How to Create Amazing Maps with Valve Hammer Editor 4.3
What is Valve Hammer Editor?
Valve Hammer Editor, also known as Hammer, is the official mapping tool for the GoldSrc, Source and Source 2 engines, which are used by many popular games such as Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2. It allows you to create your own maps for these games using a graphical interface that lets you manipulate brushes, textures, entities, lighting and more.
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Hammer was originally developed by Ben Morris under the name Worldcraft, and was first released in 1996. It was later acquired by Valve Corporation, who renamed it to Valve Hammer Editor and updated it with new features and compatibility with their engines. The latest version of Hammer is 4.3, which was released in March 2015 by Yo Den based on CSM-Hammer, HLFX Hammer, VHE 3.5.2 etc .
Why use Valve Hammer Editor 4.3?
Valve Hammer Editor 4.3 is a powerful and versatile tool that lets you create your own maps for a variety of games that run on GoldSrc, Source or Source 2 engines. Some of the features and benefits of using this version are:
It has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to navigate and work with.
It supports multiple formats such as .rmf, .map, .vmf and .vmap.
It has a splitter view layout that preserves your preferences from session to session.
It has dialog bars that pop up when you hover over them with your mouse cursor.
It has a full textured preview that shows the textures properly aligned, rotated and scaled.
It has an apply textures mode that lets you select faces in the 3D view and edit their textures and offset/rotation/scaling information.
It has a vertex/face manipulation mode that lets you edit the shape of brushes in the 3D view.
It has a wide range of tools and commands for creating and manipulating brushes, such as carve, clip, hollow, flip, rotate, scale, shear etc.
It has a smart edit mode that shows you the keyvalues of entities based on their class.
It has a texture browser that lets you browse, filter and apply textures from various .wad files.
It has a texture lock option that keeps the texture alignment when you move or rotate brushes.
It has a texture application tool that lets you align textures on faces using various methods such as fit, face, world etc.
It has a lighting preview mode that lets you see how your map will look with different light settings.
It has a lightmap grid option that lets you adjust the resolution of lightmaps on faces.
It has a variety of entities and triggers that you can add to your map to create gameplay elements such as spawn points, weapons, items, doors, buttons, triggers etc.
It has an entity report tool that lets you see all the entities in your map and their properties.
It has an entity tool that lets you create custom entities using scripts or plugins.
It has a group tool that lets you group brushes or entities together for easier selection or manipulation.
It has a visgroup tool that lets you hide or show certain groups of objects in your map.
It has an undo/redo function that lets you revert or repeat your actions.
It has an autosave function that saves your work periodically.
It has a compile tool that lets you compile your map into a playable .bsp file using various compilers such as ZHLT or VHLT.
It has a run map tool that lets you launch your map in the game of your choice for testing.
How to download and install Valve Hammer Editor 4.3?
To download and install Valve Hammer Editor 4.3, you need to follow these steps:
Download the setup file from this link.
Run the setup file and follow the instructions on the screen.
Select the destination folder where you want to install the program.
Select the components that you want to install, such as shortcuts or documentation.
Click on Install to start the installation process.
Wait for the installation to finish.
How to configure Valve Hammer Editor 4.3?
To configure Valve Hammer Editor 4.3, you need to do these things:
Launch the program from your desktop or start menu shortcut.
Select Tools > Options from the menu bar or press F9 on your keyboard.
In the Options window, go to the Game Configurations tab.
Select Add from the Configuration drop-down menu.
Type in a name for your configuration (such as Half-Life or Counter-Strike) and click OK.
Select Browse from the Game Data files section and locate the .fgd file for your game (such as halflife.fgd or cstrike.fgd).
Select Browse from the Game Executable section and locate the .exe file for your game (such as hl.exe or cstrike.exe).
Select Browse from the Game Directory section and locate the folder where your game is installed (such as C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Half-Life or C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Counter-Strike).
Select Browse from the Mod Directory section if you are using a mod (such as C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Half-Life\cstrike) or leave it blank if not.
Select Browse from the RMF Directory section if you want to specify where your .rmf files will be saved (such as C:\Program Files\Valve Hammer Editor\maps) or leave it blank if not.
Select OK to save your configuration settings.
How to create a map with Valve Hammer Editor 4.3?
To create a map with Valve Hammer Editor 4.3, you need to follow these steps:
Select File > New from the menu bar or press Ctrl+N on your keyboard to create a new map file (.rmf).
Select View > Screen Elements > Toolbars > Standard Toolbar from the menu bar or press T on your keyboard to show the standard toolbar with various tools for creating brushes (solids), applying textures (materials), adding entities (objects) etc.
Select View > Screen Elements > Toolbars > Texture Application Toolbar from the menu bar or press A on your keyboard to show the texture application toolbar with various options for aligning textures on faces (sides) of brushes.
Select View > Screen Elements > Toolbars > Map Operations Toolbar from the menu bar or press M on your keyboard to show the map operations toolbar with various commands for compiling (building), running (testing) or saving (exporting) your map