From the "month old news" category...
Steamcast: MasterGir asks: ‘Will Valve ever update the source SDK, especially Hammer?’
Gabe Newell: Oh yeah, we’re spending a tremendous amount of time on tools right now. So, our current tools are...very painful, so we probably are spending more time on tools development now than anything else and when we’re ready to ship those I think everybody’s life will get a lot better. It's just way too hard to develop content right now, both for ourselves and for third parties so we’re going to make enormously easier and simplify that process a lot.
Any new tools will probably run in the engine, like the Particle Editor.
(buried)
Well from my point of prespective the hammer editor is easy as *poo poo*.
With respect, that's because you've never known better. Hammer is OVER TEN YEARS OLD! Modern level editors are built into the engine, and the best of them can edit the world while it is running. Hammer is a relic.
And Hammer sux now, because moving around isn't good anymore. Hope they change the stuff with material types for textures and models. That's uncomfortable. So sometime you need 2-3 UVs for a single model in Source.
I dont have problem compiling map before testing it, but hammer could easily be much better.
i agree, i hope they nerf void rays in the next patch. toss=OP, lol/.
It's easy, but extremely messy. Don't know why you got so many negative votes.
I really hope he's telling the truth, an easier version of the Source Engine would give the modding community a huge boost.
i hope they will make it easy to import models into SDK
Haven't the TF2 team said they're doing something like this already?
YAY!
No further news yet?
A 3dsmax/maya/modtool exporter would be great. A much more simplified process to export models through a click or two, in a way a auto generating QC.
I think someone has made a plug-in that actually does this.
Tools could definitely do with an update, even more so, plenty of smaller features that would take little time to develop. Expand the SDK with extra tools.
Source SDK is one of the best tool's, for me but an update is likely a new hand... :)
I hope it comes with a revised License similar to UDK so Indie devs can make games for a small price or just sacrifice some of the royalties It would be a big plus for the Modding Community :P
I think the new set of tools for the SDK will start with the new Portal 2 ingame map editor! (just a guess)