Shameful mapping confessions Created 4 years ago2020-02-24 16:59:25 UTC by monster_urby

Let's get one of those fun discussions going again. So during my commute, the radio station I listen to has a segment called The Fact Controller where people phone in with confessions of things they took as fact for years but were actually completely wrong.

I figured, why not do the same thing for level design. I've looked through a few of my older maps in the last couple of days, including some backups from The Core's early days and was ashamed to find some hilarious solutions to non-existent problems. Here are two of mine.

1. I was totally unaware that the locked door sound would play if a func_door was named but not triggered. My solution was for the locked door to be a normal world brush, with a 1 unit thick trigger in front of it that played the locked door sound when the player touched it... I only learned the truth in 2012 after Archie joined me in developing The Core and I was looking at one of his RMFs... I quickly updated all of my maps with the correct setup.

2. For the longest time I thought that info_landmark entities had to be in the EXACT same spot between maps. Again, I never realised the proper use of info_landmarks until Archie looked at some of my maps for The Core and asked me why some of them were WAAAY off in the corner of the grid. He laughed.

I've just found out about the CONTENT_WATER texture and its usage a couple days ago.
I've always made light shafts as func_illusionaries with double sided brushes instead of using CONTENT_WATER (because let's face it, who would've ever thought about using that texture with that name for such a thing? No one).

So yeah: shame on me for not knowing that, and shame on the tool textures for having misleading names.

In January 2018, if I remember well, I needlessly used a BUNCH of path_corners instead of just having a multi_manager + trigger_relay system for looping.To be exact:God, forgive me for my sins...
I was even paid for that map, LOL.
But yeah, never done anything like that afterwards.

2. For the longest time I thought that info_landmark entities had to be in the EXACT same spot between maps. Again, I never realised the proper use of info_landmarks until Archie looked at some of my maps for The Core and asked me why some of them were WAAAY off in the corner of the grid. He laughed.

what the hell, they don't have to be in the same spots between maps? what do they even do

cntrl + i/l, that's right! I rebuilt the hunter space ship from metroid prime in hammer before I knew about the mirror commands. Talk about dedication.

Also, [ ] to increase/ decrease the grid size. Now when I map I keep my fingers on the buttons.

I also just found out on my last map that while using the wasd keys in the 3d window to move the camera around, you can also use the mouse scroll wheel to go faster.

Another nifty trick is to hold shift and drag click your mouse to create a new camera instead of zooming over to the location you need to view.

Another one, use the arrow keys while dragging vertices with vertex manipulation. cntrl click the window you want to drag them in. Also, someone discovered you can shift window click new vertices in vm. This allows you to grab combos of vertices that would be impossible otherwise.

I could go all day with new things I discover along the way. Lastly, when creating a masked texture in photoshop, instead of making the masked areas blue, I just make the masked areas a similar color to the outer edges of the texture. Then in Wally I click blue with the paint bucket tool to avoid colors turning semi blue along the edges of the mask.

If you have a CAD program, use it to make your texture line work match up with your brush geometry!

I wonder how many of these we’re simply not aware of

I know some of these cropped up during the Level Design Academy streams I did with Phillip. Trying to recall some that some of the viewers didn't know:

Ctrl-E centers all 2D views on the selected object.
Ctrl-3 centers the 3D view on it (JACK only)

Space + left mouse drag to move a 2D view.

We're always discovering new features and tricks. But one thing we all must be aware of is that HL engine and most of its assisting tools are either old –I'm not saying that old stuff is less useful than recent ones– and poorly optimized, as Half-Life was a game made with hurry. So we end up learning by experience with some of those hidden programming mistakes/gaps, own creativity and self mistakes. We, GoldSrc modders, (still) need better tools to make our development with greater proficiency; ease and agility. The problem is that most people are not interested in old stuff. I'm pretty sure they all could learn a lot with these old engines and tools too.

I've been working on my mod for about a year now, and in that year I've learned a lot about how to use goldsrc, so when I went back to the first map I made for the mod and saw how absolutely nothing had been optimized I was horrified. Chairs, desks, light fixtures, even archways circles and pipes not made into walls or details.

I started mapping way back in 2005 when I was a little kid pretty much, I would name my maps de_something but they didn't have a bomb spot because I didn't know what de_ meant. I also made a "first map" tutorial which was a single 20 megabyte sized, 20000 pixels tall picture, the tutorial stated that light_environment has to be high enough so it can light the entire map... Also later on I would obsessively NULL every single surface that's invisible or outside world, which now I believe is quite meaningless.

Back in '06 when I was just exploring the capabilities of all the tools out there I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to place a brush in Hammer (Worldcraft back then) I could get the outline there but then nothing would happen.
Until I found that right clicking had the option "Create brush", I used that for a year or two until I must have pressed enter by accident and saw that it also creates the brush.

When I was first starting out I read some tutorial somewhere that recommended using a "realistic" thickness for walls, which was probably meant as "Don't make them paper thin, and don't make internal walls 64 units thick!" but which I interpreted as "eyeball it, just do what looks right to you"
Because that tutorial didn't also emphasize the importance of staying on the grid, I didn't. As a standard, I made every wall 6 units thick, rather than 8 or 16, meaning every level I made during my goldsource days was severely off-grid. I only learned that this was a horrible, terrible mistake from working on the BM Hazard Course mod, because we were making the maps in sections, rather than having each level designer be assigned to a specific bsp.

Some mapping tricks I discovered from experience:

• Texture flip using a negative Scale value, which can't be done through Rotation and Align

• A lighting glitch solution

• The possibility of having many textures based on a single material texture entry - Check the tutorial's note

• Functional targetname interchange

• This is how I usually build my maps and serves as a tip: You should use only perky textures during the map development. After the job is done, select everything (all faces) and apply SKY or NULL texture, then start painting everything from scratch. It may be laborious (or satisfying) but prevents any non-visible faces with unnecessary textures (saves r_speed).

There are many others, but that's all I can remember for now.

As a standard, I made every wall 6 units thick, rather than 8 or 16, meaning every level I made during my goldsource days was severely off-grid.

Yea, too thin. That makes gauss secondary shot passable xD

My sin is that I used sv_cheats 1 in a Map Labs competition in order to make the player to not take damage when they fall on a pile of trash since I didn't found other alternatives to make the player to not take damage, now most of people won't get the achievement on my map because I'm an evil basterd.

Second sin is that I carved and I also made a inside-out brush that I'm proud of but would fuck up my map.

It seems that I was the only one to mention good experiences here. I don't think I have had any sort of shame while mapping so far. Usually, when I realize that I am doing something wrong, I can spend days, but I end up finding a solution to the problem, and if not, I resort to the forums. (:

Ok, one bad thing that I could not avoid was not being able to send my water map for the whole splash life competition that happened a few months ago due to lack of completion. But, I want to work on it later and upload it someday. (:

Well yeah, it's a "shameful mapping confessions" thread, I don't think anyone's gonna post about the good stuff they did

As a standard, I made every wall 6 units thick, rather than 8 or 16, meaning every level I made during my goldsource days was severely off-grid.

The Colony 42 RMFs made me so very sad...

Another from me which hinges on the way I played games for the longest time. I got into a habit of playing games with cheats from the start even on the easiest difficulty. This includes Half-Life, the expansions and even mods. I don't think I actually legitimately finished Half-Life 1 until after 2010 and I'm STILL working my way through Quake 1, the original Doom games and expansions.

So until 10 years ago, I played a lot of games on the easiest difficulty with cheats. I've no idea why I didn't want to feel challenged when gaming. Naturally, this led to me:
A) Getting my ass absolutely handed to me in every online game I've ever played
and
B) Doing the same thing when testing my maps/mods

So looking back on the way a lot of my maps have been received, they are simultaneously too easy while also not having enough ammo or health pickups... Feedback from The Core's pre-alpha seems the consistently describe a lot of my chapters are "fine" in terms of combat, but there aren't enough changes to heal up.

So yeah, if you're cheating/playing on low skill settings to get through games, maybe don't do that...

smiles and hopes everyone assumes I knew all these

That's why I think it's important to keep a thread listing all the hints and possibly bad development habits apparent to everyone. This makes it easy for everyone.

We have GoldSource Mapping Tips, by the way.