What was your first impression of Hammer?

[Coolz]

We were once all new to Hammer, and we all have opinions. I'd like to know what your first impression of the Hammer editor was, what kind of problems you had, why, ect.

Why do I want to know this? Because I'm a creepy stalker guy. And I'm bored. Mostly bored.

Without further ado, I'll start on my story.

When I first began mapping, I was stuck on figuring out how to create a brush. I'm serious. I couldn't figure out how to create on of those rectangular blocks today I take for granted. I had already looked up tutorials on how to create first rooms and such, but I just kept missing the part where they told you how to create a brush. In my defense, however, I was like 10, I'm a very distracted person by nature and I'm a visual learner. (Since then I've gotten a lot better at not getting distracted by nothing though)

You're probably thinking "Wow, what a dumbass!" right about now, and looking back, I kinda was. I was truly stumped on how to get started and almost stopped trying, but I eventually figured out you press enter to create a brush by mashing buttons, and really got started. Once I had truly gotten started with the editor, I thought that it was a difficult but powerful tool if I mastered it, and so I ran with it. Here I am years later creating good maps with the same editor which I once couldn't do the simplest thing with. Go figure.

 

[Dr. Orange]

First time I made a map in Hammer was for Portal 1. I had allready looked at 1 tutorial video, and opened up the Source SDK (this was before it became obsolete) and brushed out a room. It had a prop_static pipe vent, a glass wall and a prop_glados_core in it. Then I thought: "What happens when I reach the bottom of the bottomless pit through the hole in the wall?" And from that day forward, I knew what a leak was.

 

[ExtraCheesyPie]

That uh, brush story hits close to home. I somehow didn't hear the part where you press enter and I was pretty stumped.

 

[Uncuepa]

I opened up CS:GO sdk and said outloud "wow, 4 squares" and then promptly closed it. 6 months later I took the plunge and started making TF2 maps.

 

[Vel0city]

I already knew how the early Source 2 Hammer looked like with the Dota 2 beta when it was first released. Then I went into Source 1 Hammer and was like "This is how people do these things? U srs?". Makes me want Source 2 even more.

 

[Muddy]

I found Hammer incredibly easy to pick up. Barely half an hour in and I'd already gotten the hang of it. Not to say I didn't make a lot of newbie mistakes early on though... like trying to make a Garry's Mod RP map for my first ever project.

 

[Yrr]

First time I made a map in Hammer was for Portal 1. I had allready looked at 1 tutorial video, and opened up the Source SDK (this was before it became obsolete) and brushed out a room. It had a prop_static pipe vent, a glass wall and a prop_glados_core in it. Then I thought: "What happens when I reach the bottom of the bottomless pit through the hole in the wall?" And from that day forward, I knew what a leak was.

My story is pretty much the same as this only I never ran into leaks because i used horrible box skyboxes

then i made a bunch of gmod maps over 5ish years

 

[killohurtz]

Despite being intimidated by the archaic-looking UI at first, I picked up on the basic tools pretty quickly. I was following the VDC wiki for creating your first room and compiled this beauty in under an hour:

(Yes, that pit in the lower left corner was carved)

 

[Davekillerish]

I wanted to see how maps were made in tf2, maybe get an edge in the game if I knew how they worked?
Looked up: How to make map tf2
Got crash's tutorials, made a fullbright room and forgot about mapping until the same thing happened again and I realized, Hey ive done this before, maybe now that more of his tutorials exist I can get into this?
I made ALL the rookie mistakes. I didnt know what nodraw was let alone with it did xD, Super large square skybox around the entire first map, luckily it was the tiniest thing ive ever seen, like smaller than 2 fort mid area so the map didnt lag with the 1 friend I could get to bug test it.
Though the map itself is that bad, its just so dam tiny it would only be practical for 4v4's MAYBE.

 

[CriminalBunny]

I remember picking hammer for the first time back when i was 12. My goal was to make a cs 1.6 map of my school (what did you expect, I was 12) Anyway, I didn't know how to compile because I needed idk how many programs for it and quit. Years later I had the idea of making maps again but for TF2 and found out that I needed the same program (I was 14 and surprised :|
After 2 or 3 years of making noobish mistakes and learning things the hard way (box skyboxes, dangerously underscaled maps, fullbright, leaks, LOTS OF THEM), Here I am :|
It wasn't hard to learn though, I got the hang out of it in a couple of hours