Why does Source Film Maker crash when loading cp_badlands?

Whenever I try to load cp_badlands into Source Film Maker, it crashes, randomly.

I've tried restarting multiple times, and I will only try reinstalling as a last resort, as it takes too long. The map is important, too, so I can not simply use another one.

Is there any reason why a specific map would crash Source Film Maker? What can I do to fix it?

source-filmmaker

Best Answer

Unfortunately, it appears that the map cp_badlands is well known to cause issues with the Source Filmmaker. There has been several posts about it in the Steam forums¹²³⁴.

While users suggest that it relates to the word "bad" included in the name, and perhaps triggers filtering that changes the actual command being run, this is more likely to be speculation based off further issues with a other badlands maps. It is worth keeping in mind that Source Filmmaker is still in open beta, and is likely to contain bugs, both minimal and game breaking.

This Steam forum thread has a comment from Mr_Zo that might provide insight:

I was never quite sure what caused this. The only main difference between cp_badlands and arena_badlands, is the former is bigger. So obviously there is something in cp_badlands that causes the crash (Keeping in mind that SFM is based on a much older TF2 engine version than the current).

The sdk_content does provide "sdk_cp_badlands.vmf". I've tried compiling that, but it still causes a crash. If there is an area that you need to use in cp_badlands that isn't in arena_badlands, you can try cutting out that section from "sdk_cp_badlands.vmf" and delete everything else.

While this does not fix the initial problem, it gives us further insights into why the issue might be happening, and alternate ways to work around the map.

Pictures about "Why does Source Film Maker crash when loading cp_badlands?"

Why does SFM crash when I load a map?

As a general rule, if something crashes SFM, whether it's a map or model, this usually means that something is wrong with the map or model that keeps making SFM crash, though not always.

How do I launch Source Filmmaker?

You can launch the SFM directly from Steam, as you would any other game. When you launch the SFM, you'll see a startup screen that you can use to open a recent session, create a new session, or browse to an existing session. Specify a name for your session and a directory to save it in, and click Create.

how to fix sfm crashing (tutorial)

Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Images: Nika Cuores, Alexey Demidov, Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz, Tatiana Fet