Setting up Hammer

This page will walk you through setting up Hammer++ with our custom tools for TF2 Classified map development.

Step 1: Installing Hammer++

1. Make sure Team Fortress 2 Classified is installed on Steam.
2. Download the latest Team Fortress 2 build of Hammer++.
3. Copy the files of the Team Fortress 2 build of H++ into the steamapps\common\Team Fortress 2 Classified folder, as if you were installing it for Live TF2.
4. Navigate to the steamapps\common\Team Fortress 2 Classified\bin\x64 folder, and run hammer_tf2c_setup.bat (this should be right next to hammerplusplus.exe if you have installed everything correctly).
5. Run hammerplusplus.exe.

As of the Steam release (3.0.0) we include new customized versions of the compilers with the game. Older versions of TF2C's VBSP, VRAD, and VVIS are no longer compatible. ficool2's compilers (VBSP++/VVIS++/VRAD++) have a superset of our compiler's functionality, however some features like ambient occlusion may need to be retuned, as VRAD++ takes different parameters than ours.

Step 2: Configuring VRAD

When preparing a final compile of your map, you need to make sure that the parameters you're passing to VRAD are supported by our custom build. Some, such as -staticproplighting, are now enabled by default and will produce an error if you include them. The default VRAD settings we use for most official TF2C maps are:

-final -hdr -softencosine -ao -aoradius 2 -LargeDispSampleRadius -worldtextureshadows -StaticPropIndirectMode 2 -choptexlights

You can add these to your final compile settings in H++ by going to the the "Run Map..."/F9 dialog, click the "Expert..." button in the bottom-left corner of the panel to view your configurations, and add those the parameters to the $light_exe command in your final compile configuration.