I'm starting to pickup Hammer and edit TF2 maps for now. I really like the Hammer editor, it reminds me of JED but works better hah. I guess that's to be expected from an editor these days.

Anyway, do we have a community here that edits HL2/TF2 ect? Maybe since we are turning into a general editing community its time we get a HL2 forum?

I've been trying to find a good resource of tutorials, I checked out the developer wiki valve has up, but its pretty iffy for me for some reason. Sometimes it works, sometimes the pages are down. I've learned the basics, ready to move on to intermediate types of tasks...

Thanks for any help!

really? no one here works in hammer?

EDIT A REAL GAME.

like JA <.<

Edit Morrowind.

HL2 is impossble to mod.

I gave up within 2 days and went back to JK

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

I've messed around in Hammer a bit, but I don't have time to make my epic SP mod.

I kind of want to make an X-Com clone but using the HL2 assets...it would be like resistance versus zombies.

I also still want to make a Deus Ex mod.

...good, because if you dropped the SG1 mod we would have to string you up.

but it would be so much better in a good game

*cough* JK: Source *cough*

make a left 4 dead mod =D

I'm thinking an L4D map + intricate cave system (like the antlion caves in ep2) =

I think a JK source mod would be cool, butttt it would take a whole team of people to complete something on that scale. I don't think L4D is yet supported by hammer even though I think there is an unofficial hacked version of hammer that rips data out of the L4D folder.. unsure.

I just want to complete my TF2 Capture Point level and move on from there.

Uh huh

How are Ruthven and Micheal Jackson similar...?

Someone should take an existing, modern free/open source engine, and make it understand JK files. I guess i could learn a new scripting if someone bothered with that. I'm too old to learn editing for a new engine, and a lot of other editor that i've talked with, have said that the only reason they still edit jk is that they don't have the time to learn a new engine anymore.

"JK files",
"existing, modern"
"free/open source engine"

pick one.

And you are honestly going into the game design industry?

If Ruthven isn't willing to learn any new tools or techniques then design is pretty much the only thing he can do.

I wouldn't mind seeing what the coding side of Source modding is like. I've had a new game type (kind of a fusion of CTF and The Hunted) that I've been wanting to implement for a couple years now. Originally I planned to do it for JK but it seems it'd be a waste these days.

Ruthven is right: HL2 is pretty crappy for editing, especially for custom game types and things like that.

If old JK editors are interested in modding for a newer engine the best choice would be Unreal. Tim Sweeney even said at one point that JK's COG was one of the inspirations for UnrealScript.

Hahah, no way. Do you have a link to that?

I wish I did. I can't remember for sure if it was in an interview or an article he wrote on Epic's site about UnrealScript.

Maybe I'll go that route instead. I want to put forth as little effort as possible because I simply don't have time for things like editing most days.

Oh, and I tried googling for that quote. There's someone in the unreal editing world who goes by the nick "cog", and there's the fact that Epic made Gears, in which the word COG also comes up frequently. Talk about a needle in a haystack.

1st of rob, f*** off.

2ndly, the reason i gave up on HL2 editing is because the mod tool i downloaded didnt support HL2 models despite declaring it did, the only official steam tools were Hammer + animator flex tool + scene editor, the other tools such as material converters, coding, etc, didnt function/crashed/had no support.

Essentially, too much effort, not worth the time scale for the work output, and i'm perfectly happy with JK, i like working around the restrictions and being able to work very very fast and have a game that only looks slightly ****.

and yeh i know what shaders are and how they work, I will put in the effort when I get a new computer for Crysis editing.

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

The main reason I gave up JK editing, other than lack of target audience, was the sheer number of annoying limitations. The lighting is probably the worst of them. If JK had simple, Quake 2 quality lightmaps, I probably would still be poking around with it. It takes such a ridiculous amount of work to get lighting to look decent. And if you're using a lot of 3DOs to make up for limitations in what you can do with level geometry, it only gets worse. If JK's architects had a little more insight and designed the engine to be a little more future proof, it wouldn't be so frustrating to work with.

So basically you agree with my post.

Good.

I had decent luck with dynamic lights...

Future proof? I honestly dont think they cared much about what community editors might do with it.

They used it extensively in their own future releases. If they had done more of it correctly do begin with, they would have saved a lot of time. Not to mention just improved the sheer quality of the product. JK came out around the same time as Quake II and Half-Life, but was vastly graphically inferior.

Well, yes, they reused the engine, but with major enhancements. The Infernal Machine, for example, is capable of some fairly insane things in COG. We all saw how that turned out.

I think it would be wise to at least have edited at least two of the following engines if you're wanting to head into this particular section of the industry. Specialising in one engine is ok but it will limit your employability.

Unreal 3 - Although quite tedious sometimes, would probably be my first pick as a polished and up to date engine.

Doom 3 - Great dynamics in this engine. Quite easy to dive into scripting too. Lighting tools are also very nice and when used sensibly can generate some great effects.

Crysis - Seems like a good engine, don't really know much about it myself. Doesn't seem to be used for that many titles at the moment. Will probably be used a little more when hardware catches up.

HL2/Hammer - It's a nice engine but I feel like it's relying too heavily on old techniques. It's still holding up today though, and provides a great foundation for editing.

Quake 3 (just to dabble) - Although an old engine, I would say it's one of the easiest to start on. There's tons of easy tutorials out there, lots of advanced things to learn, and essentially you'll come out of it with a much better understanding of game engines in general. Great for learning the fundamentals (area portals, voids, gameplay mechanics etc).

That's just my opinion mostly, though.

The advantage of Quake 3 is that it's open source. ioquake3 is an open source improvement upon it, including many bug fixes and enhancements.

Doom 3 will likely be opened in a few short years, probably around the time id Tech 5 comes out.

In Hammer, how do you apply a texture to just one side of a brush?

Something this trivial has been bothering me.

Tried holding ctrl/shift/alt in combinations? My guess would be ctrl+shift+click.

Click the multicolored box tool (i forget the actual name of it, you will see what i mean) then that should open up a small window with menus on it, find the texture you want, select it, then in the 3d preview window you should be able to click just the one side, and apply the given texture you selected.

To apply textures to individual faces of a brush:

1. Click the Texture Application Tool to bring up the Face Edit dialog.
2. In the 3D view, left-click on a face to select it. CTRL-click to add or remove faces from the current selection.
3. Choose a texture from the Current Texture pop-up list, or click Browse to open the texture browser.
4. Click Apply. The texture will be applied to the objects.
5. Use the Scale, Shift, or Rotate buttons to modify how the texture is positioned on the objects.
6. When you are finished, click on the Texture Application Tool to close the Face Edit dialog.
   

From Valve's Developer Wiki... helpful?

Yeah I figured it out some time later. The whole switching from "texture" and "brush" mode is something I haven't wrapped my head completely around. Sometimes I just want to SELECT the face, not matter what mode I'm in.



You are thinking GtKradiant. :/

Now to figure out why looking for appropriate textures is such a headache.

lolhammer

I always found it funny how people from the Quake or Half-Life mapping scene always think that Radiant and Hammer are such great editors. Truth is they've never used anything good like UnrealEd, Serious Editor or JED.

Seriously, is there a better way of browsing for textures in Hammer? When I look for textures to put on brushes, the editor throws the entire damn texture set from all the Source games I own. How is this suppose to be efficient? Shouldn't it first ask you what game or which texture folder you want to browse in instead of F*** THAT HERE'S THE ENTIRE LIBRARY.

The tutorials suggest messing around with filters and keywords. But doesn't sort out the mess enough. I want TF2 textures to use with a TF2 map, but I still don't want to see every damn image used in the game from HUDs to skyboxes. I must be missing something, help me.

JED is not a good editor. I think a huge part of the reason JK levels look so primitive is just because the editor is so poor. The fact that JK was designed to be edited that way is the source of a lot of the poor design decisions in the engine. If you study the way level designers and modelers work you can see pretty easily where JED's shortcomings are.

On the subject of texturing:



First, is there a way to shift, scale and rotate a texture in increments? I mean, it's nice to match textures up perfectly, but the process of moving around or adjusting textures is time-consuming when it goes one increment at a time. What I mean is, let's say I want to simply rotate a texture at 10 degrees at a time. I know I can type in a number, but it's more of a time-saving issue especially if juggling around many textures in one map.

Second, it's more of a UI issue. Why buttons with one letter? I guess after awhile, you just know what they do. But I never found out why people design it in such a way (one letter?) in other programs too.