How do i go about doing this?

Just press the export button or you do testmap and it should automaticly export it as a .bsp in the directory you put as target in hammer options.

so it should already be there???

Ok, well you got ur 2 different file types. There is the Hammer editing file type (.rmf) and you final map that the source engine is going to use. The .rmf does not contain lightmap info, vis info, any other info besides your basic geometry, textures, entities, all you need to edit your map. You need to export or "run" your file in hammer to get it into the .bsp state that the source engine uses. If you set it all up correctly, I think it should just be file -> run? This will run a series of programs that will build lighting, collision, visability info, etc and put it into the final .bsp file. At that point you can play your map.

Note: This run process can take a LONG time if you have a complicated map, so do not freak it if seems like the program froze, go get a snack watch some tv and come back. Its best to run as few background progams as possible during the build.

This isn't actually converting, it is compiling. Basically it means it's putting your theoretical info from within hammer into concrete info that the source engine uses. This is similar to just about any other field of computing, any program you use is compiled from it's original language using a compiler for that specific language. mp3's created or mixed on the pc are compiled (or rendered, same thing) from the program into an mp3.

.rmf and .map are older extensions that were used in mapping for hl1. For hl2 you are going to use .vmf (valve map file) for your maps editable in hammer, and .bsp (binary space partition) as the final compiled map that you will run ingame.

I'm assuming you have already figured this out since you released your beta.

And back to that freezeing thing if you get "Warning too many clusters in cluster" or something like that, if that message appers during compiling/convertion you should prepare yourself for very long wait (24H) because I did get that message and when I ran all 3 things at normal it froze up to PortalFlow ...3 and staied even my com was on 12h.

So I turned vvis.exe running fast and now it'll go through that part but as you can see in Final version of Water Hazard there are some errors at the water when you go to islands corners.

i got it....