Resolved - Hammer Editor

[Jablonski]

Name: P. Jablonski

Rank: Sgt.

Type of issue: Software or Steam

Brief Description of Issue: Ive been working on making a map and 30 hours in, every single entity just dissappeared. Hammer editor crashed so i should be able to open to the last save right? But when I did it gave me an error saying something about 5 props couldnt load so i loaded it with out them. next thing i know, I have a map missing hundreds of entities.

This is what it looks like now with all the railings, ladders, tables, couches, windows, door/frames, ruins, spawn points are gone now. Is there a way to recover the lost info or go back to an earlier save point, or am I just done learning how to map?

Thanks guys!

***Medical Supply Staff ONLY Below this line***

Current Status: Resolved

Main Technician: Cutts

Supporting Technician:

[Ford 1st MRB]

What does the error log say?

Whenever hammer crashes it should automatically save the file as a different name. The auto save file should be .vmx if I remember correctly, instead of the normal .vmf file.

[Jablonski]

I dont exactly remember, its gone now and just loads up whats left of the map. But when I had gotten the error it just told me something about 5 courupt items or something and gave me the options to open with them or load with out them, loading with them caused an emidiat crash and then when i loaded with out them it brought me here.

[Ford 1st MRB]

Did it save a .vmx file?

[Jablonski]

yes it did.

[Cutts]

OK... I've had this problem a lot. Its fucking annoying!

First up - please dont let this stop you from mapping - I lost a shed load of work this way twice when I started. Yes, its pretty heartbreaking,

but what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger! I considered not bothering to carry on, but I came back a few days later when I wasn't

quite as annoyed any more, and I rebuilt everything that was lost... and made it better!

Basically, its really easy to create an invalid brush, without hammer telling you about it.

If you save a map with such a brush, and then try and load that map again, it will give you a message about the number of bad brushes

and will remove them. Typically, all entities and vis-groups also get deleted, and everything else gets stuck into a single visgroup.

I haven't found a solution to this problem, but I have changed the way I work to minimise it:

1) Save often and append a new number to the end of each save. This way, you can reload a version up to about half an hour ago (or the

latest save which isn't fucked), and also reload the newer "fucked" version, then copy/paste any bits you can salvage from the fucked version

back into the older working version.

Tip: delete everything except the new stuff in the fucked version, surround it all with 1 big brush that is snapped to a course grid, group it, copy it,

paste it into the working version, then align the surrounding box where needed, ungroup, then delete the box.

2) Save in particular before you do any fiddly brush work, especially with the vertex tool. Watch out when merging vertices... sometimes

that can create a bad brush.

3) In general, try and avoid and vertex having any non-integer coordinates. If you use the clipping tool, or you rotate / resize something,

its easy to end up with fractional vertex coordinates... whilst these aren't necessarily a problem in themselves, subsequent modification of

that brush can cause weird errors, resulting in bad brushes.

4) Watch out, again, with the vertex tool... it is possible to get two or more vertices, VERY close to each other so that when zoomed out they

look like they're in exactly the same position but they aren't. This can result in quadrilaterals where all 4 vertices are not on exactly the same

plane (which is mathematically impossible).

To make matters worse, if you try and select just one of them in any 2d view, it will select both of them.

To fix this, you can zoom close up in the 3D view, select each vertex in turn, and manually align each to the grid at 1x1 scale.

Or, alternatively, rip out that brush and reconstruct it carefully - you might save yourself a headache.

5) After you have finished the fiddly brush work, save again with a new number, and then close and reload the map to check if there were

any errors... it make sense to check just after, so you dont press on with more work only to find you made a mistake hours earlier!

6) Avoid using carve tool. No really - just build it by hand. The carve tool does some retarded stuff, especially if you're trying to carve

very complicated shapes.

After a while, I kind of got a sense of when I was sailing close to the wind with this problem, so I now know when to save, and rarely do

I lose any work now... at most it will be 15 minutes worth, rather than 5 hours worth!

I hope that helps!

Edited August 21, 2012 by Cutts 1st MRB

[Cutts]

One other thing... be very careful about bad quadrilaterals... they're REALLY easy to make, if you start moving vertices about individually!

If you really want to make one, chop it into 2 triangles instead.

[Jablonski]

thats good advise ill head in the future. So basicly this map is buttfucked, so I suppose ill just start over since I lost pretty much everything but 2 buildings worth of walls. Guess this gives me a chance to improve. So dissapointing.....