Hammer crashes: Open map to find all entities as "."

Beetle

L9: Fashionable Member
Aug 17, 2008
627
178
My Hammer crashes but not often. Sometimes when it does, I reopen it to find all my entities as "." So instead of it being a "prop_static," it's a "." In the entity report it lists all of those entities as blank.

They retain their properties, but I have to manually set them back to actual entity names. Does anyone know what causes this or what I can do to prevent it from happening?

(I use Boojum's hammer config)
 
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Beetle

L9: Fashionable Member
Aug 17, 2008
627
178
It has happened on more than one occasion, and it is a form of vmf corruption I guess since it only screws up the map that was loaded when Hammer crashed. I'll try to get a ss.

hammer%20problem.PNG


See? All the properties are still there, but it's like that for every entity in the map.

I've tried refreshing/resetting/reinstalling/verifying.
 
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Beetle

L9: Fashionable Member
Aug 17, 2008
627
178
Have you tried opening it with hammer in an older source engine?

I think I saw your thread where you tried that. I briefly tried, but there was no TF2 option for the older engines.
 

LMFAO

Banned
Jun 14, 2012
131
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I don't think anything older than 2007 can help. I heard in 2007 TF2 came out, so I assume otherwise.

I think I have to side with "A Boojum Snark" on this.
 

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
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Sep 5, 2010
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I think I saw your thread where you tried that. I briefly tried, but there was no TF2 option for the older engines.

You can still open the maps in the older engines, but sometimes you get a different, equally as catastrophic error. Still worth trying.

just don't compile, or you'll have a bad time.
 

Nicknam4

L1: Registered
Dec 8, 2011
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I think I saw your thread where you tried that. I briefly tried, but there was no TF2 option for the older engines.

It doesn't matter. I opened it with Portal's 2009 engine. It won't recognize what the entities are but you can still resave it fine.
 

Beetle

L9: Fashionable Member
Aug 17, 2008
627
178
It doesn't matter. I opened it with Portal's 2009 engine. It won't recognize what the entities are but you can still resave it fine.

Does that mean after resaving it, the newest engine will recognize the entities again? If so, that's all I need because that's the only problem I'm having.
 

Micnax

Back from the dead (again)
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Apr 25, 2009
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This problem happened to me during the contest, because of an Invalid Solids error. Removing the solids caused all my brush entities to go into the state you have. It's easily fixable by renaming them all again into the entities that they are, but all my point entities were removed from my map and I had to re-add them all again.

Sorry, but it's the only way to get your stuff back :/
 

Beetle

L9: Fashionable Member
Aug 17, 2008
627
178
This problem happened to me during the contest, because of an Invalid Solids error. Removing the solids caused all my brush entities to go into the state you have. It's easily fixable by renaming them all again into the entities that they are, but all my point entities were removed from my map and I had to re-add them all again.

Sorry, but it's the only way to get your stuff back :/

Are you sure they were removed and not just invisible? For me, they were still there, but I had to go into the Entity Report to find them.
 
May 2, 2009
320
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I too had this problem after the hammer fixed my invalid solids but luckily it only corrupted my func_details and one trigger_multiple. I couldn't find any other way to fix this than manually renaming them.

Hopefully you get yours fixed easier way.
 

Boylee

pew pew pew
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Apr 29, 2008
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I almost lost a couple of days worth of work to this malfunction (or one very similar to it). In my case it was caused by an invalid solid. When the error occurred I made sure not to save the corrupted version under the same name. I opened up the vmf in notepad++ and removed the offending brush and the map opened fine. Took me a while to identify the solid but it was much quicker than rebuilding the whole bloody map. Good luck fixing it man it's a real pain in the arse.
 
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Beetle

L9: Fashionable Member
Aug 17, 2008
627
178
It mainly happens when I have a complicated brush I know I shouldn't have but need it (like a complicated func_train brush). I know things like that tend to lead to invalid solids :(.

But it also has happened when I've had no complicated geometry, still, I think the chances are much higher with an invalid solid error.

Also, I've noticed Hammer crashes much more often when I click the Flags tab. It doesn't always, but it gets annoying. Anyone else have that issue?
 
Mar 20, 2012
391
806
Happened to me twice. Have to watch that vertex editing.

I usually just open an autosave (you can find these in C:\HammerAutosave - set to the .vmf autosave file type) or a backup. I know nicknam solved his by opening it up in the older engine and removing the offending brush.

It's a big pain in the butt. It's made me much more cautious with my vertex editing.