I this guide I will be showing you how to make dark maps (maps with no lighting) for SFM.

If you're wondering why anybody would want a map thats completely dark, it is usually because it allows the user to create their own custom lighting without having it be affected by the map lighting.

For this guide you will also need to download BSPSource, which can be found here.[ata4.info] It's a nifty little tool which will allow you to decompile .bsp files into .vmf files to edit in Hammer.
Also it should be noted that not every map will decompile well, some will throw errors and others will need some editing to get them back into a usable state.

Once you've got BSPSource downloaded and a .bsp of the map you want to decompile, you'll need to start BSPSource with the bspsrc.bat file in the BSPSource folder you downloaded.

BSPSource will open, all you need to do is drag and drop the .bsp of the map you want to decompile into the box.



Now just go ahead and hit decompile and choose where you want the .vmf to be saved, name it something like 'map_name_dark'. A window will appear logging what BSPSource is doing and if there are any errors, if all goes well there won't be any errors.

Now open up the SFM SDK by launching SFM in Steam and clicking 'Launch SDK'. Click the option that says Hammer Editor. You will be greeted with the the archaic Hammer interface.

Go to File > Open and browse to the .vmf that BSPSource created.



Now go to Map > Entity Report at the top toolbar. This will open up a new window, you need to find light_enviroment and click 'Go to', this will teleport the view to focus on a little sun symbol. You need to double click it, it will then open a new window showing the properties of the entity.

You will need to change the settings to the ones below, what this does is make the map light completely dark.



Click apply to close the window. Now go to File > Run Map a new window will appear with settings for compiling the map. Map compiling can take a while to complete so you probably want to go ahead and set 'Run VIS' and 'Run RAD' to Fast. The downside to this is that you will get a lower framerate in SFM, so if you have a slow computer and are willing to wait what can be several hours for the map to compile you can leave them at normal.



Once you have done that click 'Ok' and the map will begin compiling, hopefully you won't get any errors. Once it has completed you can close the compile window and load up your map in SFM as normal!