Overview
Learn how to decompress these maps so that SFM won’t crash upon loading them.
Introduction
Recently, Team Fortress 2 introduced a Map Workshop, allowing map authors to easily share thousands of maps that won’t get played because they aren’t on Valve servers. To solve the latter problem, Valve introduced CS:GO style operations in the Gun Mettle update to bring these maps to the uncultured masses.
Problem is, these maps use a new form of compression that SFM has not been updated to use yet. As a result, SFM will choke and die upon trying to load such maps.
Luckily, fixing it’s really easy. Come along now!
Requirements
You’ll need the following to do this:
- Source Filmmaker. Obviously.
- Team Fortress 2. It’s free nowadays, ya know.
- A general willingness to use Windows Explorer.
- Some tea, coffee, or some other drink you’d have on a nice afternoon.
Got all that up and ready? Good! Let’s go.
How To Get It On
First thing’s first, run over to steamappscommonTeam Fortress 2tfmaps and grab an affected map. For testing’s sake, we’ll use pl_borneo.
Copy it over to steamappscommonTeam Fortress 2bin. Now, click the address bar at the top of the window, type “cmd” and press Enter. A command line prompt will pop up. Don’t worry! We won’t be here long.
Type in the following:
(or whatever map you copied in) and press Enter. Wait a couple of seconds for the text entry field to reappear to make sure things are done.
Now, you’ll notice that the BSP file you copied here is a lot bigger. Take it and move it to steamappscommonSourceFilmmakergameusermodmaps.
Now, treat yourself to a nice big swig of that drink I mentioned earlier. You’ve done it! I knew you’d be able to handle it, you handsome devil, you.
Troubleshooting
If you get a message about now being able to find a gameinfo.txt file, you need to set your environment variables. Here’s how.
- Open the SFM SDK.
- Open the drop-down box at the bottom of the window and select whatever option is already selected (likely usermod).
- A window will pop up asking if you want to do this. Click “OK”.
- Restart your PC, just to be safe.
Further Reading
You may need to manually update your TF2 assets to make sure everything looks right:
[link]
Some custom maps may not have HDR. Here’s how to deal with that:
[link]