Invalid Solids Crashing Hammer And Removing Entities

[Nicknam4]

Hello everyone, I've been working on a CP map and upon finishing Red's side and copying it to prepare for reskinning to create Blu's side I kept running into problems. Whenever hammer crashed and I had to reload the save, I received a message saying there were invalid solids and whether or not Hammer should resave with said solids removed. If I clicked Yes, Hammer crashed and upon reload, the map had no entities whatsoever. If I clicked no, Hammer crashed and the map again couldn't be loaded.

I had a backup before copying the Red side, so I loaded it and recopied+reskinned everything. I knew when I reloaded this save I would get the problem again, so I did some research and discovered the Alt+P trick to remove the solids before reloading. Well, while I was fixing one of the invalid solids, Hammer crashed, and now I have no way to remove them without destroying my entities.

I understand this is a new bug, and that apparently you can load the map in an old version of SDK to fix this. How can I fix this, or get an older version?

 

[ForbiddenDonut]

Load an autosave. They're located in C:/HammerAutosaves. Make sure you set the file type to .vmf autosaves.

 

[Nicknam4]

That wouldn't help me, because the only autosaves or backups I have that don't have the "invalid solids" are from before I copied the red side, and I do not want to have to copy it all and reskin everything a 4th time. Is there a way I can salvage my current save?

 

[Ælement]

Do you know the invalid brushes ID's? Perhaps you can remove them manually, by opening your .vmf in notepad++. Not sure tho.

 

[Nicknam4]

Hello again! I finally managed to fix this without needing to load any backups, and so to help people in the future with the same problem, this is how I did it.

First I made two copies of the map (This is with the entities in the map, if you already clicked "Yes" you have to use your latest backup with entities)

Then I loaded a copy in hammer and clicked "Yes" to removing the invalid solids, removing the entities as well. Then in the Source SDK window I changed "Engine Version" to "Source Engine 2009" (Any previous version should work, the game does not even need to be set to TF2)

Next, I loaded the other copy that has all the entities (even though they aren't compatible with this version, it should still work) I clicked Map>Entity Report and selected all the entities with a Shift+Click. I copied them, and then loaded the first copy without entities. Then I simply pasted the entities and moved them in the right place, and saved. I was then able to open the map normally in the current SDK version. It all took about 5 minutes.

Cheers!

 

[Nicknam4]

Heh. Had the same problem again, turns out what I did last time was way over-complicated. All you need to do is open it in the old Source Engine and say Yes to removing the invalid solids, then re-save it and open it in the current version.

 

[deadsource]

If my memory serves me right, small complicated brushes are to blame for such errors.
...well, that's my experience, not fact.