in case you hadn't heard, there is a new tool for mappers.

http://extension.ws/hlfix/ <- server is a bit slow, but worth it.

hlfix is a tool that converts Worldcraft/VHE format files (.rmf) to standard .map files. In the process, it performs a number of geometric operations to fix common problems with brush geometry. hlfix is far more sophisticated than VHE's built-in map export feature. The purpose of this tool is to give map designers much greater flexibility in the type of geometry they use to build their maps.

To begin with, hlfix outputs floating point coordinates to .map files as opposed to VHE which rounds all coordinates to integers. This alone solves a number of typical mapping problems. hlfix also performs three phases of geometry correction:

-Tesselating non-planar faces
Faces that do not lie entirely in one plane are decomposed into planar polygons which approximate the intended surface.
-Decomposing non-convex solids
A convex brush has all it's edges "pointing" outward. Non-convex brushes are cut into convex pieces.
-Uniting coplanar faces
The .map compile tools do not allow a brush to have multiple faces in the same plane. Any such faces are joined together by hlfix and a warning is given if they have different texture information.

that is right, it lets .rmf output floating point, it fixes bad brushes and coplanar surfaces, but that is not all! also on the website it the .rmf syntax info. now waldo and the guys working on VHE 3.5 already know that, but it is handy for anyone else......

check it out!

Very interesting indeed. Gotta check this out when I'm home. Indeed that coplanar face fix is pretty good.

I will try and use this and check out what's the result. Not hoping too much tho :p

ill haveto try this out

thanks for bringing this to our attention, tommy. certainly worthy of our attention.

Its a great tool for find strange brushes and stuff that hammer doesnt find. Simply take a look at the brush # and find it in your map, correct it and woola.. :)

Worthy of attention, yet I tihnk it may be doing a little to much work for you. I like to have control voer whats going on and I dont want the program running off and doing its own little thing. I'll have to see how it works.

Maybe I'm off base here...but this will help mappers who create bad brushes...it rewards them. To me that's not fixing the inherent problem of knowing how not to make a crappy brush.

Don't get me wrong...It's cool code and I think there might be a way to harness the code for optimization purposes (like how there are model optimizers out there that reduce the poly counts on models)...but this specifically rewards sloppy brushwork by fixing them (and in the process adding one or more brushes to your map). If there's something here I'm missing about the benefits this tool offers please let me know.

FuzzDad: Doesnt that really depend on how you use it ?

I dont know how you work when you make your map, but it seems that you are pretty good. :D

Well, Im I havent mapped that much and Im mostly building stuff from the triangle method. It looks pretty good and Im pleased with what I have done so far. But that's beside the point... when I build traingles in hammer then extract them to a map file they tend to be missaligned and sometimes even unusable. Hammer itself seldome finds those error and I have to manually find them and correct them. Hlfix finds them in no time and sure it can fix it for me but I have so far manually corrected them all in hammer myself and then rerun hlfix until there are no errors or warnings.
If that doesnt help me to become a better mapper then perhaps you can explain to me how I will become one ?

Hlfix also transforms the rmf files to map files more correctly which is why I tested it in the first place... from what I learned from it today, I can easily say that I found no other tool out there that does the job that well.

i agree with FD, people now can just fix the problem with not any knowledge of what its fixing. Thus they will keep doing mistakes and become dependant on it...

I did a Spec File supporting HLFix for Batch Compiler. It includes support for ZHLT Custom Build 1.7, MapBackup and HLFix. Should simply be a matter of selecting your .rmf file instead of a .map file and compiling as usual.

It can be found at the bottom of this page (http://countermap.counter-strike.net/Nemesis/batchspec.html).

Could someone please give it a test to make sure it's all woking correctly so I can create a few alterations of it.

Thanks.
~Nem

it IS a beta and bugs have been found, and are being workied on.

specificly it seems to rename targets and entity names for some entities. so watch out for that.

report any bugs, he has promised to try an fix them ASAP.

Could the rounding to integers cause "leaf saw into leaf" errors? I get that error whenever there is complex vertex manipulation, despite the absence of any problems in brushwork. Maybe this will fix the problems.

Im a noob mapper, and i dont want to learn any bad habits, and especially dont want some program editing my map without me knowing it. ESPEcially in beta. Plus i dont think it fixes anything a few extra seconds couldnt do...

VERY cool tool :D

Im quiet amazed with the atitude some ppl have here.

Lets not use a safer car since it only promotes bad driving

it has been updated to fix most known bugs.

it has solved some folks leaf saw errors, others it didn't.