[HELP] Freezing when opening a map in Hammer

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Sdather
20 Posts
Posted Sep 27, 2011
Hello, ThinkingWithPortals community.

I post here to inform you of one of my biggest problems:
When I try to open my map, Hammer stop at "Reading Chunks - 5%" and then "do not answer. I tried opening other files like instances and other things and there is no problems. I never had this kind of problem before with my map, it happened all of a sudden !

Please does anyone have an issue to this ?

Sdather, from "Aperture Sciences - France".

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spongylover123
944 Posts
Posted Sep 27, 2011
Replied 2 minutes later

Sdather wrote:
Hello, ThinkingWithPortals community.

I post here to inform you of one of my biggest problems:
When I try to open my map, Hammer stop at "Reading Chunks - 5%" and then "do not answer. I tried opening other files like instances and other things and there is no problems. I never had this kind of problem before with my map, it happened all of a sudden !

Please does anyone have an issue to this ?

Sdather, from "Aperture Sciences - France".

Is it a .bsp file?

Avatar
Sdather
20 Posts
Posted Sep 27, 2011
Replied 9 minutes later

spongylover123 wrote:
Sdather wrote:

Hello, ThinkingWithPortals community.

I post here to inform you of one of my biggest problems:
When I try to open my map, Hammer stop at "Reading Chunks - 5%" and then "do not answer. I tried opening other files like instances and other things and there is no problems. I never had this kind of problem before with my map, it happened all of a sudden !

Please does anyone have an issue to this ?

Sdather, from "Aperture Sciences - France".

Is it a .bsp file?

It is a .vmf file.

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spongylover123
944 Posts
Posted Sep 27, 2011
Replied 2 minutes later
What kind of map are you loading?
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Sdather
20 Posts
Posted Sep 27, 2011
Replied 1 minutes later
What do you mean by "what kind of map" ? Coop or solo ?
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spongylover123
944 Posts
Posted Sep 27, 2011
Replied 2 minutes later

Sdather wrote:
What do you mean by "what kind of map" ? Coop or solo ?

Any kind

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Sdather
20 Posts
Posted Sep 27, 2011
Replied 1 minutes later
This is a normal coop. Puzzles with simples stuff, no rotating panels, just buttons and doors for now.
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spongylover123
944 Posts
Posted Sep 27, 2011
Replied 9 minutes later
Try making a new one, your vmf file may be corrupt
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Sdather
20 Posts
Posted Sep 27, 2011
Replied 3 minutes later
-_-
OK... Thanks for helping. :smile:
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Robdon
204 Posts
Posted Sep 27, 2011
Replied 49 minutes later
Hi,

What I do when I get weird problems with maps, is to take a copy of it, and then start removing bits of the map, say 10-20 entities/brushes at a time, and re-run it every time until I find it starts working.

Then you know which 10-20 it was causing the problem, and you can narrow it down.

Its the only way sometimes to find problems like this.

Or post your vmf file and we could take a look.

Rob.

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Sdather
20 Posts
Posted Sep 27, 2011
Replied 21 minutes later

Robdon wrote:
Hi,

What I do when I get weird problems with maps, is to take a copy of it, and then start removing bits of the map, say 10-20 entities/brushes at a time, and re-run it every time until I find it starts working.

Then you know which 10-20 it was causing the problem, and you can narrow it down.

Its the only way sometimes to find problems like this.

Or post your vmf file and we could take a look.

Rob.

Thank you very much. Here is the link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=G0N62EHM

Avatar
Robdon
204 Posts
Posted Sep 27, 2011
Replied 29 minutes later

Sdather wrote:
Robdon wrote:

Hi,

What I do when I get weird problems with maps, is to take a copy of it, and then start removing bits of the map, say 10-20 entities/brushes at a time, and re-run it every time until I find it starts working.

Then you know which 10-20 it was causing the problem, and you can narrow it down.

Its the only way sometimes to find problems like this.

Or post your vmf file and we could take a look.

Rob.

Thank you very much. Here is the link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=G0N62EHM

Ah, its a bug with hammer...

You have got an entity called 'hint1_room2', its an env_instructor_hint class.

In the 'caption' properties, you've put the text as "DID YOU KNOW?" with the double quotes in there.

Since Hammer uses double quotes to also put around properties, its causing hammer to get confused.

To fix it, close hammer, open your vmf file in notepad, and search for "DID YOU KNOW?"

(Use CTRL-F to search for text)

You will find a line like this:

"hint_caption" ""DID YOU KNOW?""

Change the 2 double quotes to 1 double quote, and then save the file, then open it again in hammer.

So that the line says:

"hint_caption" "DID YOU KNOW?"

That should fix it...

Rob.

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Will T.
163 Posts
Posted Sep 27, 2011
Replied 3 minutes later
That freezing during load is actually normal for Hammer. Just let it sit for 2 to 5 minutes and see if it moves. If it doesn't budge, something may be genuinely wrong. It's been the same way for a very long time, and the delay is longer the larger and more complex your map is; it will also be longer the slower your machine is.
Avatar
Sdather
20 Posts
Posted Sep 27, 2011
Replied 7 minutes later

Robdon wrote:
Sdather wrote:

Robdon wrote:

Hi,

What I do when I get weird problems with maps, is to take a copy of it, and then start removing bits of the map, say 10-20 entities/brushes at a time, and re-run it every time until I find it starts working.

Then you know which 10-20 it was causing the problem, and you can narrow it down.

Its the only way sometimes to find problems like this.

Or post your vmf file and we could take a look.

Rob.

Thank you very much. Here is the link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=G0N62EHM

Ah, its a bug with hammer...

You have got an entity called 'hint1_room2', its an env_instructor_hint class.

In the 'caption' properties, you've put the text as "DID YOU KNOW?" with the double quotes in there.

Since Hammer uses double quotes to also put around properties, its causing hammer to get confused.

To fix it, close hammer, open your vmf file in notepad, and search for "DID YOU KNOW?"

(Use CTRL-F to search for text)

You will find a line like this:

"hint_caption" ""DID YOU KNOW?""

Change the 2 double quotes to 1 double quote, and then save the file, then open it again in hammer.

So that the line says:

"hint_caption" "DID YOU KNOW?"

That should fix it...

Rob.

I'm trying, I'll edit later for the results.

EDIT: You solve my problem, thanks a lot ! :thumbup:
This topic may be closed now.

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Robdon
204 Posts
Posted Sep 27, 2011
Replied 1 hour later
No problem, glad I could help :smile:
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ChickenMobile
2,460 Posts
Posted Sep 27, 2011
Replied 4 hours later
Quick note:
You can use the .vmx as a backup if you have compiled a map and afterwards through more mapping you have corrupted the original file.

Once I made a very complicated mesh without compiling and I couldn't open it because it said that the file was corrupted. I just put in an extra bracket in the .vmf using a text editor... and all fixed! Great detective work Robdon.