Editing Tips
Interlopers Editing Tips
We've collated some useful tips for you to read and learn from. Whether you're a complete novice or an advanced level designer - you should find something here to interest you.
To contribute your own useful tips please visit this thread and read the first post for instructions.
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Tips statistics
In total there are 50 tips
The users who submitted the most tips are:
- Blink ( 12 )
- Zecrah ( 2 )
- Mage_ofOld ( 2 )
- forty-nin3 ( 2 )
- Duke Nukem ( 2 )
The users with the highest rated tips are:
- forty-nin3 ( 3.00 )
- Penney ( 3.00 )
- Spartan ( 2.00 )
- lillerik ( 2.00 )
- Lord Ned ( 2.00 )
Pre-Hammer Planning
Tip Rating: 3.00
Just because "You have a good idea in your head" doesn't mean it's the best idea. Turn off the screen and get some paper, a pencil, a ruler and whatever geometry tools you think will be necessary. Draw a layout, basic or complex, it's for YOU to follow. Editing your drawing is a 100x easier then editing your map later in hammer. Also keep in mind your original idea is rarely your best idea. Let your mind flow and think, let the map evolve.
Category: Miscellaneous
Untextured Geometry.
Tip Rating: 2.00
When using dev textures or placeholder textures on complex and repeated geometry such as multi-brush pillars and archways for hallways, just keep one and use a simple brush as a reference for the rest.
Category: Hammer
Keep things in scale
Tip Rating: 2.00
By using the dev textures you can ensure parts of your map stay in proportion with the player. Things such as doors and walls have specific textures for this use. Failing that, add several info_player_start entities in your map when you are working on new areas - this will give you a constant visual reminder of your level in relation to the player.
Category: Hammer
Easy Texture Scrolling
Tip Rating: 0.00
Select a face with the Face Edit Sheet and then just use your arrow keys to scroll the texture easily.
Category: Hammer
A fresh Perspective
Tip Rating: 0.00
Never, ever, ever, test your level/map pack/mod by yourself. You need beta testers, maybe 3-5, to get a fresh persective of your maps. Find out from a player's mind if the experience is satisfying and enjoyable, and if not adjust your mod. Every map needs to be beta tested.
Category: Half-life 2
Re: Tips Submission Thread
Tip Rating: 0.00
While in Paint Geometry mode:
Alt + LMB = Change Radius (Drag Mouse)
Shift + LMB = Move up and down (Drag Mouse)
Alt + RMB = Get the normal of the current face
Ctrl + LMB = Select/Deselect displacementCategory: Hammer
Compile Often
Tip Rating: 1.00
This may sound weird but compiling is not something that needs to be left to the end. Compile after you do each major changes, displacements, all props, lighting etc because compiling at the end of your map will take ages - so any problems that come up won't be obvious until then.
Category: Hammer
Moulding your world
Tip Rating: -1.00
Practice using the clip and vertex tools. They will come in handy when creating complex geometry or simply spicing up a bland blocky room. Even a little goes a long way.
Category: Hammer
Realism, and working from references
Tip Rating: 1.00
When working from real-world references, always beware confusing realism with accuracy. In games, realism is best thought of as 'suspension of disbelief', not accuracy. So, just because your reference photo contains oddly-aligned brickwork, or a glaring seam between two styles of brickwork, this doesnt mean you should recreate that - it'll end up looking like bad texture alignment. Similarly, a strong contrast between two lighting styles might not always carry over to the game well. In short, always prioritise the artistic qualities of the scene over it's accuracy.
Category: Miscellaneous
Don't rush your first map
Tip Rating: 2.00
Often, one can spot that a novice mapper will post his first map without spending enough time on it. Spend time on your first map and you will get positive feedback. Enough time would be 2 - 3 weeks at the very least. Anything lower than that is pushing your luck.
Category: Miscellaneous
A Quick Clone
Tip Rating: 3.00
If you hate copying and pasting in hammer and having the copied object/brush be completely away from where you want, you can hold Shift + Drag the object you want to duplicate it, really quick duplications if you're placing many barrels or some brushes.
Category: Hammer
Smoothing textures to create smooth shadows
Tip Rating: 2.00
Select a face from the brush, hold "alt" and right click on the surface you want to align. Move each align to the next face. When your texture is properly aligned see if a single brush face is big enough for one lightmap luxel.
(3D window/lightmap grid) If not select the facetexture open its properties and choose a smaller lightmap grid. (default is 16, use numbers value of 2 => 16/8/4/2/1 ) Go back in to normal shaded/textured view. Select the faces you want to smooth (hold "CTRL"). Then go back into lightmap grid and click smooth, then select a number for its smoothing group.Category: Hammer
Re: Tips Submission Thread
Tip Rating: 0.00
Alt-Right click: Used to align a texture as to the face selected. (Perfect for aligning textures on corners with ease)
Ctrl-M: While in selection mode to rotate, scale, and move based on input values. (Very useful for turning brushes and props with precision.)
Walls are ~16-8 units thick, 128 units high, and the space in-between floors is ~32-16
Stairs are ~Rise-8 units, Run-12 units
Arches are easier to build if one makes it manually (using vertex-edited blocks) from the outside of a cylinder brush.
The skew tool loses alignment to the grid if used more than once on the same edge.Category: Hammer
Use CLIP on interfering geometry
Tip Rating: 2.00
Use the CLIP texture to smooth out areas of your map that have geometry that may interfere with a player's movement. Nothing will annoy someone more then dying because they got caught on a pillar, especially in multi-player.
Category: Hammer
Use the SDK Maps
Tip Rating: 1.00
Valve graciously provided us with several maps with the sdk_ preference. There is a map for every physics effect, and also several maps for actual levels in the game or for the multiplayer components, to really learn how to get things done.
Use these well made maps often, its the easiest way to learn new techniques, because you can run the map, then check what it does, then see how to do it in hammer.Category: Hammer