Erk

erk
aa
Aug 6, 2016
433
1,098
Hi, my name's Erk, and I've been addicted to making maps in Hammer.

I've been doing this for around a month now, and I've made approximately zero maps I am proud of.

I think I've got the basics down. I don't get leaks as much, I know how to skip (mostly), and I can utilize props correctly.

Dynamic entities like doors and resupply lockers have been the bane of my existence, solely because they took forever to make.

And then I stumbled across this place, which was like finding El Dorado. There's a lot of things I needed here.

Although, certain things I still don't understand, and I was thinking maybe there was a thread detailing it that's buried somewhere here?

My first issue is that I want to create 3D water environments. Not just a pool, but a tunnel system with vertical entries and exits. Anyone got stuff on this? Googling doesn't have anything.

Another one;

I wanted to make 3D skyboxes but my camera view was too high up, so I put the sky_camera lower to fix it, but the view ingame wouldn't update so I tried deleting it and placing a new sky_camera in the same position, and that didn't work, and this is a run-on sentence, and I then I tried putting it was before, and then I tried removing the terrain I made for it and that didn't work, and then I cried a little

and then I just deleted the whole thing.

Please send help

Another one;

There was this weird checkered texture that would go over the terrain textures I made. Is this a lighting bug? Has anyone made a tutorial on this that I should read?

That's all the questions I have currently, probably just going to end up with even more questions. Thanks for reading.
 

Moonrat

nothing left
aa
Jul 30, 2014
932
585
I think you could have worded this a bit better, I'm having a bitch of a time trying to figure out exactly what you mean. Also, screenshots would be great, and make it a lot easier to discern your problems. Though I'll try to answer some of your questions.

If the view ingame for a map you've made is not updating, chances are something is happening that causes your compile to fail. If that happens, the BSP will not be updated. You can copy and paste your compile log into this site http://www.interlopers.net/errors/index.php to find out what is going on, as it's pretty much spot on everytime

Something about water in Source is that you CAN NOT have more than one level of water visible at a time. What I mean by that is that if you have a water brush that is 256 units high, and then another at 128 units high, that will not work. Though you can have multiple water brushes at the same time, as long they are the same height.

If you see a checkered texture over another texture that is not purple and black. Then you need to create a cubemap within your map, which will most likely fix the issue. Here's a tutorial on cubemaps, and what they do https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Cubemap
 

Erk

erk
aa
Aug 6, 2016
433
1,098
I think you could have worded this a bit better, I'm having a bitch of a time trying to figure out exactly what you mean. Also, screenshots would be great, and make it a lot easier to discern your problems. Though I'll try to answer some of your questions.

If the view ingame for a map you've made is not updating, chances are something is happening that causes your compile to fail. If that happens, the BSP will not be updated. You can copy and paste your compile log into this site http://www.interlopers.net/errors/index.php to find out what is going on, as it's pretty much spot on everytime

Something about water in Source is that you CAN NOT have more than one level of water visible at a time. What I mean by that is that if you have a water brush that is 256 units high, and then another at 128 units high, that will not work. Though you can have multiple water brushes at the same time, as long they are the same height.

If you see a checkered texture over another texture that is not purple and black. Then you need to create a cubemap within your map, which will most likely fix the issue. Here's a tutorial on cubemaps, and what they do https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Cubemap

Sorry for the typos, thanks for the help and your time.

Did not know you can not have more than one level of water. Questions about that; so how did Valve create Well? It's one of my favorite maps and I loved how the defending team can use the water to flank the opposing side. Is the water just one solid block?

Thanks for the cubemaps, will certainly remember that next time.

Thanks.
 

nickybakes

You should've played Rumbleverse
aa
Jul 28, 2015
911
1,739
Hi, welcome to TF2Maps! We hope you enjoy your stay! The cafe is in the third door on your left. We serve free breakfast every morning from 6 am to 11 am. Biscuits on Tuesdays. Be sure to join our steam group ( http://steamcommunity.com/groups/TF2Mappers ), and hang out in the steam group chat with all the cool kids!
 

Moonrat

nothing left
aa
Jul 30, 2014
932
585
Sorry for the typos, thanks for the help and your time.

Did not know you can not have more than one level of water. Questions about that; so how did Valve create Well? It's one of my favorite maps and I loved how the defending team can use the water to flank the opposing side. Is the water just one solid block?

Thanks for the cubemaps, will certainly remember that next time.

Thanks.

Find out for yourself https://tf2maps.net/threads/valve-maps-decompiled.5952/
 

Erk

erk
aa
Aug 6, 2016
433
1,098

View: https://youtu.be/fbOBcHGwWDg?t=82


Thank you so much I was looking for all these earlier and I couldn't find them.

Edit: I figured it out;

The water in Well isn't just one block it's multiple blocks at the same height.

As in the water goes through the terrain and the outside bits are covered by solid blocks to prevent leaks.

Wow, thanks for the lesson. Really enjoying this site.
 
Last edited:

henke37

aa
Sep 23, 2011
2,075
515
The rule is that you can't have water surfaces of different height in PVS at the same time. You can have as much water as you like, just only one surface height.