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Jackhammer 1.0 Public Alpha - New Level Editor
Jackhammer is a brand new level editor for games with a quake-style BSP architecture. The aim is to develop a convenient cross-platform tool capable of incorporating the best features of existing editors, such as Valve Hammer Editor, Q3Radiant and others. Despite Quake and Half-Life having been released a long time ago, the large community have arisen around, still developing mods and games on their bases. However the existing editors suffer from fundamental disadvantages their users are well familiar with. Jackhammer does aspire to be the universal level design tool for classic games. But not only the classics! The editor shall become a key development tool for the Volatile3D II engine, that is why its second name is Volatile Development Kit.

Jackhammer is being developed since August 2013, that means the editor is very young. But the team of professional programmers and testers is ready to present the public alpha within four months. Despite not all the functions being implemented, not all the planned games being supported and only a small extent of the new ideas being realized, today you are able to download, install and evaluate Jackhammer in action. Please don't forget that alpha is the first, quite a raw version, and may contain some issues. We are interested in a vast testing of the editor and grateful in advance for your comments and suggestions! In addition, you can provide Jackhammer with financial support, donating funds for the further development.

This version supports Quake, Quake II and Half-life.

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Features

DOWNLOAD - Win32 now, Linux in future.

Quoth FGD for Jackhammer

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I didn't try this when it got released and I now regret that. After watching Daz map on twitch yesterday I decided to try it out.

This editor is good. REALLY good.

I have a few things I'd like to see changed or improved but what there is already is outstanding. 
 
Except for this shit which seems to pop up with regularity:

Bad texture axes on face:
face point at (608 128 32)
face area = 512.000

Which brush is it? GUESS. 
 
are the numbers incorrect? because it sounds pretty specific. 
 
Coordinates are accurte, yes, but I'd rather know which specific brush was having the problem. The problem is that faces look fine in the editor, so I basically have to delete brushes in the area until I find the one it's talking about.

It happens when you use SHIFT+ALT+R_CLICK to copy textures and attributes to entire brushes. That feature leads to sadness. 
 
does jackhammer put in line comments for brush #s? i always liked that method for debugging. 
 
Just had a look ... no. 
 
Super fast question ...

I know what these handles do:

https://drive.google.com/a/epicgames.com/file/d/0BzD7pFjY3WbiaHFRTHRRVlNhdjQ/view?usp=sharing

There is another similar state though. What do the yellow handles do?

https://drive.google.com/a/epicgames.com/file/d/0BzD7pFjY3WbibGdwcVBmQTJFVW8/view?usp=sharing 
 
Sorry, still get used to Google Drive settings ... I think this will work. Just the yellow handle version:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzD7pFjY3WbibGdwcVBmQTJFVW8/view?usp=sharing 
 
Just use some normal host like imgur.com or quaketastic that works without forcing a shitload of random JS down your throat. ;) 
 
Just answer the damn question. :) Why is there a set of handles where the middle handles turn yellow? 
The Yellow Handles 
It keeps the brush on grid when resizing, most noticeable when a brush is skewed or otherwise in an odd shape. Sort of like a quick alternative to using vertex manipulation, allowing for resizing one side of a brush, without manipulating the other side of it. 
 
Ahh, I see it now! Ok, it only drags the verts in the half of the brush closest to the handle clicked on. Kinda cool .. OK, thanks! 
Jackhammer Issues / Thoughts 
I'm using Jackhammer to build my Quake level for map jam 3 and have come across a few issues and annoyances that should be (heh) easily remedied

1) if you select a brush (or brushes) and then start drawing a new brush, that new brush should be the same height and start at the same point on the z axis as the selected brushes. Hammer does this and it feels really weird for JH not to do this :)

2) There is some strangeness going on with vertex manipulation when you have multiple brushes selected. JH will not let me move verts on a brush when I have certain other brushes selected. I am guessing that JH checks the entire selection for concave brushes when a vertex is moved and this is what could be causing this? If I select 2 or 3 brushes next to each other then the v-manip works just fine but if I continue selecting brushes along the chain of brushes in the map the v-manip stops working. I can provide pics / map file if you want to test this further.

3) placing entities into the map by clicking in the 3d view will place the entity off grid and it is a nightmare to get it back on grid. Some sort of grid snap for entities placed in the 3d view would be very nice!

4) Another grid snapping issue but this time with brushes. When duplicating the current selection (shift+drag) the new selection can sometimes be nudged off-grid by an amount equal to half of the current grid size.

5) When placing entities using the 3d view it would be nice if the editor could place entities on the surface by finding the bottom of their bounding box. For example currently if you place a shambler by clicking on a level floor the shambler will be placed half in the floor on the z-axis.

6) No face splitting while in vertex manip :( (see trenchbroom editor)

Aside from these issues the editor is very nice and I am enjoying using it! Very easy to setup and go. Feels very familiar to Hammer/Worldcraft. I think I experienced a single crash when duplicating some brushes but that is the only stability issue I have come across. 
Thanks For The Valuable Feedback 
1) already fixed
2) just disable vertex restrictions, they are disabled by default in latest releases
3) ctrl+B
5) this is achieved via FGD file, there is a new keyword "offset", you can see an example in PlayerClass definition in the FGD.
6) Ctrl+F
Some of these features don't work in 1.0.155, please upgrade to 1.1.320a if you are on Linux. 
Spawnflags Settings 
This is certainly a fringe case that many users probably will not come across but I thought I would bring it up anyway.

It seems you cannot manually change entity spawnflags value from the entity window in JH? It seemed to me that JH hides the spawnflags key from view because if I manually entered a new key/value pair called "spawnflags" with a value of "64" (what I required to get specific behaviour from an entity in a Quake mod) then it would create a key called "spawnflags#1" "64".

Is this an editor issue or something that can be fixed within an FGD? Exposing the manual editing of spawnflags would be a very useful feature!

Thanks for the response to my earlier post. It is nice to see that some features are in/added and others have shortcuts. Thanks :) 
 
Daz, you could always click on the "Flags" tab in the entity properties window. :) 
Yes, Spawnflags Key Is Hidden 
Never thought someone will need to edit them manually. :) Why not set a flag using a checkbox, as WarrenM suggests? JH accepts the checks even if they are not described in a FGD. 
Hmm 
I could swear I tried that and it didn't work. I could be mistaken however. It's quite possible that 64 was an incorrect spawnflag as the mod documentation for Zerstoroer is possibly the worst document I have ever read :)

Anyway. JH is a really nice editor. I will definitely do a video for it when I get a free moment 
 
To test whether it works, simply open an exported map file in a text editor. If the "spawnflags" keyvalue exists for your entity, and has a correct value, then it's not a JH problem. Otherwise, it might be a bug. 
 
It should work. My mod uses a bunch of spawnflags and they all seem to work from within JH... 
Textures Not Showing Correctly In Editor 
I'm sorry if this has been posted but I didn't see this problem anywhere...

I installed "jackhammer_linux_11320_x64.run" on a Pinguy OS Distro which is based off of Ubuntu 12.04 located at "/home/dano/jackhammer". I ran jackhammer.sh and went to "tools>options" to set up the Quake game profile. The settings are all the correct locations for the .fgd, .pal file, quake101.wad file, game executable, directories etc etc.


Now, with all that if I load a map I simply get white brushes everywhere OR... if I delete the use of the .pal file(location in profile) I get some super low-res version, that's black and white, of the textures!!!!

Also on some maps I get the pink/black squares but I assume that's a texture in use that's not in my .wad file.

Even though I use Linux I'm basically an EX Windoze user with zero 1337 skills ;)

I have no graphics problem with any other game/program with my setup, nVidia gtx660 card.

Any idea's on how to solve this?

I dual boot with Win7, and JH works fine there, but I was hoping to one day find a non dual boot, native OS, editing solution.

Thanks. 
Continued From Above. 
Custom Palette 
Is this the return of Quake Noir? 
Wow 
Seems like a palette problem.
When palette file is not defined, JH uses an internal "black-and-white" palette.
Are you sure your pal file is correct?
You mean the same file does work under Win7, but does not under Linux? 
Yes, Same .pal File Copied From Win7 
At first I went to quaketastic and d'loaded the quake palette from there. But the file size difference between it and the JH supplied file was suspect. So that's when I booted up Win7 and installed JH under that OS. After seeing it function correctly I copied the .pal file from Win7 into my Linux install of JH. No difference :(

Anyway, just looking to see if there was a quick fix that you had come across. Not really a big deal if I'm the only one ;) 
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