From a beginner, to beginners

[Micnax]

CompilePal seems to do much the same, while also packing custom content, as n8five said.

Haha, I've been out of the scene for quite a while... this looks like a much better alternative.

 

[MegapiemanPHD]

Here's a few I've picked up.
-you can right click in the 2D view's and select flip options to quickly flip selected items horizontaly and vertically
-going to Tools, options, 3D view, you can increase the model and detail render distance in hammer
-pressing turns off those white outlines for props in the 2D view
-make sure the checkmark in the box next to AUTO in VisGroups is solid when compiling
-check that all doors function
-check that each respawn locker is unique
-check that players can change class inside their respawn room
-be sure to build cubemaps for BOTH LDR and HDR
-remember to repack the map using bsp_repack
-the button will show a prop's collision mesh if it has one. If a prop does not have or has a weird one, pick a differant prop or use the clip, bullet block, and/or invisible texture to create one for that prop.

 

[Crowbar]

-you can right click in the 2D view's and select flip options to quickly flip selected items horizontaly and vertically

Ctrl-i and ctrl-k will do that even quicker

 

[Pocket]

I can disagree with this.
First (and third), you can just nodraw all the faces that are compiled but never seen - the percentage of those isn't very high if you're doing things right, and even if you miss some, the perfomance impact will probably negligible (again, if you don't make a box around the map so all the outside faces are compiled).

What I've heard a lot of people do is not bother with nodraw during alphas, and then bulk-convert everything except skybox to nodraw as the first step in detailing. It makes sense since if you're dealing with the kind of optimization or filesize issues that might be caused by too many textured faces before you start detailing, you're already doing something very wrong.

 

[Crowbar]

What I meant was most of the textured faces aren't gonna end up in the bsp anyway because of touching void or other brushes, and percentage of faces needed to eliminate manually isn't very high. But I see your point.

One of my other advice is: if you're using full screen mode with shift-z, always toggle it back before saving file. The VMF only stores the position of viewports, but NOT the boolean state of whether it was fullscreen or not. So, after loading such a VMF, you'll end up with a fullscreen viewport,, and hammer will think it's the usual state of viewports. Silly bug hammer is full of.

 

[RodionJenga]

You accidentally a keyboard

If all your brushes and models are bordered in red, press I
If your mouse gets locked to the camera and there's a cross in the center, press Z
If there's a white box that lists your position and fps in the camera, press O
If you see a giant red circle when zoomed out and maybe your map is disappearing, press C

also my camera starts spinning sometimes which i fix with ctrl-shift-r (which can also be used for its real function to replace entity data)