Fixed sphere and arch tools:
Valve's brush tools are all designed to round the points of the solids they make onto the grid. This causes spheres to break and sometimes messes with arches too. The sphere screenshot is demonstrating that Hammer isn't marking the sphere as an invalid solid like it usually would. I modified the 2003 leaked Hammer source code to do this. Sadly that version doesn't include the torus tool. It's probably of dubious legality to release this even without the source code but maybe I could drop some prefabs. It's probably a popular argument that models should be used for this kind of thing but in my case I need it for something models can't do.
Non-solid visibility blocker:
I made a texture that can be used exactly the same way as the hint texture but it also blocks compiled visibility. It doesn't change brushes placed inside of it and some faces of the brush can be covered by the hint or skip textures to make them not block vis. This is done with a custom BSP compiler. It can properly seal areas.
Why:
I made these for optimizing Garry's Mod Spacebuild maps, which consist of many nonsolid spheres that one can travel into, revealing mini levels inside them. I will be putting a sphere of the vis blocker texture around them. The special hint-like behavior of them is essential here, as it is very hard to make a hollow sphere that doesn't glitch out and develop leaks. Yes, I am fully aware of how "bad" it is to make a sphere that's not an entity. :)
Download:
There's no download yet! These things are not necessarily complete, fully tested, or release-worthy. Posting here to see if people are interested in a release.
