Hammer (level editor)
More info
- Creator
- Ben Morris / Valve
- Released
- Type
- Level editor
Valve's level editor for Source and GoldSrc games, which began life as the standalone Quake editor Worldcraft before Valve bought both the tool and its creator.
Ben Morris released Worldcraft in 1996 as an editor for Quake maps. Valve hired him in 1997 and made the tool the official map builder for Half-Life, after which it was renamed the Valve Hammer Editor. Every official Counter-Strike map since has been shaped in it.
Hammer works with convex solids — "brushes" — carved together into rooms and corridors, after which a compiler works out visibility and lighting. The model is archaic but durable: the tool has carried through Source and Source 2 and still bears traces of its 1990s origin. Plenty of mappers learned geometry the hard way through its leaking walls.