Valve Source Tools is a set of console instruments designed to work with Valve's software infrastructure, including Steam and Source Engine games.
Currently the core of its functionality lies in two PowerShell modules: ValveSourceTools.Steam and ValveSourceTools.SourceEngine. These modules are designed to work with Windows PowerShell (version 5.1) and .NET Framework 4.8+.
Note that even though Windows PowerShell is shipped with every standard Windows installation, it is recommended to use a more recent version of PowerShell, which is available as a separate downloadable distributive. Refer to the Links section for the latest version of PowerShell.
ValveSourceTools.Steam provides parsers for .ini and Valve's .vdf formats. VDFs are used by Steam to store configurations and other related information. This module is currently in development with more features coming later, as well as user-oriented instruments built on top of them.
ValveSourceTools.SourceEngine is designed to work with Source Engine resources and provides multiple instruments for importing/exporting .vmf, .lmp and Stripper's .cfg formats, as well as merging them together.
See the Links section for more info.
Source Engine maps are packed in the .bsp format (see BSP (Source)). It's a map compiled for the game engine, but it's not the format you can work with in a map editor (Hammer or Hammer++). To work on a map you need to decompile it, which gives you a .vmf file. Its structure is similar to JSON, except it allows for the same key to have numerous different values (so not the usual unique key-value pair).
If a map is updated after the game was already shipped, devs don't change the whole .bsp file. Instead, they add additional files (.lmp, LUMP) that describe changes to the map. These files are read and processed by the game engine when the map is loaded.
Additionally, server admins may also want to introduce unique changes to the maps on their own servers. A common way to do that would be with the help of a Metamod plugin, Stripper:Source. It allows you to add, remove or modify entities on the map without requiring clients to have the same version of the map, because all of the .bsp and .lmp files remain unchanged. All the changes are described in .cfg files with specific instructions for Metamod that are executed on map launch.
However, there is no known way to work with those Stripper's config files locally in a map editor, no way to incorporate all the changes. That is, there wasn't until now...
There can be three (or more) different files with slightly different formats that describe the end result seen by players on the server. In order to load it all in the map editor, the ValveSourceTools.SourceEngine module was developed that would help merge these resources into a new single .vmf file.
So how does it look like?
Vanilla is how it looks like in the base game.
Custom is an example of how it may look like on a community server.
Now you can have these changes in the map editor, too.
- Even though this module is supposed to work with a number of Source games, it was only thoroughly tested with Left 4 Dead 2.
- Use
Get-Help <function name> -Fullto get complete help info on a given function. - All of the module's public functions accept both absolute and relative paths as inputs.
- Specify path to a log file with the
-LogFileparameter for any function to log its actions. - Include the
-Silentparamater to suppress both console and file logging even if path to a log file was specified. Note that progress bars will still be visible, as the whole process may take some time (usually takes a few seconds, but can be half a minute, depending on your machine and main core load at the moment). Those will be wiped from the screen after the process is done.
You don't need to install the modules in order to use them — just downloading them is enough:
- Click on the
<> Codebutton in the top-right corner of this page, choose "Download ZIP" and save it anywhere you want; - Unpack the zip to a directory of your choosing;
- Make sure to avoid whitespaces in the path.
- Launch PowerShell CLI in the directory where the zip was unpacked to;
- Import the modules:
Import-Module .\ValveSourceTools.SourceEngine\ValveSourceTools.SourceEngine.psd1
Import-Module .\ValveSourceTools.Steam\ValveSourceTools.Steam.psd1Now these modules will be loaded for the duration of the session.
Install the modules on your system:
- Click on the
<> Codebutton in the top-right corner of this page, choose "Download ZIP" and save it anywhere you want; - Unpack the zip to a directory of your choosing;
- Make sure to avoid whitespaces in the path.
- Launch PowerShell CLI in the directory where the zip was unpacked to;
- Run
.\setup.bat
Now these modules will be available whenever you launch PowerShell.
These commands will help you get started:
Get-Module ValveSourceTools.* -ListAvailable
Get-Help ValveSourceTools.SourceEngine
Get-Help ValveSourceTools.Steam
Get-Help <FunctionName> -FullWhere <FunctionName> is a name of a function, e.g. Get-Help Merge-Map -Full
List of available function names (ValveSourceTools.SourceEngine): Import-Vmf, Export-Vmf, Import-Lmp, Export-Lmp, Import-Stripper, Export-Stripper, Merge-Map
List of available function names (ValveSourceTools.Steam): Import-Vdf, Export-Vdf, Import-Ini, Export-Ini
- BSP (Source) | Valve Developer Community
- Binary Space Partitioning | Valve Developer Community
- VMF (Valve Map Format) | Valve Developer Community
- Lump file format | Valve Developer Community
- List of the Source decompilers | Valve Developer Community
- BSPSource | Valve Developer Community
- BSPSource Releases | GitHub
- List of decompiled maps by Spumer | GitHub
- Valve Hammer Editor (Source) | Valve Developer Community
- Hammer++ | Valve Developer Community
- Hammer++ Features | ficool2.github.io
- PowerShell/PowerShell | GitHub
- See Releases for the latest version;
- Or use winget:
winget install Microsoft.PowerShell