Portal 2 Authoring Tools - When are they out of Beta?

[G0DL355]

Does anyone know? It's proving buggering annoying that I can't share content having to get whoever I'm sharing my map with to have to compile it in Hammer for Portal 2 beforehand. Not that I'm complaining overly, as they are free - I'd just like to get my mod started soon is all.

Spoiler

Command-line Potatogun FTW!

Cheers in advance,

G0DL355​

 

[Lobster]

I am a little confused. What exactly do you mean by them having to compile it in hammer beforehand? When the tools leave beta they won't be much different than they are now, with the possible exception of the pak files working properly again. But you should be able to get around any of the issues you are having with the beta tools today, let us know the specifics and there may be a solution!

 

[G0DL355]

Probably best if I did.

The only thing I'm genuinely having an issue with is sharing any maps I make, with friends and even playing other custom maps that are online. As a group, we've all tried following the instructions to-the-letter in the Portal 2 wiki, but to no avail: none of us can get custom maps (either made by myself or others) to run in Portal 2, unless they've previously been compiled in Hammer. It's something I thought was just buggy (especially considering the command-line integration of the maps themselves) in the Tools themselves - especially considering the state of the Sketchup Plugins.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated, and any maps/mods I release would have yourself and any attributed owners of the resources thanked.

Thanks in advance,

G0DL355​

 

[Ennui]

Hahaha... yeah.

You have to compile a map in hammer before you run it, true. Your vmf (valve map file, raw source for a map, uncompiled) needs to be compiled into a bsp map file. This is what happens when you compile in Hammer.

I'm guessing you are confused because you're giving people your VMF and having them compile in Hammer which automatically copies the resultant bsp to the appropriate Portal 2 maps directory and auto-runs it... so here's how to solve your problem. Instead of giving your friends the uncompiled YourMapName.vmf, find the YourMapName.bsp created by Hammer during the compile process (you can figure out where it copies this to in Configuration settings for the Portal 2 config in hammer, or by looking at the compile log - it's probably in Portal 2/maps/ or something in your steam games directory) and give them that.

 

[G0DL355]

Sorry - I didn't explain. I've had to give them the uncompiled files, because the .bsp's wont run when I give them to them. The same can be said for any BSP's I download online - we just can't plain run custom maps from our copies of Portal 2 without having compiled them from VMF beforehand. I've even tried making a VPK and doing it that way, but that obviously didn't work either.

Ho-hum, I'll try again today - it's been a while since I've worked on this actively.

Cheers for the advice so far though!

 

[Ennui]

That's very odd... what happens when you try to run the bsp?

 

[G0DL355]

I figured it out myself - Portal 2 doesn't recognise .bsp's with spaces in the filename, so it was an easy fix, and now my friends can play my maps! That, and I noticed the Authoring tools, now have a 'tools mode' of Portal 2 which I'll look into more when I have the chance.

Thanks for all your help - it's good to know if I get into a real mess in the future, I wont be alone!