Hammer World Editor is Valve’s level editing (and authoring) tool for its Source engine. The software has been available as part of the Source Development Kit (SDK) for years and, by default, uses the assets (textures, models) that ship with Valve games, including CS: GO, Team Fortress, Portal, Left 4 Dead, and, most notably, Half-Life 2. Although I came into the project having used Hammer before for FPS mods, a version is bundled with SteamVR tools that is optimised for VR authoring, which I had not tried previously. I evaluated both during the research.
Feelings
Opening Hammer World Editor is a nostalgic experience in the 2020s. The basic interface is the same—and familiar to other level editing and 3D tools of the same vintage. It’s also every bit as obtuse as it always was. Hammer is not really a game authoring tool but a game editing tool designed for creating levels for existing games. As a consequence, there are several versions, the versioning is not easy to follow, and it is difficult to even launch, never mind just use.
However, Hammer is also the only tool for Steam that enables users to create “environments,” which are 3D interactive scenes based on models built in 3D authoring tools or captured photogrammetrically. SteamVR ships with several such environments, most built by professional game developers as side projects, and they demonstrate the potential for using photogrammetry to capture spaces.
Evaluation
Like Google, Valve’s attention wanders as an organisation, with periods of intense development on one thing followed by fallow periods where tools are left to slowly deprecate. Then, randomly, Valve will release a fully realised update that some team has clearly been working on for years. It’s frustrating because the idea of environments is good, but the tools to access them have not changed since the launch of SteamVR—they are not accessible or user-friendly.
Application
Constrained to SteamVR and a narrow range of potential applications, building immersive journalism in Hammer may offer an easy route for integrating VR interactivity and photogrammetry—but one that will have little broad or commercial appeal.
Conclusions
It’s a dead end.