Lack of interface for installing 3rd party maps

Is it me or does everyone else find it strange that Valve have not made an interface for installing and deleting custom made maps?

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Just Kidding

Just Kidding

yeah that whole folder structure thing is pretty clumsy when it comes to hl2sp maps. Some people opt for an installer tho I have no idea how that works

It would make things minimally easier for users and could, potentially, cause many problems for other games.

For it to work, people would have to learn a new container structure for their maps and they'd have to update hammer to accommodate this. It would need to hold all the information for the map's files.

In addition to this, what if more than one map uses the same custom file?

It gets a little complicated, and I'd, frankly, would rather valve focuses their Steam development time on making the thing faster.

It would be possible, however, for someone else to make this, but it wouldn't be built into steam.

That's just if you want it to use the structure it currently uses, the alternative is for them to rethink their entire file system structure, which would be better for the long run, but that's even more complicated. Though, keeping a catalog of what's installed and isn't (which would probably be kept in archive files) would be much simpler.

So yeah ... you can make it if you want, but if you start deleting stuff that shouldn't be deleted, people will be pretty pissed off.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Crono said:
It gets a little complicated, and I'd, frankly, would rather valve focuses their Steam development time on making the thing faster.

And the software developer, once again, ranting at anything remotely graphical in the UI.

Sorry, Crono...

I think the way Valve thinks of it is that, basically, you don't even need a UI, since maps are downloaded automatically when you enter a server. I always found that feature pretty convincing.

I think a "Custom Map Manager" would be pretty good. It would be pretty simple and I don't think it would effect anything at all.

It would just simply list what custom maps you have for your selected game and you could delete the ones you no longer want or add extra maps and such.

"Crono" said:
In addition to this, what if more than one map uses the same custom file?

All custom content should be embedded inside the bsp files (Flynn.. with your modified vmt files for your corridors map :P) for standalone maps, perhaps this program could browse each bsp file to ensure that it is not deleting custom content that other maps use also OR just not delete any custom content at all, only the bsp files.

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Aaron's Stuff

Oh yes I know you guys say that aaron. Believe me, if it was that easy I would have damn well done it! Unfortunately, I did try it. Literally dozens of times. I was making myself go absolutely nuts with the sodding thing (where's the angry smiley?). But for some reason it simply did not work. Anyway, how hard is it for the end user to go out of their maps folder and into their materials folder to simply drag and drop the .vmt files in? There are even instructions. I have just tested it, took me 6 seconds.

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Just Kidding

Just Kidding

That's really curious that pakrat won't work for you, have youn tried reinstalling it, or updating your java platform? the first few times I tried it it failed but after watching that vid a few times I haven't had any problems.

As for your fallback plan bear in mind a lot of people are intimdated by anything not dealt with through an interface, I know it sounds lame but I know people personally who play these games and have not a clue how to navigate to whichever folder, anywhere. Plus Valve's dir structure is not the easiest to figure out when you first see it, seems like a hundred clicks to get somewhere

Hello Haymaker and peace. I actually tried to use Pakrat on my last map I released (Courtyard) but it didn't work so I deleted the piece of shit. I then re downloaded it to try on this map. I know my Java is updated because the little popup on my desktop said "A new version of Java has been installed...". B.T.W., I KNOW that it worked since it zipped the .vcd and .ain files.

Now to address what you have dubbed my "backup plan" May I remind you that the user has to navigate to the maps folder in the first place to put the .bsp in? How hard can it be to click the back button and then click the materials folder then simply drag and drop the .vmt files from the .zip file to the materials folder? There are even instructions for christ's sake!

I have seen many a map with no instructions at all, and just files in the zip pack. If you were talking about that I would understand. I provided easy to follow instructions with my map.

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Just Kidding

Just Kidding

Man, it's really hard to believe that packrat wouldn't work for you. It's a little strange to use at first, but once you got it to run, it's 3 clicks and it's done.

1.) Open up the bsp file in your game directory (make sure you ran cubemaps before that, btw)
2.) Do the auto/scan thing... it should find all files needed and put them into the BSP
3.) At the end of the list, you should see all new files in a blue color
4.) Choose "SAVE BSP" from the menu

And you're done.

reaper47 said:

Crono said:
It gets a little complicated, and I'd, frankly, would rather valve focuses their Steam development time on making the thing faster.

And the software developer, once again, ranting at anything remotely graphical in the UI.

Sorry, Crono...

I think the way Valve thinks of it is that, basically, you don't even need a UI, since maps are downloaded automatically when you enter a server. I always found that feature pretty convincing.

I'm not even remotely against GUIs, especially if creating the GUI, like building on an existing platform, like steam, is simple.

I'm not so sure. Because custom maps could be single player or multiplayer. But, the issue is that, there's all this sort of inherent structure that would need to exist for something like that to work.

Aaron, packing various media content into a BSP isn't always the best idea. If it's, for instance, something commonly used in a community and there's 20 maps that use it, if you had all of those maps, you'd now have 20 copies of the same thing. Art content, also, gets rather large. If you think it's so simple, go make it, there's, apparently, a decent majority of people who want it

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

reaper47 said:
Man, it's really hard to believe that packrat wouldn't work for you. It's a little strange to use at first, but once you got it to run, it's 3 clicks and it's done.

1.) Open up the bsp file in your game directory (make sure you ran cubemaps before that, btw)
2.) Do the auto/scan thing... it should find all files needed and put them into the BSP
3.) At the end of the list, you should see all new files in a blue color
4.) Choose "SAVE BSP" from the menu

And you're done.

Ahhh, come on...! The mapping communities disbelief is an insult to the literal dozens of times that I compiled a map, started H.L.-2, built the cubemaps, quit H.L.-2, went into Pakrat, opened .bsp, selected files, saved .bsp, deleted files from relative directories, opened H.L.-2 again, loaded map, tapped in sv_cheats 1, notarget and noclip, looked at textures, saw pink and black checker board.

Edit: I never saw no blue files in a blue color. They just had a tick box by them with a tick in it. I'll even give one of you the files so that you can try for yourselves if you like!

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Just Kidding

Just Kidding