Valve releases 'Source 2 like' Updated Modding Tools for Dota 2 (Hammer 2014 and more

[sersoft]

And it all started when 4chan brought a crate and crowbar to Gabe Newell and he basically confirmed Source 2 right there and then.

[bur]

that was probably the most pointless stunt i’ve ever seen

gaben was like “are they serious?”

[k3nny1550]

So yeah, this is a thing. I would love to be able to do things with these tools. That terrrain editor looks wondrous.

[COLOR=‘Green’]Merged duplicate thread with this one.

[JeffMOD]

The following is a collection of Skype logs as I took my first forray into the new tools. I had no access to documentation, (as the VDC is still having trouble) and as such some of my problems are likely fixable and some of the information I am presenting is likely inaccurate. Also, since it is a beta release, subject to change.

Okay, so double clicking on an add-on in the new DOTA2 SDK will open the engine in a window (Dota 2 (64-bit) [retail]) and the new “Asset Browser” which seems to show all available assets including vmaps.
I guess I can see this being used as an alternative to digging through the files in explorer
There is an integrated material editor
Which has stuff like normal maps, the ability to set it as a solid colour, and easy scrolling, all available via checkboxes. No more messing with the code of the files, I guess.
Lightmapped Generic and Vertexlit Generic are both gone, leading me to assume the new Global Lit Simple is the base shader for both models and brush/meshwork, and that there’s a new lighting solution
Textures are now listed as tga files, indicating that either they will be saved that way, or embedded in the vmat file with the material parameters.
There’s a search function that seems to bring up just the test stuff in the current configuration, but they’re all listed as tgas.
Similar to the Cryengine SDK, you seem to only have access to a few textures, the rest being imbedded in the game but unacessable. (Or maybe I’m doing something wrong)
Hopefully this will not be the case in the final release

There is a model editor, however I cannot find any models to open with it, so I can’t tell what it does
Perhaps they haven’t ported everything to the new file formats yet?
There is a particle editor, again unable to locate content to see the functionality of it
I’m assuming it’s similar to the in-engine one
Oh! found them
They’re listed like in the old in-engine editor
However attempts to open them give the error “No corresponding content file1”
Double clicking stuff in the asset viewer does, however, open it in the proper editor
You can access the material editor by clicking on model materials in the model edtior
WASD to move and right click to look around in the new model editor
I assume you can use the model editor to tweak stuff assuming it’s not read-only game content like we have access to currently
But it’s mostly the old model viewer with a new interface
Okay, now for the biggie - the new hammer

Options menu has a lot less stuff, but then again most of that has historically been for game configuration, so it makes sense
Z movement is now offically named “Fly” and gives you a little toggle notification when you activate it
Right clicking in the 3D view moves it
But only if you drag - otherwise it brings up the old context menu.
Bit of an odd choice if you ask me, I expect many people will move by accident when they mean to bring up the menu
2D grid movement is now with right click as well - there is no scroll bar
Ugh. Brushes are now placed like objects in 3DS Max.
You do get a 3D drag tool now, which is good since the 2D views are basically gone
This will be horrid for [on] grid stuff
They’re still there, but you only get 2 viewports
So you have to switch manually
Clipping now removes faces
There is a texture projection tool - no clue what the hell that does. I’ll experiment
My display driver stopped responding and the editor crashed, but not before I got a chance to see that all the materials in the game are available in Hammer.
Like all of them. Including model textures, like before in the pre-'06 engine days
Which is probably a bad idea

There is a mirror tool, which I can see being useful.
Interface is like the clip bar, but adding stuff
It makes copies of the geometry, rather than adding it to the mesh
Might work on ents too
Oh, I see. The texture projection tool is just a really bad implementaton of the old face edit tool - that warps your textures so as to be unreconizable, apparently.
That’s going to be a big learning curve
I just realized the massive scale I’ve been working on. Good to know that without a 2D grid your only way to know is to have entites in

Also, shift-Z viewport increasing does work, but is basically useless now because the viewport area is so narrow
You can resize it, but really, the default should be better
There’s a class properties window open by default, which is the same menu you get when double clicking on an entity or rightclicking and selecting properties
Or not, as the second method is now gone
You can free-move stuff in the 3D view, which is really inaccurate because you’re using a 2D plane to move things in 3D space
Hence why having 2D viewports is a better option
Selecting things by vertex does NOT get you vertex manipulation, but you can bevel things.
And that seems to be about it as far as the functionality goes
The face tab lets you do standard material stuff, (Thank god, finally!) but shifting doesn’t seem to work anymore
You can still use the align buttons,
Oh, I see. There’s a shift button down below that does what the arrow buttons used to (though the arrow buttons seem to be dummied out) but in large increments
Shifting now works with the arrow keys.
Texture scale seems to be completely different from what it used to be, as .25 is friggin’ massive.
May be a byproduct of DOTA, though
Can’t for the life of me figure out how the mesh stuff works
Can’t make it do ANYTHING, let alone something I intend.
Guess I’ve have to wait until the VDC comes back up
You can drag stuff from the asset browser into the editor (seems like it’s designed for a multi-monitor workflow) but apparently not into the asset sprayer because it switches over to the selection tool when yoyu do
However, without a preset (not included, apprently) you HAVE to drag assets in to use the sprayer
The drag and drop is neat, especially since it knows what entity to use for props, but kind of useless for any of the new functionality
There is also an asset browser in the editor
Going to try the DOTA grid editor now

It works like you’d expect from, say, the Warcraft 4 Editor (coming never because of WOW) It’s easy to drag out cliffs and roads, foliage is placed dynamically and intelligently (bushes on grass, lillypads on water) from the two different team tileset presets…
You can use space to toggle through the different paint types, so you can transition between terrain, water, etc without moving your mouse
The more you click with the terrain tool the higher the cliffs get, with a neat layered effect and dynamicly placed cliffside props
You can lock off sections of the map so that the tools don’t affect them, which is handy
Doesn’t seem to be affected by grid size. You can select the radius of the brush, but that has no effect on Z

Again, this is just me going in blind and reporting my findings as they happen. I had no documentation for the new features and changes - and it is a beta.
I expect Valve will work out the kinks and get everything that is actually broken fixed, and that after the documentation gets back online a lot of the problems I had will be cleared up.

However, you guys know me - I use Hammer on a regular basis, have been doing so for years. Enough has changed that even to use the same features in the editor, there is a new learning curve.

In short, the new Hammer is probably a very powerfull tool for making an RTS or a MOBA once you learn how to use it, but things have been changed far too much for it to be the same editor we all know and love, and it’s definetly not usable for a first-person or third-person game as-is. I hope this is a seperate build specifially for Dota 2, and not an indication of how Hammer is going to work from now on.

[skyace65]

Hopefully they release a version mod makes can use themselves soon. I’m hoping it increases productivity for the BMS team, OBM, WC and other mods.

[garrthbarrttinn]

@Chrillen

Some of the presentation info actually fits well with the capabilities for streamlined content authoring found in the new editor. It even uses meshes in favor of brushes. That alone is a huge change.

IIRC the general and all powerful balckmeas forum consensus was that the Sauce 2 plantation leak was a fake. The weird mix of low and high quality assets/effects combined with the fact that the entire scene is easily doable in the CS:GO version of Sauce 1 suggests that this was some random person’s cool Sauce 1 project advertised as Sauce 2. In fact, the lighting in all the scenes looks A LOT like CS:GO’s lighting, it’s probably just Sauce 1 with ultra high poly models and 2 frames per second.

On a more relevant note, this new editor is really really exciting. Hopefully we’ll see an explosion of cool top down mods based off this (wondering if lambda wars will port to Dota2).

Also, for the people working with this, does it support concave brushes now?

[Jack_Freeman]

Sounds like you were just a bit unlucky, JeffMOD, I could easily see this being used for FPS games and such. BTW, vertex manipulation is still very much possible (click on a vertice and then click on the translate tool), and clipping/slicing brushes doesn’t remove the face if you just check the “cap new surfaces” box when you choose the clipping tool.

[Crypt]

Well he was totally without the VDCW, it’s possible some key information was just missing.

[JeffMOD]

@Jack Freeman

Sounds like you were just a bit unlucky, JeffMOD, I could easily see this being used for FPS games and such. BTW, vertex manipulation is still very much possible (click on a vertice and then click on the translate tool), and clipping/slicing brushes doesn’t remove the face if you just check the “cap new surfaces” box when you choose the clipping tool.

Good to know.
Though it would be even better if the functionality everyone was familiar with was the default.

Also, while I suppose it could be usable for FPS games if all the functionality is still in, the lack of a proper 2D viewport setup a la 2013 Hammer makes things very cumbersome, especially for the precision needed for eye-hight camera settings.

[dky.tehkingd.u]

My big question is, how did they implement meshes? Are they actually solid, or is their solidity faked? How did they get around the old problem where BSP collision algorithms fail spectacularly when faced with concave geometry? Did they invent their own collision system?

Because if the meshes work the way that we’d reasonably expect them to work, I’d love to see them replace the ol’ func_detail.

[Jack_Freeman]

Concave collision does seem to work.

[dky.tehkingd.u]

That doesn’t really look like a concave shape, unfortunately. Could you create something more obviously concave?

[Jack_Freeman]

I was wrong, it seems.

[Maxey]

What a shit engine.

Pre-order cancelled.

[Pyroclase]

@Cpl.1nsane

I’ve used Hammer for only a few hours of my life, but I’m still excited by that.

[ToT]

What advantage does 64 bit for games?

[Kairouseki]

Allows it to use more RAM. 32 bit games (and software in general) can only use 4GB of RAM max. Might be a bit lower than that. 64 bit does have a limit but it’s something insanely high I think. There might be various other advantages but that’s the main one.

Edit: Also, a PDF about Valve’s new built in physics engine, Rubikon. Apparently Source 2 is going to use this instead of Havok.

https://box2d.org/files/GDC2014/SergiyMigdalskiy_PhysicsEngineDevelopment.pdf

It’s mostly about programming and bugtesting but there’s some screenshots of L4D2, apparently confirming a Source 2 port.

[dky.tehkingd.u]

@Jack Freeman

I was wrong, it seems.

Yeah… thought so. Oh well… I guess we can’t fully surmount the BSP system’s limitations quite yet.

[Pyroclase]

@Kairouseki

Edit: Also, a PDF about Valve’s new built in physics engine, Rubikon. Apparently Source 2 is going to use this instead of Havok.

https://box2d.org/files/GDC2014/SergiyMigdalskiy_PhysicsEngineDevelopment.pdf

It’s mostly about programming and bugtesting but there’s some screenshots of L4D2, apparently confirming a Source 2 port.

So, Source 2 is basically confirmed at this point?

[Crypt]

Source 2 was officially confirmed years ago.