GoldSource Mapping Tips Created 18 years ago2006-01-02 09:43:42 UTC by Kasperg

Well.. Er.. Lots of good stuff is recieved by cop.. er studying other people's work..
Decom.. uh.. clears throat.. Making screenies also helps..

I can do the same effect as Daub, only a little easier, and much more effective.

I'm writing a tutorial on it now.

Place both of them in an equal distance from each other.

this sentence is sort of funny. You know, any two things are always equidistant
The method seems to work fine. If your cilinders are aligned to the grid, chances of getting malformed faces are less likely. Also, remember to clip objects according to the grid, from one vertex to another.

I think he meant "with the same x- and y-offset value" so that the curve formed would be a semi-semi-circle, not a semi-semi-oval.

Exactly..

Before i ask a question, i was wondering if some-one could link me to an error guide, or something of that nature.

Gunter, see the Links page for Leak-Free. Tommy's is ancient. Stop linking to it, people!

Ancient but great. Most errors are listed, and it remains a good source of answers.

Leek-Free is dead, people! Maintain your links!

Yeah, what the hell happened?

Don't know, but it is offline now for ages. You might want to add "Temporary down" next to the link, or try to contact the owner.

Many people don't seem to search on Google, but there's other people that don't look at other known HL-mapping sites. Give them a try, you will often find new things even if you don't expect it.

BLASPHEMY! you shall be smitten.

Sad to say, i can't come up with any good mapping tips. most of my would be with making textures, and those are photoshop tips more than anything else.

For the record, I CLIP and HOLLOW things out A LOT! i rarely get errors.

CLIP and HOLLOW

Euw...

I suck at photoshop but I hate using the HL textures.

Anyway I can offer little in the land of tips but here is how I go about making a level and a little trick I discovered (although I'm sure valve used it too)

Note that this example shows 1 hallway but i tend to work on 3 rooms at once.

STEP 1Firstly make basic box rooms and make the gaps for the doors and light it with point entity lights. Texture it with the base textures that the room will use.

STEP 2Next add the brush based lights and minor details to the floor and ceiling. In this case I have made gaps for the lights and some pipes and then covered them each with a simple func_wall brush

STEP 3Next add the major details. I have built support pillars along either side of the hallway.The hallway was very dark after removing the point entity lights so in order to brighten it up I added upward facing lights on the base of each pillar. These are good because they light the ceiling. However if you want a dark area just leave these out.

STEP 4Now here is the clever tip. I added some point entity lights at 3 points each in the dead centre of the hallway. There were set to a brightness "0 255 0 50" which is fully green light but set to be very dim.When compared to the original there is very little difference but the slighly more green tint makes the lighting a little more interesting. Valve used dark blue point based light entities in the Anomalous Materials RMF included with the HL SDK.

Here is a list of what I think works and where.

Red Tints for tunnels or areas containing pipes and vents.
Green Tints for older or run down areas of a level.
Blue in labs and offices.
Purple in areas that are subject to a lot of alien activity.

Note: Tints are best used in well-lit areas otherwise they will overpower the the original lighting although using more than one in a dimly lit area can have some interesting effects.

I agree with Vox about the music thing, it helps creativity and interest in the project if you are listening to some music you love.

Other than that, I don't really know what to say, everything I could say seems a bit self-explanatory.

I don't mean to offend any of the mappers who made the following maps, I just played in them in muzzle's server till my connection timed out.

Tip 1:

The staircase's railing isn't well aglained. It's just rotated regular rail texture.
There are special textures that fit stair's railing.

This is one of those textures. Unfortanatly to make it fit you must make the railing from many parts, as seen in the screeni. The texture on these brushes is 1.00x1.00 so the size of that brush(lower bar on the screen) is the size you should use is the size of your steps is 16 units highX32 units wide. First make your brush and use the texture application to aglain the texture to the middle. (using the justify texture to center or fit and the shift option) If the texture is heading the wrong direction use the aglain to face option in the texture aplication, or add a '-' before the number in the scaling x/y value. After aglaining to all the sides of the brush turn on the texture lock and copy the brush over and over till you created the whole railing.

Tip 2:

You see that the fence hides a part of the beams, to slove this, tie the fence and the beam, to entity each one alone.

Tip 3:

This one isn't really a problem but I want to post a little nice trick.

1)Create a brush textured with the null texture or {blue texture. Texture one of the sides with the net texture.

2)Copy the brush like in the screeni below. Don't do anything(changing the tool, moving around in the 3d view..ect), If you did do anything then move the second brush a bit in a 2D view and drop it in the same place it was. In the tool menu->flip objects flip the object horzantaly or vertecly(it dependes on the window you moved it in) so the net texture will face the other brush.

3) Tie each part seperatly to an entity.

- A TWO DIMENTIONAL BRUSH

Tip 4:

Those little holes you can't pass through below the destroyed wall, and the windows you wont even get to them create usless clip nodes. To remove those clip nodes just place a clip brush over them.(bullets, missles and grenades pass through clip brushes) You can also place over detailed cliffs clip brushes. This way you can avoid the max clip nodes error like unbreakable's casa del administrator entery, he created really detailed cliffs, so highly detailed he had to turn half of them into func_illuosnaries to remove some clip nodes. If you'll place clip brushs the walls will still be solid and you'll remove most clipnodes.

Tip 5:

Monsters can only climb steps that their hight is two times smaller then their leangth, Like in the screeni. The maximume step size is 16 units high. The regular step size(also the one used in Hl1) is 16x32.

I'll post an example map with most of these tips and a flip sign in it.

teehee, muzz, you got pwned by elon

shouldn't laugh though. it was my map you edited

@Elon: I know some textures in Detention aren't aligned perfect.

However, I don't think many people will notice and if they do, I doubt if it'll impact their sense of immersion. I simply think it's not worth the hassle. It's not something that feels unlogic or looks that bad, it's just not perfect. Anyway, I could've created a texture for that, don't limit yourself to HL ones...

I'd see that as much more important now. Technical tips and tricks have their place and it's good to learn new nifty trickery, but you should know it's place. Looks sell your level, gameplay keeps it being played. I'd rather put more attention to aligning the platforms and placing items accordingly (that plaza there really could've used some AR grenades to balance the weapons placed higher, for example) that fixing ladder textures like that.

First use the regular light entity and see how it looks, insted of using texture lights, they always seem so unrealistic. And when adding atmosphere and feel to your map, you should have colord lights, not much, just a little "touch" so that the player wont think of it but it will look better.

And DON?T be afraid to carve, hollow or clip. Those tools are there because they are working and usefull. If used like they should you won?t get errors, if you use them the wrong way, like hollowing a cylinder are carving wierd shapes you?ll get errors, but that?s just common sence. Use them with care and they?ll work just fine and save you time and energy.

I don't find carving any usefull, because it is prone to errors when used with shapes more complex than a cube, plus I like to have more control over my brushes.
But feel free to use it. If it saves you time, don't discard it. I just don't find it saving me time...

Anyway, using texture lights can be a quick way to lit up an area. Fiddling with your .rad files can be of use there, as the default light information may not always suit your taste.

Be aware that colored lights affect the way textures come out. A red texture shows up black when lit by blue light, for example. Common sense but good to keep in mind. Using light tints can be a nice way to give different area's a different feeling, and they can serve a landmark function there as well. In my map mudanchee (that's still in the works...) the main cave is slightly blueish, the crystal cave is greenish, the tomb cave is reddish and the waterfall cave is wet, err, orange. Not only the objects and shape of these area's show you where you are, also the color useage lets you know your location.

use the regular light entity and see how it looks, insted of using texture lights, they always seem so unrealistic

I disagree. Point lights are much less realistic. They can be used in certain spots where the light source is not clear (over a pool of mystical powers for example) but placing them under a fluorescent light is noobish, I'm sorry to say. I understand that a light bulb can shine light in a spherical way, but fluorescent lights do not.
Unless I'm wrong, texlights can be triggered on and off with the proper settings, so pointlights should only be used for testing or ambience, never instead of a light emitting texture :

That is a great way to make DM maps easier to learn and play, maps that look the same everywhere isn?t always easy to play without getting confused and lost.

Indeed, Tosse, hence the use of landmarks. Recognizable objects, or shapes, or colors, or style, or other things, to let the player know where he is. Sounds can play a role there too.

Sounds can play another role and that's the role of warnings. When you hear water splashing around the corner, you know there's a player coming up. Depending on the area, your equipment and the assumed equipment of the opponent, you now have a little time to decide your strategy. You could hide to ambush him, or run away, or throw some grenades already.
In UT, health vials were used sometimes to give audio warnings. Experienced players however may avoid them to surprize their opponents. A nice tactical situation, don't you think? Or how about triggering these signals but then backtracking, leaving someone else waiting around the corner only to render him vulnerable to another side...
And then there are the broadcasted signals. The one in crossfire that tells everyone to get to the bunker. Or the ones that indicate somebody has gotten the RPG.

Visual signs can serve the same function. TFC maps sometimes have a map that shows which control zones are occupied by who, that's a less direct visual sign and probably not the best example here. But think about de_aztec, the thunder that you see just after somebody crosses the rope-bridge...

Oh, and item placement. Placing a valuable item in the middle of a room not only makes it harder to get, experienced players may also use them as a bait - while they're waiting just up on a platform or behind a pillar, their opponent may rush to the weapon... of course, the opponent may also decide to scan the room first.

I'm just brainstorming a bit and rehashing things I've read and some things I've tried implementing mysels. Just take what you think is usefull here.

One thing i like about DM maps is when it?s easy to find and get a gun, i hate it when one of the player?s got the gauss or egon while you run around with the little crap pistol you start with and you can?t get a gun in time. That?s why i created Banko_arena (btw, the final version should be done soon) You are never far from a gun or a player, lot?s of action.

Here's a simple one that most people know, but still I see it buggered on a regular basis.

When you have double doors of any kind--like elevator doors--make each door a seperate func_door, and give them each the same name. Then put a trigger brush in front of the door.

This way, the doors will only open by the trigger, and will always open simultaneously.

When making an elevator with I always had a problem that the doors start to move after/before the whole elevator started to. In one of my late maps, I created an elevator with windos, and doors with windows. I added a little delay(well not so little, 3 seconds and afterward raized to 8) and what a wonder, NO PROBLEMS with the doors and window, all of them had the same timing too.(mostly with out a delay I need to change the doors' delay) Conclusion: When making elevators with doors, add a delay of atlist 2 seconds, after the doors close, before the whole elevator starts moving. In that time you can use an env_shake and an ambient_generic to make it less boring.

Edit:

Got another tip! When you get bored of building one place move to another. When you'll finish with the other place it'll be easier for you to finish the first.

Ignore button:

If you've created a complex brush-based entiy like a func_tank, train, or whatever, and you want to edit it without changing it To World and redoing all the entity values, use Ignore.

Click on your entity and then click the Ignore button. This disassociates the brushes from the entity--while the button is toggled--, so you can edit the brushes individually. When your done, click again and WALLOP, your done

A confusing sidenote about Ignore. If you hit CTRL-W to change a brush To World, it is actually the hotkey for Ignore Instead!

Elon Pro?

One further thing worth mentioning about the Ignore button - 'cos I get caught by it all the time. ;)

Don't forget it is turned on!

This can specifically be a problem if you start trying to create or modify other brush-based entities; you can get yourself into quite a mess...

Heres tips1,and
2.

If you fix that example map link, it'd be more usefull, Unbreakable...

However, you may want to approach reflective floors in a different way by leaving the faces underneath just normal as they are, without copying the lights - or applying a black texture to them (which allows you to leave out detailed brushes and all). Then, place sprites at the place where the lights would be in the mirrored part.
This gives a more vague sort of reflection, one that works better in certain occasions and one that's quite easy to set up and good for performance.

If the center x of your hammer window is illuminated red, you have an enity in need of an origin brush--func_door_rotating, func_tracktrain, etc.

Apparently when you leave it out, Hammer uses the center xyz of world as the origin.

Path_corners for func_trains, and path_tracks for func_tracktrains. I wasted a couple of hours learning that one the hard way

if you have a tunnel going through some a pool of water - if you tie all parts of the water to one entity, then some dissapear, you get errors, and sometimes the water appears somewhere else

what you need to do is tie each one seperately, and make the lower ones a texture set to 1, so that you can't see the layers.

Neat alex! Most people know this already, but the same sort of thing applies to fence/railings--transparent textures. If you make all the sides one entity, then some edges disappear.

Making each fence/railing section it's own entity fixes it

If the center x of your hammer window

What center x? I don't see center x. Or perhaps you mean the x in the middle of each brush/brush-entity?

I also think it's known by now why that happens, but let's rehash it in a clear way:

Face splitting happens when two brushes touch or intersect. The surface of one is splitted into convex surfaces, so the touching surface can be safely removed.
If you were to tie this touching brush to an entity, the face splitting wouldn't occur, but there would also be a small part of that otherwise splitted face that is never seen.

In fact, face splitting happens between every brush that's in the same entity. You can see world brushes as being part of the big world entity here, as a matter of speaking. So for a railing, if they're part of the same entity, then splitting occurs and naturally also the unseen face removal.
The natural solution is then to put both brushes in different entities.

On a vaguely related note, putting too much opaque surfaces in front of each other (sprites and beams count as well here), you're filling the fillrate, which means, the scene needs to be recalculated for every of those surfaces. Needless to say, that hurts performance a lot once you've used enough layers. Polycounts don't matter here.
Not that most of us will ever do things like this, but hey.

Misinforation alert!

If the center x of your hammer window is illuminated red, you have an enity in need of an origin brush--func_door_rotating, func_tracktrain, etc.

What center x? I don't see center x.

Yeah Muzzie, you're right--I just tested it and there is no center x... I have no idea what I was thinking. Actually, I think I had a weird phantom brush appearing, caused from collpasting vertieces until there were none left...yikes--this isn't modeling rowleybob! I think I ended up fixing it by opening entiy report and deleting.

Misinforation alert!

I'm sure I learnt this a long time ago, however I seemed to forget it today, and it cost me a big chunk of time, so I'll repeat here for your pleasure:

Cordon Tool:

Does NOT work in Expert mode!
Does NOT process map.rad file--textlights--!

err.. The cordon tool only restricts what Hammer exports when you click "Export to map".

Firstly you shouldn't be using Hammer to compile, and the cordon tool does nothing to the .rad file.

Why not make this thread a sticky?

[Edit] Hehe...nevermind

and the cordon tool does nothing to the .rad file.

It's strange because I ran into some trouble while making the fallingwater map for Source. Texlights didnt always work. Was it because of cordon bounds or is there a minimum brush size in Source so it emitts light?

My mapping tip of today: If something has been done before, dont map it unless your version is better or offers something new. Bad maps are bad, but it's worse if they can easily be compared to older and better ones. (this of course makes reference to the kazillion versions of popular CS maps )

@Kol: You're absolutely right, everyone should batch compile. I've just downloaded Nem's and the HL tool archive too.

From what I've heard it makes things easier, and because Hammer isn't running, the compile tools have more resources and hence, faster compile.

It just takes me a little longer than most to try new things compared to most people...-1000 forum points for me

Heyhey, why should I batch compile if compiling from Hammer is easy to work with? I'd take the little resource loss for granted just because it lets me compile faster... I also can jump straight back to Hammer after a test-run, without ever accessing another program.

That's just personal preference. Not a general rule or something that has to be done. Just like carving - if that works for you, do it.

Another, general, tip:

Save up on idea's. You might be able to use them later even while they're of no use to you right now. They can give inspiration or form great idea's when mixed up with others.
Also, don't stop working on a project to chase another, 'better', idea. Having finished something counts for much more than having thought up on a 'good' idea. Idea's are plenty, results are not. Go for the result, perhaps use the idea but otherwise save the idea for later, as stated above.

Just my point of view on idea's. Hope it helps you some.

Cool. Now I don't feel so bad about not batch compiling. I'm still going to try it though...

HLFix

Thanks to NinjaGrinch, I use HLfix now, and for those of you who don't use it, lemme tell you now, it's absolutely essential!

For those who don't know, it makes you're compiled architecture more like it appears in-editor. You know how if you take a piece of complex architecture, rotate it, and compile, and you get all those weird non-flush, ugly edges?? HLfix fixes that!

Makes lots of impossible or otherwise difficult architecture to pull off much easier. In other words:

Don't delay, HLFix today

That's a good tool - can't say i use it much. i like having to slog out my Vertex Manipulation through compile cycles. Failing that - it's Notepad editing.

It certainly broadens what you can do. There's architecture I can pull off the first compile now, that I wouldn't've even attempted prior to using HLFix.

At the same time, the exquisite architecture you can pull off, often isn't very well appreciated using the Half-Life Engine. Simpler stuff looks just about as good in game

I still think it's absolutely essential though... While over-detailed brushwork doesn't "show" the greatest in HL, those awful edges that don't line up--without HLFix--are instantly, and terribly recognizable

I dont know if this can be counted as a tip, But i was reading about not hollowing cylinders, and if you want to make a really quick pipe, make an arch. set it to 360 degrees and make the walls thin enough to crouch/walk inside. then you can VM to get a nice neat square outline.

Pretty nice. Whatever brush/vertex you have selected, you can move around with the arrow keys! Nice for lining up stuff while watching the 3D view, or just lining up stuff in general.

Now if they would only add this for texture alignment!

Just turn off Texture Lock, nudge the brush about a bit, turn it back on, and put the brush itself back.

That's a great idea!