* Help Me Map *

[Uranium - 235]

I know how to make a basic room with a spawnpoint in Hammer. Yeah. And a tiny bit about entities. Anyway...

Someone write up a quicky tutorial on how to make a basic readyroom (worse quality then co_core's readyroom, I don't care :p), and a basic 1 room map with a couple hives, a marine area, and a scattering of spawn points.

Also, how the hell do I 'texture light' a map? I have a light entity but I'm going to run out of those if I have to light every single room and every area with one.

[esuna]

I know how to make a basic room with a spawnpoint in Hammer. Yeah. And a tiny bit about entities. Anyway...

Someone write up a quicky tutorial on how to make a basic readyroom (worse quality then co_core's readyroom, I don't care :p), and a basic 1 room map with a couple hives, a marine area, and a scattering of spawn points.

Also, how the hell do I 'texture light' a map? I have a light entity but I'm going to run out of those if I have to light every single room and every area with one.

ChromeAngel's already done a sample map tutorial, you can see that here. Any other questions, feel free to ask, but i see no point typing up a tutorial when there already is one.

Now, about the texture lights. In your compiler's directory there is a file called "lights.rad". Inside this file you'll see a load of lines similar to this.

Code: [Select]

LIGHT1 170 170 170 200
LIGHT1_RED 202 0 0 200
SUBWAY_LIGHTS 170 170 170 200
LIGHT_STRIP3 170 170 170 200
~TRN_NS 170 170 170 200
~TRN_NSBLUE 170 170 200 200
That's just a few lines from mine just as an example. The way the line is constructed is the texture name, "LIGHT1" for example. You can find out the texture name through VHE or wally. The next 3 values are the RGB value of the light, and the last number is the brightness value. A good way to determine the last 4 values is by making a light entity and adjusting the brightness until you get the colour / brightness you want, then simply copy and paste it into the "lights.rad" file.

lights.rad is automatically picked up by the compiler, hence why it must be in the same directory. What it does is makes the texture you select emit the light values you enter, and also lightens the texture to the parameters too. Try and avoid doing this too much, however. Because it lights up the entire texture, that means the frame  / border of the light too, which can look pretty ugly. This is where light overlays come in. I won't type up how to use them here now, but if you want to know, tell me, and i'll run through how to use them.

[esuna]

Sod it, i'll do a tutorial about light overlays, because they're too handy, and pretty easy.

Create a brush to be a light, do it however you want it and texture it with a light texture. Now duplicate that brush and put it directly infront of the original brush. Now make this new brush 1unit thick and texture all the sides with "null". Now on the front face, you need to put on a texture overlay. Here's one for the "lights_round" texture. On the left is the original texture, and on the right is the overlay texture.

[esuna]

Now you have that done, select the 1unit thick overlay brush, right click it, then select "tie to entity". In the properties window, select "func_illusionary" and set the Render Mode to "Additive" and the FX Amount to 255.

When you compile and load up the map, you'll find that the light texture itself will still be pretty dark, but the actual "light parts" of it will be nice and bright, giving it a more realistic light effect.

For a little extra effect, add your light overlay to your lights.rad file so it will emit it's own lightsource too.

A final bit of information. the "light" and "light_spot" entities without targets are removed from the total entity count of your map, so running out isn't a problem.

[Uranium - 235]

Okay, I made a largish room, put a grated floor (And did it right! No blue!), a couple res nodes, 'Join Marines' area and a tiny marine start, with a texture light in it. The whole room was bright bright, none of these neato lights I see in maps where there's bright washing down the wall to the floor. Or are those entity lights.


Oh lights 'without a target'... meaning what?

[Satiagraha]

woo! go Esuna!

now where can I find the .fgd for NS?

[esuna]

Okay, I made a largish room, put a grated floor (And did it right! No blue!), a couple res nodes, 'Join Marines' area and a tiny marine start, with a texture light in it. The whole room was bright bright, none of these neato lights I see in maps where there's bright washing down the wall to the floor. Or are those entity lights.


Oh lights 'without a target'... meaning what?

When you create a light_spot you set the pitch, yaw and roll determining it's direction. The other, and easier way, of directing spotlights is by "targeting" another entity, usually a info_null. The way you do this is simple, make a light_spot where you want the light source to be, then make an info_null where you want the light to aim. Now give the info_null a name, for example "CatOnARope", then under the properties of the light_spot entity, you set the "target" value as "CatOnARope",a nd the light will be directed that way.  It's only by using this "targeting" that the light gets added to the entity count, otherwise it's not.

[Satiagraha]

Whats the command to list out all the rendering values (like # of polys on the screen) in the console?
btw, i'm using HL (the original WON version) v1.1.1.0 and "Hammer" v3.4

I am getting an extremely laggy play when i compile the map and run it. All it is is a room with a small model of a house i'm designing for an Architecture class. I'm getting < 4fps and i don't even have that many polys... Theres no leaking, theres no misconfigured entities... i'll attach the worldcraft .rmf to the post so you can see it and try to fix it.

<Update>
I just switched to ZHLT (Zoner's HL Compiling Tools) and problem solved
</Update

[Uranium - 235]

What the hell? Okay, so I used to be able to click on a brush to select it, click again to put it into 'rotate', click again to put it into 'skew'. Except now it won't do that

[Dubbilex]

Sometimes when I find hammer's being a dick, I just save my work, close it, and reopen it.

That'll usually solve problems like that

[esuna]

Whats the command to list out all the rendering values (like # of polys on the screen) in the console?
btw, i'm using HL (the original WON version) v1.1.1.0 and "Hammer" v3.4

I am getting an extremely laggy play when i compile the map and run it. All it is is a room with a small model of a house i'm designing for an Architecture class. I'm getting < 4fps and i don't even have that many polys... Theres no leaking, theres no misconfigured entities... i'll attach the worldcraft .rmf to the post so you can see it and try to fix it.

<Update>
I just switched to ZHLT (Zoner's HL Compiling Tools) and problem solved
</Update

The command for displaying the e and w polys is "r_speeds 2", this will post it to the console normally, but if you have developer 1 and -dev on, it'll put it up on screen. Just as a warning, this does drop your fps a bit having it on, so bear that in mind.

And Uranium, yeah, restart VHE a few times, it happens, maybe try reinstalling it. It's unfortunately a bug with the program.

[Uranium - 235]

Um, okay, I have a texture light, and the texture lights up and all, but... it's really not actually lighting the room... it's at brightness 200, even 300, and I'll be damned if it actually manages to illuminate more then two square feet on the floor it's only a foot or so above...

[Dubbilex]

If you want said texture light to actually light the room up, try using a much higher value such as 1000 or 2000.  A few of those in a room will do nicely

[Uranium - 235]

For the texture overlays, I actually have to fotochop myself an image and pack it into a .wad file? Can someone find a copy of Wally for me? Waiting in line for it at ugo.com or whatever the hell it's called isn't very cool...

[esuna]

For the texture overlays, I actually have to fotochop myself an image and pack it into a .wad file? Can someone find a copy of Wally for me? Waiting in line for it at ugo.com or whatever the hell it's called isn't very cool...

I've mirrored it. Can you tell me when you're done with it so i can clear it off my ftp.

It's erased now.

[Uranium - 235]

Done and done Thanks.

[Fewlio]

Hafaf, if you ever need wally just give me a tell, I uploaded it to my geocrappies website ages ago, but that site has limited bandwith so I'm not posting any linkage >_>.