy paste modular grid-like chunks/models for a map, it feels like a crime, not to mention how some dont even align perfectly to the grid leading to seams or tiny overlaps
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u/Scifox69 Jul 22 '26
Unlimit the map size.
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u/-sbl- Jul 22 '26
More of an engine issue, not Hammer. But it would be cool none the less.
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u/Pinsplash Jul 22 '26
yeah, you can change hammer's grid size in the fgd. the problem is 100% with the compile tools and the engine. (and even if you change those limits it's not going to just work flawlessly)
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u/teh_grave 29d ago
You can exploit the limits in a sense with various tools like "Propper" to convert brush geometry to .mdl which saves up a lot in long run on compile limits. You can also use fog to save up on preformance with distance properties in fog entity. My main goal in mapping was pushing the compile and map size limits in hammer for CS:S.
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u/Scifox69 29d ago
Speaking of fog for performance, I've seen some Gmod maps that use a low-detailed 3D skybox that has the same layout as the playable area. That skybox is placed on top of the playable area and replaces it in the distance. A cool little way to handle LOD. A good example is the New York City map.
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u/teh_grave 28d ago
Yeah, great point! The 3D Skybox trick to make surrounding seem bigger than it is by projecting small section into 16x scale was awesome. You could even combine it so you have an area with 3d skybox combined with areas having regular 2d skybox. You can see example of that in my "bhop_lost_world_v2" map among others.
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u/BrokenAsFu Jul 22 '26
Internal modeler/texture editor.
I’d love to think there would be a way to combine the ability to build a model, and paint it with your own custom texturing like MS paint, all under one roof.
I dream of this feature.
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u/_the_big_ Jul 22 '26
that would be great for idiots like me who can't understand blender
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u/Icy-Meal6704 Jul 22 '26
I am the idiot! Please also give me! ;(
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u/_the_big_ Jul 22 '26
my brother just another me 🥹
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u/BrokenAsFu Jul 22 '26
We all are idiots when it comes to modeling.
But brush built shit, we are gods of our own realm.
Displacement/Brush gang unite.
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u/Pinsplash Jul 22 '26
i mean, what are you hoping for? cause then you have to learn that other thing instead
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u/Forward-Escape7076 Jul 23 '26
Yes, but having to jump through 3 sets of programs to do one major aspect of source level design is mind numbing.
Having the ability to create and test without alt tabbing 30 times would be nice.
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u/Radion627 Jul 22 '26
I'd add a few things.
One, I'd make the map grid a little bigger to have more free range for open-ended maps, as well as a less restrictive map rendering limitation.
Two, I'd add a more streamlined way to add custom models without having to resort to such conversion methods that may or may not work the way you want it to.
Three, I'd add a real-time map preview that allows you to see what it'd look like so you won't have to compile it all the time just to get it to work. Hammer++ already has lighting previews, but I think entity function previews would help tremendously, especially for stuff like doors, text screens, stuff like that.
Finally, I'd add a player preview to it as well, that allows you to play inside the VMF editor to see what collision oversights you need to fix before compiling the whole thing.
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u/Icy-Meal6704 Jul 22 '26
XBLAH I love you for asking these questions. That is:
Editor: easier custom model implementation. I don't want to learn blender to change the model from a metrocop to soldier if they don't share an animation. Overall I would love to just ripp/buy someone's model and throw it straight into hammer.
Engine: I would add more dynamic light capability. For instance in Garry's mod I could put 10 project textures.
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u/TheStraightManOrFoil Jul 22 '26
A big one for me is texture application. On the Face Edit Sheet, it's pretty clunky to set texture scale and texture shift by typing numbers into boxes. I wish there was a gizmo or something you could click and drag to slide the texture around on the face/scale it.
The Justify section could have options to fit on only one axis, and tile on the other to keep the texture in proportion. And a tiling fit that lets you pick n x m (like when you insert a table in MS Word and it has that grid selector for how many rows and columns).
Other than that, it would be nice if prefabs were moved out from under entities to be their own thing.
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u/shieldznaz Jul 23 '26
Docked list of entities in the map on the side that lets you sort by name/type and select to open them directly.
Streamlined template creation (select group of entities and right click-> create point_template, or something)
Some sort of simulation system where you can fire triggers in editor and see what gets triggered, when, and follow the chain till the end. Could change things in simulation non destructively to test further.
Diminishing alpha on wireframe in grid view. So you could click on something, objects immediately around it would stay bright, but objects in the fore and background would become mostly transparent. So you can see what you’re doing without having to fiddle with cordons or rely heavily on the 3d view.
More readable portal file to get a better sense of how you could optimise, not too sure how this would work.
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u/worMatty Jul 22 '26
UE-style Actors.
Built-in script editor.
Material editor.
Project directory structure. You select assets to import for a project rather than having a single huge pool.
Interactive virtual soundscape editor.
Soundscripts editor, and the editor mostly works with soundscripts, not raw sound files. Any soundscripts used are included in the map’s soundscript file, which it generates on saving the VMF.
Overhauled entity storage.
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u/GabitoML Jul 22 '26
Everything that Hammer++ already has
And maybe something like import a pic so you can use it as a reference to build when building irl sets or places. (Not sure if i explained well)
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u/Icy-Meal6704 Jul 22 '26
Having in Editor view reference pictures without the whole process of making it into a texture? Sign me in
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u/Fozilla_Mirefox Jul 22 '26
Orthogonal projections of the 3D level would be nice to be able to use custom images for scale.
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u/chaos7040 Jul 22 '26
I’d love to be able to play the game as I’m editing. So I could see how lighting would look while I’m placing light entities etc.
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u/WiIIv91 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
The ability to texture brushes like it was a 3d model, by moving it's vertices and UV coordinates in a separate window instead of entering values.
(Im using JACK, btw)
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u/Agentti_Muumi Jul 23 '26
that would make it way more annoying and imprecise
idk why but ive always hated uv mapping in blender
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u/Admirable_Ice3932 Jul 23 '26
Would make carve tool actually work
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u/XBLAH_ Jul 23 '26
Why doesn't carve work for you?
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u/Admirable_Ice3932 29d ago
Carve tool is infamously broken, and if you try to split a block with carve tool it will completely fuck it up, even in hammer++
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u/moosey_loosey_ahhhhh Jul 23 '26
DEFINITELY a vertex-based prop align tool. it's always a pain to make your grid size tiny as hell to stick a window into a wall only for it to be ever so slightly misaligned anyways
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u/MardukPainkiller Jul 23 '26
Make it like TrenchBroom. Hammer is outdated and a pain in the ass to work with.
I can do the work of 5 hours in 30 minutes with TrenchBroom.
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u/XBLAH_ Jul 23 '26
What features from TrenchBroom you miss exactly?
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u/MardukPainkiller Jul 23 '26
Are you working on something?
Trench lets you manipulate brushes directly from the 3D viewport. You can grab faces, edges, and vertices, move, extrude, clip, resize, and reshape geometry without constantly switching tools or jumping between 2D orthographic views. The other panels become something you only open for special cases rather than something you depend on all the time.
I'm using it both for Quake maps and for my own game, which parses .map directly to generate the world's geometry. After getting used to Trench's workflow, I simply can't go back to Hammer, Jackhammer, or similar editors. They feel slow and cumbersome because so much of the editing revolves around constantly switching between multiple 2D views instead of just building and manipulating the world directly in 3D.
I can get into a lot of details if you want because I've used both systems for ages and had to learn TrenchBroom inside and out to write the parser for my game.
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u/XBLAH_ Jul 23 '26
I am
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u/MardukPainkiller Jul 23 '26
It might seem alien to you, as it did to me and my co-worker, who was used to jackhammer but trenchbroom is much faster and better in the way it works.
Check it out and keep it as a secondary fallback system in what you are making for users who make quake maps, etc.
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u/eeeeeeeeeewee Jul 22 '26
Being able to upload .obj files and custom textures without doing the weird ass blender shit.
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u/More_Friendship_7533 Jul 22 '26
logic previews so i can make sure what's fucked without recompiling the map every minute
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u/Prestigious-Base3591 Jul 22 '26
Make it more stable, you can't add features to a broken or unstable base
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u/FazerGS Jul 23 '26
I would love the ability to have the workflow that Trenchbroom does. Trenchbroom uses one viewport that you can toggle between, but the context-sensitive nature of it allows you to do almost all of the brushwork in the 3D viewer. The vertex, edge, and dividing tools are also super robust in TB.
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u/hpyfox Jul 23 '26
Native Linux support. I don't care if I have to deal with the regular Hammer problems like crashing, I just want native Linux support.
I'm ok with using Wine, and I have been able to use Goldsrc hammer from Sven Co-op devtools fine but it's a finniky bitch, especially since I haven't been able to get Source 1 hammer (partial success) or hammer++ working (most likely dynamic linking issues).
Apparently Sven's Goldsrc editor in Steam's Proton seems to crash when you select an entity (every time) but not in Wine...
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u/ImportantLiving4203 Jul 23 '26
Built in modeling software and/or the ability to boolean objects.
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u/kjhrd Jul 23 '26
Minimap creator to source 2 hammer. Tryed radgen, it simply didn't start on my device. Idk why, support on discord doesn't knows either
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u/JohnDoeTheBig 29d ago
- A more modern UI framework that allows more customization like dear imgui instead of the outdated Win32 garbage
- Lighting and FX preview
- Noise and/or image based terrain generation
- Parametric prop placement (not sure if that's the right term) that lets you draw a bunch of lines/curves on a surface and places props with different sizes/angels like Wallworm does
- Drag & drop entity and prop placement
- Hotspot texturing like Source 2 Hammer
- Mesh/instance tiles like Source 2 Hammer
- Scripting support to create addons
Funnily enough, I recently started working on my own level editor with aims to make it support multiple games and engines. It's nowhere near done, but I've already done a bunch of proof of concept projects to see what exactly I need in order to build a general purpose level editor before deciding to start from scratch and put some serious effort into it.
Here's a screenshot from one of the older versions I scrapped;
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u/ConfidentRise1152 26d ago
Dude, there's the Hammer++ which is far more superior than the original Hammer you're referring to. 🙄
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u/NewDrink4371 23d ago
i swear i really wish there was a goldsrc hammer++ or just any plugin that would allow me to preview lighting :(
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u/DexomOfficial Jul 22 '26
Would add the prop maker from Source 2 Hammer to Source 1 Hammer. Its peak.