Help with mapping conepts

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fazhu23

L1: Registered
Mar 2, 2012
3
1
Hello all, I have some questions that I would like to ask the community and any help, or detailed tutorials would be greatly appreciated. I've recently started mapping for a vsh server that I'm play in regularly and hoping to add my contribution to the server I picked up hammer and have already submitted my first map. However this is where some problem arose. I know from decompiling some map there seems to be a second skybox that makes it the "outside" world. all the items placed inside of it appears outside the regular map area and not reachable to the players. As you can see I have no clue what that is and therefore don't even know how to name and even less how to make one. I tried making a second skybox and placing objects inside but have to no avail. Any tutorials in that region would be great!

Also I've been trying to find more props to add to my collection and have found them here at tf2maps.net, however when I tried extracting them as explained in the readme file to the path> C:\Program Files(x86)>Steam>steamapps>username>team fortress 2>tf, I can find some of the model and there are some that I can't find even though they are apparent in the folder, is there a different folder that I can put it in?

Lastly but not least, I'm trying to add airplanes into my map and want them to fly around randomly, should I be using the func_tracktrain for it to follow?

Thank you all for taking the time to read this long post and hopefully I can find some answer here. Thanks again!!
 

Freyja

aa
Jul 31, 2009
2,994
5,813
The skybox is what is referred to as a 3D skybox. There's an entity in the middle of it called sky_camera which "looks" at what's around it and projects that 16 times larger around your map. I will go hunt for a tutorial and edit the link in, if I can find one.
EDIT: http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=116 Here you go. It's a little outdated, but basically what you need to do.

Secondly, if you can't find a folder for a downloaded prop, make one. They're not there by default, so just make the required folder structure and place them in there.

Thirdly, Func_tracktrain is how I would make something fly around, yes. I'm certain that's how it was done in ctf_aerospace
 
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fazhu23

L1: Registered
Mar 2, 2012
3
1
Thank you so much for your help!! The link seems helpful. Another clarification about the folder though. The downloaded prop have both a material and model folder inside it, should I just copy them into the tf>material and tf>model respectively and that should do the trick?

Also, is the areospace the map with the flying airplane? It's amazing how you knew it was that map that I got the idea from. XD
 

Freyja

aa
Jul 31, 2009
2,994
5,813
You put the model files, that's the .mdl, .vtx, .vvd, .phy files into tf/models/<subfolder>/

The texture files (.vtf and .vmt) go into tf/materials/models/<subfolder>/

For example, a rock model would most likely have it's model files in tf/models/props_nature/
and it's materials in tf/materials/models/props_nature/

And areospace is the only map I can think of that has flying planes, so it was only natural to think of that :)