WARNING: Save File Corruption Technique / bug in Hammer

[Aki]

I ran across the following incredibly annoying bug while building protection pillars like you see at gas stations to keep vehicles from hitting the pump. To see the bug in action start a new map then...

1. Create a cylinder brush with 32 sides measuring 16x16 hammer units.
2. Save the file and close it.
3. Re open the file, hammer gives an error message about a corrupted solid and asks if you want to resave the map. Go ahead and do so. Hammer will crash.
4. Reopen hammer and open the test map. The solid will be gone. Had this been an actual map and not a test map - every single static prop in your file would also be gone.

Where does a bug report like this go in order to reach Valve?

 

[Fruity Snacks]

This has already been noted ... it's an annoying bug.

 

[tyler]

Well, in fairness, you did build an invalid solid.

 

[Boylee]

That shouldn't really be punishable by lost map. It is fairly easy to make an invalid solid by mistake. I've come a cropper to this once during clifftop's development and nearly lost a day's work because I moved one vertex 2 units by mistake. I managed to avert losing all the work by opening an autosave in notepad++ and removing the offending brush. Luckily I knew where it was and could check co-ordinates in an old save file.

 

[tyler]

That's true, but a cylinder that small with that many faces isn't legal the way Hammer does it, that was my only point. I guess it was a dumb point.

 

[Boylee]

Ahh I see your point now, a 32 sided, 16x16 cylinder is indeed a very bad idea, and is a world apart from accidentally editing one vertex to create an invalid solid.


On the other hand, it's silly that hammer will let you build an invalid solid without warning you. I know in several cases it will not allow you to exit vertex edit mode, but in others it's happy to let you make your map file unreadable. It's a pretty serious error that would be nice to have fixed.