HELP! My maps are to bland Created 18 years ago2005-07-03 15:21:08 UTC by Specter515

Hello everyone, this is my first post and i hate to say that textures in general are giveing me a hard time! The actual map makeing isent to hard for me so far, but when it comes time to textureing rooms, im haveing a hard time. Let me explain, i make a room, for some reason it allways ends up bigger then i want it to be (wide, not hight) and then i try and spruce it up but it just doesnt help, i've included an example picture so you can see what im talking about since its hard to comment when you dont have a visual!or

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b24/Specter515/badex.jpg

Anyway, i guess any advice on makeing a room/level/map good as far as giveing it personallty and such would be helpful. I tried puting a pipe, prefabs, etc, but it just doesnt help! Also the things you cant see, the doors for instance behind you in the picture just dont seem to fit for the map itsself, and its pretty annoying. The maps i'd like to make are multiplayer so they cant have alot of personalty that a singleplayer would but im leaning towards the CS or even seven co-op (maps like halflife) where the map has alot of detial but its still multiplayer. (and i love seven co-op btw :D) There arent to my knowlage any tutorials on texture alligments and what textures work with what (like alist/guide) so like i said, any ideas/pictures/links will be very helpful because i really dont want a boring map!

Another thing i'd like to point out is the fact that my textures are washed up looking (look at the wall) and this happens pretty often, im not sure how to correct something like this and it is a nusance since i cant seem to get a nice looking wall =/

First of all, if you want your rooms not being over sized then put an info_player_start in them. The green box will appear as you, the player. Use this to scale your room. Secondly. Scan the toolbar on the left side of hammer editor and look for an icon of a cube with several textures on. Not only can it apply more then one texture onto a solid, but can also allign them. And you should give your rooms a purpose to them instead of randomly putting prefabs in them

Read the texture aglinment tutorial that is in the Intermediate section! And as for it's streched texture decrise the texture horiznale scale to 1:00! And that metal shelfs are facing the wrong direction flip them!

yeh, about the wall, you keep on stretching them. Either rotate them or use texture alignment OR texture sizing

He just fits them he should also rescale them! And sometimes fitting menually is better!

push those two smaller shelves onto the back wall.....if that room was a little smaller, it would look quite nice IMO, i like the lighting in it, i don't think it would really fit into a multiplayer map, a few HL monsters in there wouldn't like out of place at all!

Thanks everyone, the advice really helped, i relized that i was just auto sizeing it and not scaleing it to 1.00, here is the map retextured so to speak and i put some monsters in it, once again thanks and i hope i can contune with some intresting maps, hehe

The crate is misaglined you probebly moved it with out the texture lock. Reaglin the crates texture and remove that light entity ? that texture is already light-emitting.

I also advise you to look in tutorials and example maps to see how things are done.

PS: align all the walls for you only aligned the wall below the pipe!

that picture i took to quick, i did fix everything up though, but im still haveing a problem! i cant seem to find the right textures to go with the type of room im going for. I'll pick the right wall usually but then i have no idea what floor/roof/ other wall textures work well with it, is there any way to tell? also alot of my rooms although intresting, are just blocky, i'd like to give them some archatecture but again, no idea what works and what doesnt work. Is there anyway refrence or resorse for all these general map makeing problems?

Try the Vertex Manipulation tutorials.

i'd like to give them some archatecture but again, no idea what works and what doesnt work

It depends on what you are aiming for. If you want your maps to look real, then you should just use real pictures as your reference (you can also take a look at most of the CS maps to see how they do things)
By the way, you dont need to make great architecture to make a map work. As I said before, it depends on what you want to do. Sometimes making non-standard architecture is a nice way to make your map stand out and be remembered.
You see, brushwork is just a part of map making. The same map can have a entirely different feel and gameplay depending in how you place lights, player spawns, weapons, monsters etc

just spend 10-15 mins browsing through all your textures, then place some together and see how they together, also textures with the same names (babtech, fifties) often compliment each other well

Also look at HL1 for texture uses. Their texturing ways could help you

and all the good maps in the vault

Try reading lots of stuff about architecture and design, learn how to use all the tools in VHE (read the help file - its very.. helpful :P)