Half-Life Alyx SDK Description
The purpose of this repo is to automate the process of enabling the SteamVR environments tools to be used to create and compile maps for use with Half Life Alyx. Big credit for this script goes to Gvarados twitch as I learned how to do this by watching his live stream while he set this up and painstakingly recreated it on my own.
How-To Use
I've created a video tutorial here which I highly recommend for new users - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=338OCffvyzc&lc=Ugw4qgsX1dmVFtC3ohV4AaABAg
This repo includes a batch (.bat) script that you can run on your machine to faciliate the creation of a Alyx SDK "standalone" app. This will make a copy of some files to run as a standalone application that will enable you to use all of the Half-Life Alyx assets to start creating custom Half Life Alyx maps before the official toolkit arrives! This works because the existing SteamVR environments editor is ALSO based on source 2 and fairly compatible with HL Alyx assets.
Run the hl-alyx-sdk-setup.bat script
The script tries to find where your steam/alyx/steamvr installs are located by default, but should prompt you if any/all of those don't exist. The script will copy over files that it needs to launch the base editor, there are additonal required files: see below.
Follow additional instructions at the end of .bat script
You MUST download the .FGD files required by Half-Life Alyx to load entities into Hammer or none of the entities will show up correctly on your map. You can download those from Gvarados1 FGD repo
Run Editor launch script
Double click the bat file located in your new SDK folder to launch the editor.
FAQ
Errors compiling
I haven't experienced this particular issue, but a lot of folks have been describing it in discord so I will capture it here. If you build your map and get an access violation error that looks like the following:
Then here is the fix:
Go to game/hlvr/soundstacks and change the one that says soundstacks_manifest.vrcman_c and change it to soundstacks_manifest.vrman_c.old
Error on editor load
This error can be ignored, the editor will still load fine after you click OK
Known issues
Navmesh doesn't appear to be working - see other guides for fixesNavmesh works if you grab the latest FGD's (this repo includes a patched gameinfo file)Running in editor WILL crash the editor- Running in editor works now!- Random crashes
Compiling maps
Maps should compile from the hammer editor, note that you will have to COPY them over to your REAL Half-Life Alyx maps folder in order to actually try them out. This is possible with +sv_cheats and the map command in the console of Half Life Alyx.
Why?
Valve initially promised us SDK tools that would launch side-by-side with Half-Life Alyx, but it turns out that wasn't the case, although they have now informed us they are hard at work at releasing the SDK and/or editor.
Turns out they already shipped the SDK tools on Dota 2, Destinations and SteamVR Home which happen to be compatible with HL:A.
DISCLAIMER
Not everything works, probably lots of it doesn't, you will most likely encounter crashes periodically. Save often.
I'm not responsible for anything that happens to your machine if you run this script, please don't sue me. In addition I'm a complete novice to the Hammer editor, so I have no notion of what is/isn't functioning properly when it comes to that, but basic world building and assett dropping seems to be working perfectly fine.