How to deal with giant maps?

[DrHaphazard]

Hey I got a central question for yall. How do yall deal with maps as they become bigger and more complex? Do yall try and create different parts of the map seperately and join them together later? I have often wanted to do just that but have hesitated every time because i figured it would be an ungodly pain joining the pieces together.

Just looking at the decompiled 2fort gives me a headache. I can't understand how any mapper could work with all that on his screen unless he worked on different parts in isolation.

 

[Vilepickle]

You have the plan in your mind (and on paper) and build on from there. It's not too hard once you're into it.

 

[lsd]

Personally I've found that when I make a map that gets bigger and/or more complex than what i originally thought like you said, what I do is I focus on each bit as I work on it. For example, I focus on a certain corner of a bunch of rooms — I look at it, add stuff, do brushes, then at some point I say "oh then this should be over there", and it sort of goes from there until I feel that I've done enough there.

I don't really break things apart and do them separately, but I do piece the brushes together as I work and then focus on a certain area separately.

 

[Milktoast]

Create user visgroups.

 

[Nizzem]

I use this tool to focus on one area of the map

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Cordon

 

[dirtyminuth]

Create user visgroups.

Yes. Here's ctf_core:

 

[Vilepickle]

Good lord. You prolly spent more time making the visgroups than actual mapping

I usually just get the parts and run with it rather than making them all individual. I _have_ been using a lot of groups lately though, which are helping me stay more neat.

 

[lsd]

Good lord. You prolly spent more time making the visgroups than actual mapping

that's what i said when i read it too.

 

[Intraman]

I usually just focus in on each section through the use of the 3-d view and zooming in. Though creating visgroups is probably the better way to do it.

 

[drp]

its not hard to focus on something in your 2d panels and just find it in 3d.
are the visgroups like layers in autocad?

 

[reyowns]

When you open the map up it looks all crazy because they have everything visible.. when people work on big maps they work on sections at a time and then they make it "invisible" so it wont become to complex... You can turn stuff on and off by selecting it on the right side menu check boxes.... (VIS groups)...

 

[Milktoast]

Visgroups are like layers in other applications. The default visgroups are ok if you're wanting to, say, turn off all entities everywhere in the map. Creating your own visgroups is pretty simple and adding/removing objects from them is straightforward (just click the checkboxes in the visgroup tab of the properties box). Objects can belong to multiple visgroups.

Using your own visgroups gives you the same effect of working on different parts of your map in separate files... except you don't have to work with separate files! Just turn off the parts of the map you're not working on. For those people with slower machines, turning off large chunks of your map makes Hammer a lot faster when flying around and selecting objects.

If you're not using them, give them a test drive.