Is it me or Hammer actually crashes a lot?

MOCOLONI

L6: Sharp Member
Dec 16, 2014
373
89
I'm not sure whether it's related to all the Engine's games or TF2's one: after spending about 20 minutes on Hammer and saving the file, and then compiling the map (or not), closing Hammer will result in the tool crashing to desktop, either with an error message or simply freezing for 3 seconds and then closing. Opening Hammer again will throw a message saying that the last session didn't end properly or something like that.

It's not related to my system since it has run through many operatin system reinstallations, from clean installations to upgrades.
 

AsG_Alligator

qhull precision error
aa
Aug 5, 2016
595
1,191
Hammer is just like that.

Crashes randomly, for no apparent reason.

Thats why you should save often, and have autosave on.
 

hutty

aa
Mar 30, 2014
538
444
The most stable hammer experience i have had was running it through wine on linux. Everywhere else it is crash city.
 

iiboharz

eternally tired
aa
Nov 5, 2014
857
1,291
Yeah, Hammer is extremely unstable. It's effectively 20 year-old software that rarely gets attention. It's to be expected.

Addendum: CSGO's Hammer is actually really stable, it's one of the only versions of Hammer that gets attention.
Thinking about it, why is there even multiple versions of Hammer? They should just have one :(
 

Muddy

Muddy
aa
Sep 5, 2014
2,574
4,592
The most stable hammer experience i have had was running it through wine on linux.
Same here but on OS X. Unfortunately it comes at the price of TF2 being really unstable through Wine.
 

Muddy

Muddy
aa
Sep 5, 2014
2,574
4,592
why would you be running tf2 through wine? it runs natively on mac and linux
I tried running Steam as a whole through Wine for convenience's sake. And what iibo said; Steam's Mac port is just garbage..
 

worMatty

Repacking Evangelist
aa
Jul 22, 2014
1,257
999
Hammer rarely crashes for me.

Can't say I remember it crashing when I've closed it. It usually crashes while I'm looking for materials or editing an entity.
 

ics

http://ics-base.net
aa
Jun 17, 2010
841
540
Hammer is like that occasionally. Sometimes it is stable as rock, sometimes it crashes twice within 3 minutes.

Yeah, Hammer is extremely unstable. It's effectively 20 year-old software that rarely gets attention. It's to be expected.

Addendum: CSGO's Hammer is actually really stable, it's one of the only versions of Hammer that gets attention.
Thinking about it, why is there even multiple versions of Hammer? They should just have one :(

CSGO hammer is also famous for having black textures in the texture browser, that only go away by restarting hammer and then another batch of texture is black. They do work, just the preview is pitch black. It has it's own series of bugs. These are not present in TF2 version at all. Also CSGO hammer does crash, it's not crash free.
 

nickybakes

You should've played Rumbleverse
aa
Jul 28, 2015
911
1,739
Thinking about it, why is there even multiple versions of Hammer? They should just have one :(
CSGO runs on a different version of Source, so this is most likely the reason to have a different version of Hammer. I wouldn't be surprised if they realized "hey we're making Source 1.5, might as well start off fresh with a newer version of Hammer, fixing issues we had with older Source games."
 

ics

http://ics-base.net
aa
Jun 17, 2010
841
540
CSGO hammer is "branch 2" of source engine:

HL2 -> ORANGEBOX -> TF2
HL2 -> CS Source -> L4D -> L4D2 -> CSGO

All these games L4D, L4D2 and CSGO have their separate sdk toolset. CSS, TF2 and others these days have the files within the game, but they used to be all part of now deprecated Source SDK.
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
2,579
I don't know if the engine has much to do with it. Unlike, say, Source Filmmaker, Hammer doesn't actually load up an instance of it; it has its own weird rendering engine that can handle brush-based geometry rather than the polygon-based kind compiled maps use. Almost all of the engine-specific stuff is handled via the compile tools (which are external) and the FGD file (which is plaintext and easily modified). VMF is also plaintext and, if I'm not mistaken, uses a universal syntax that can cover any and all entities and parameters.
 

Freyja

aa
Jul 31, 2009
2,994
5,813
CSGO hammer is also famous for having black textures in the texture browser, that only go away by restarting hammer and then another batch of texture is black.
I've definitely had this bug many a time in TF2 hammer. Usually happens when I've had it open for a long time though.
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
2,579
Also if CSGO's Hammer was actually optimized for CSGO, it wouldn't choke so hard on decompiled maps full of props with no LODs.
 

EArkham

Necromancer
aa
Aug 14, 2009
1,625
2,773
One thing (of many things) that would be nice to have in TF2's hammer is the ability to see blend texture modulates in the 3d viewpor.t Was really surprised to see that you could do that in CSGO, but that functionality makes perfect sense to have.
 

Yrr

An Actual Deer
aa
Sep 20, 2015
1,308
2,743
Using hammer long enough you kinda get a feel for how to stop it crashing (and for when to save (all the time)), but it'll still surprise you sometimes
 

zzdev

L1: Registered
Feb 13, 2017
5
3
Hammer Map Edit more like Crash Simulator

Interesting
 
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