Release Hammer's source code

[SamVanheer]

Release the source code for Hammer, the Half-Life 1 level editor. The last released version for this engine was 3.5 beta in April 2003, more than 20 years ago.

Most level designers nowadays use JACK, a closed source program with a paid version. A recent update broke compatibility with the last free version making it impossible to open JMF files saved using the paid version: https://steamcommunity.com/app/496450/discussions/0/4036980006268371571/

While the free version may receive updates to add support this illustrates a continuing problem with HL1 level design: there is no freely available level editor that works properly and has all of Hammer's features.

Hammer itself has had problems running on newer systems: AMD drivers have had problems for a long time and since it uses immediate mode OpenGL it has problems running well when loading very large maps. It also has bugs and non-functional user interface elements.

There are open source level editors but none that provide full support for Half-Life 1 and the only one in active development (Trenchbroom) is mainly a Quake level editor.

Providing the source code would allow an update to be developed to provide a direct replacement for Hammer that is open source and under the control of the community that uses it.

Some other things this would allow:

• A native Linux version
• Removing the use of Windows' Short filename APIs
• Adding support for the engine's filesystem behavior (_downloads, _addon directories et al)
• Improving error reporting when a problem occurs during compilation (e.g. the very common "file not found" errors which don't report which file was not found)
• Ensuring the game is launched correctly to avoid problems when the working directory is not set to the game directory
• Fixing the spawnflags tab not properly setting flags after the 12th flag