How Long Until Hammer Is Gone?

Hello,
I have been using Hammer for a significant amount of time and love Hammer very much.

Based on information from others, I understand that Hammer supposedly will be done for or completely deprecated in due time. I can see the vision however I simply cannot let go of Hammer. I've tried the Indirect Light volumes and such inside the scene editor and it's just not good enough. 

My current usage for hammer is simply for the superior lighting, I depend on baked shadows and Indirect lighting, in fact, my only reason for using Hammer is simply because of how sophisticated it is when it comes to lighting. Like I said earlier, I tried the Indirect Light Volumes, I've tried everything and nothing compares to the fidelity Hammer can provide. Even if it later goes, will it still be present and "working" in a sense I can continue using it?

Are there plans to introduce higher fidelity lighting solutions for lightmaps, improved GI Probes (The DDGI Light Volumes are not going to work for my work), enhanced indirect lighting, etc?

Thankyou.

Indirect Light Volumes are so bad right now that hammer is far from deprecated yet, honestly I don't know Facepunch plans, but my guess is that they're not going to remove hammer until the new mapping tools in the scene system are entirely done and fully polished !

So this includes:
- Complete conversion of all the necessary tools from hammer
- A proper GI system
- A conversion tool probably to convert hammer map to new scene system map

Laylad indicated not too long ago that Hammer will likely not be "removed" in a literal sense, but rather placed in the backseat, as it already has been for some time now. Either way, you will really always be able to use Hammer for whatever purpose you please; the question is whether access will remain available through the S&box Editor.