Below is a list of mapping terms and their meanings that may be useful to those just starting out. They could be hammer specific lingo, feedback related terms, or just in jokes that are actually worth remembering. This list is a constant work in progress as I'm not aware of every term in existence, so feel free to post any additions and I'll periodically update this main post to add them to the list.
-BSP: Binary Space Partition, the format hammer compiles maps to so they can be loaded in game.
-Vis/Visgroup: A BSP file splits a map into a multitude of sections called Visgroups in order to determine what to render on screen and when to render it. This is done by deciding what a player can see while they are within one Visgroup compared to another.
-Leak: A BSP file works by splitting a map up into a multitude of sections in order to determine what renders on screen at different times. To do this, a map needs to be sealed with world brushes, sorta like a bucket. Any gaps will cause the compiler to not understand how to correctly create visgroups which can lead to many errors. Too many leaks or too large of a leak and a map won't compile at all.
-Compile: Turning a VMF file into a BSP file so that it can be played in game.
-Cubemap: An entity used to create reflections. During compile, the compiler will open the game and take screenshots of all 6 sides of a cubemap, then apply those images to any nearby reflective textures. This also effects some weapon reflections, such as the Snipers scope.
-Prop: Any entity that begins with prop_ and has a model set to it ex. prop_static, prop_dynamic
-VDC: Valve Developer Community. The main Wiki and documentation for anything related to the source engine.
-Interlopers Error Checker: A website that allows people to input their compile log and check it for errors while also offering possible solutions to those errors. Website: https://web.archive.org/web/20180213200549/http://www.interlopers.net/errors/
-SDK: Software Developer Kit. The general term for tools used to modify games.
-CompilePal: A 3rd party program designed to aid in the process of compiling and packing a map.
-Packing: The process of saving any custom content not found in the base game to a BSP during Compile time. Unpacked content will appear as an error.
-Alpha/Beta/RC: The stage a map is in. Alpha maps are at the start of development, Beta maps are in the middle of development, and RC or Release Candidate are at the end of development.
-Hammer Units: The standard measure of distance within the source engine.
-Viewports: The screens in which you look at your map.
-Main: The main route players will use the most often
-Flank: Side routes that give players more options to get to important locations other than the main route
-Sightline: Any location a sniper can use to see another location. Can be neutral to simply identify a location or negative to identify locations that feel unfair where a Sniper has too much of an advantage
-Pixelwalk: A invisible pixel wide platform players can stand on. Sometimes happens where 2 brushes meet and is rarely done on purpose.
-Rollout: Mostly used for Soldiers and Demomen, a rollout is a term used for a fast and optimal way to get from a spawn exit to an objective
-Clip and/or Clipping: Used to refer to any invisible barrier that stops player movement. Originally a term meant to describe a clip brush, is generally used now to refer to any invisible that blocks movement. The lack of clipping on something could cause players to get stuck on it, their camera to jitter as their player model snaps between different heights, or allowing players to get places they shouldn't such as out of bounds.
-OOB: Out of Bounds. Anywhere players aren't meant to ever get to.
-Diaper: A term coined by Youtuber ArraySeven used to describe a map who's Skybox brushes are built to be a simple inverted cube instead of properly lined up with the map. This causes poor optimization.
-Optimization: Generally used to refer to a players frame rate. Poor Optimization can cause low frame rates that can disrupt play. Hints, Skips, Occluders, Area Portals, Skybox brushes, and prop fades can all impact Optimization
-Prop Spam: Used to describe any area(s) where props feel overused. This can make an area(s) look noisy, lead to poor Optimization, and/or cause disruption during play
-Prop Jump: Used to describe a path or route from a low ground area to a higher ground area where players have to jump up a series of props. Ex. the left flank of Dustbowl Stage 2 A
-Fullbright: Refers to a map not having any light entities. This can happen either due to the absence of lights or by only compiling for HDR or LDR instead of both. Anyone playing with LDR settings on a map compiled with only HDR lighting will see the map in fullbright instead of seeing any proper lighting.
-Door Soup: An area with too many doorway options. Causes over choice where players are unsure where to go at any time.
-Swiss Cheese Design: Maps with this kind of design tend to be built like real life locations where people can access anywhere at any time, instead of having inaccessible areas or buildings. This causes players to get lost and confused by over choice.
-Spawncamp: Any time a player or team can stand outside a spawn door and easily kill any spawning players as they exit in a way that feels unfair. Can usually be solved by having multiple exits that can't all be seen by an enemy standing in one location.
-Pub Push: The time period where a maps objective timer is running low and the attacking team goes from not focusing on the current objective to trying to coordinate and focus on it before the round ends.
-Choke Point/Choke(s): An area of a map that funnels players into a small location that is easy to defend against. Many early TF2 maps are designed around Choke Points.
-Meat Grinder: Any part of a map where players constantly die without feeling like they can make forward progress, usually caused by a choke point.
-Competitively Viable: A phrase that can mean either a map has potential for competitive play, or used sarcastically to refer to map design that copies competitive map segments without understanding how to put them together cohesively. Ex. Badlands 2nd point Spire prop.
-Hero Prop: An important and detailed prop a map is built around. Ex. Gourdon from PD_Farmageddon
-Respawn Wave: TF2 uses respawn waves for it's spawning system in order to try and spawn team mates together at the same time. This can be set via an output to the tf_gamerules entity in hammer but keep in mind, the number set doesn't mean that exact number. Instead, that refers to the lowest possible respawn time with the highest being the set number doubled. Ex. a 5 second respawn time will have 5 seconds as the lowest and 10 seconds as the highest. The default is 20 seconds.
-Turtle: A player, usually playing as engineer, who constantly stays in one safe area.
-Nest/Engineer Nest: A location where an engineer has set up all 3 of their buildings and maxed out their levels.
-Pickups: Usually refers to Health and Ammo boxes, can also refer to powerups for modes like passtime or mannpower
-Friendly: A player who refuses to attack and instead just hangs around a map. These are not allowed during TF2 map tests.
-Imp: Stands for Impromptu. A shortened term for impromptu map tests.
-Game Day: A map test or server event set for a specific date and time opposed to an impromptu test.
-Dead end: A "route" with no exit. causes players to get stuck with no way to retreat in a fight and/or lead them to an unsatisfying location where they need to turn around, which disrupts flow.
-Flow: How players move from one important location to another throughout a map. Good flow allows players to naturally use intended routes. Bad flow causes players to get lost without knowing how to get to objectives and/or causes them to get stuck in dead ends.
-Gravelpit style: 3 Points where last is locked and capturing both first points unlocks it
-Steeltype: Multiple points (usually 5) where the game starts with only the first and last unlocked, the locked points get unlocked by capturing in sequence starting from A and the game ends at any time if Last is captured
Hammer Terms:
-VMF: Valve Map File, the format hammer saves maps as.-BSP: Binary Space Partition, the format hammer compiles maps to so they can be loaded in game.
-Vis/Visgroup: A BSP file splits a map into a multitude of sections called Visgroups in order to determine what to render on screen and when to render it. This is done by deciding what a player can see while they are within one Visgroup compared to another.
-Leak: A BSP file works by splitting a map up into a multitude of sections in order to determine what renders on screen at different times. To do this, a map needs to be sealed with world brushes, sorta like a bucket. Any gaps will cause the compiler to not understand how to correctly create visgroups which can lead to many errors. Too many leaks or too large of a leak and a map won't compile at all.
-Compile: Turning a VMF file into a BSP file so that it can be played in game.
-Cubemap: An entity used to create reflections. During compile, the compiler will open the game and take screenshots of all 6 sides of a cubemap, then apply those images to any nearby reflective textures. This also effects some weapon reflections, such as the Snipers scope.
-Prop: Any entity that begins with prop_ and has a model set to it ex. prop_static, prop_dynamic
-VDC: Valve Developer Community. The main Wiki and documentation for anything related to the source engine.
-Interlopers Error Checker: A website that allows people to input their compile log and check it for errors while also offering possible solutions to those errors. Website: https://web.archive.org/web/20180213200549/http://www.interlopers.net/errors/
-SDK: Software Developer Kit. The general term for tools used to modify games.
-CompilePal: A 3rd party program designed to aid in the process of compiling and packing a map.
-Packing: The process of saving any custom content not found in the base game to a BSP during Compile time. Unpacked content will appear as an error.
-Alpha/Beta/RC: The stage a map is in. Alpha maps are at the start of development, Beta maps are in the middle of development, and RC or Release Candidate are at the end of development.
-Hammer Units: The standard measure of distance within the source engine.
-Viewports: The screens in which you look at your map.
In Game Terms:
-Route: Any path a player can take to get from one important location to another. Ex, from their spawn to the current active control point.-Main: The main route players will use the most often
-Flank: Side routes that give players more options to get to important locations other than the main route
-Sightline: Any location a sniper can use to see another location. Can be neutral to simply identify a location or negative to identify locations that feel unfair where a Sniper has too much of an advantage
-Pixelwalk: A invisible pixel wide platform players can stand on. Sometimes happens where 2 brushes meet and is rarely done on purpose.
-Rollout: Mostly used for Soldiers and Demomen, a rollout is a term used for a fast and optimal way to get from a spawn exit to an objective
-Clip and/or Clipping: Used to refer to any invisible barrier that stops player movement. Originally a term meant to describe a clip brush, is generally used now to refer to any invisible that blocks movement. The lack of clipping on something could cause players to get stuck on it, their camera to jitter as their player model snaps between different heights, or allowing players to get places they shouldn't such as out of bounds.
-OOB: Out of Bounds. Anywhere players aren't meant to ever get to.
-Diaper: A term coined by Youtuber ArraySeven used to describe a map who's Skybox brushes are built to be a simple inverted cube instead of properly lined up with the map. This causes poor optimization.
-Optimization: Generally used to refer to a players frame rate. Poor Optimization can cause low frame rates that can disrupt play. Hints, Skips, Occluders, Area Portals, Skybox brushes, and prop fades can all impact Optimization
-Prop Spam: Used to describe any area(s) where props feel overused. This can make an area(s) look noisy, lead to poor Optimization, and/or cause disruption during play
-Prop Jump: Used to describe a path or route from a low ground area to a higher ground area where players have to jump up a series of props. Ex. the left flank of Dustbowl Stage 2 A
-Fullbright: Refers to a map not having any light entities. This can happen either due to the absence of lights or by only compiling for HDR or LDR instead of both. Anyone playing with LDR settings on a map compiled with only HDR lighting will see the map in fullbright instead of seeing any proper lighting.
-Door Soup: An area with too many doorway options. Causes over choice where players are unsure where to go at any time.
-Swiss Cheese Design: Maps with this kind of design tend to be built like real life locations where people can access anywhere at any time, instead of having inaccessible areas or buildings. This causes players to get lost and confused by over choice.
-Spawncamp: Any time a player or team can stand outside a spawn door and easily kill any spawning players as they exit in a way that feels unfair. Can usually be solved by having multiple exits that can't all be seen by an enemy standing in one location.
-Pub Push: The time period where a maps objective timer is running low and the attacking team goes from not focusing on the current objective to trying to coordinate and focus on it before the round ends.
-Choke Point/Choke(s): An area of a map that funnels players into a small location that is easy to defend against. Many early TF2 maps are designed around Choke Points.
-Meat Grinder: Any part of a map where players constantly die without feeling like they can make forward progress, usually caused by a choke point.
-Competitively Viable: A phrase that can mean either a map has potential for competitive play, or used sarcastically to refer to map design that copies competitive map segments without understanding how to put them together cohesively. Ex. Badlands 2nd point Spire prop.
-Hero Prop: An important and detailed prop a map is built around. Ex. Gourdon from PD_Farmageddon
-Respawn Wave: TF2 uses respawn waves for it's spawning system in order to try and spawn team mates together at the same time. This can be set via an output to the tf_gamerules entity in hammer but keep in mind, the number set doesn't mean that exact number. Instead, that refers to the lowest possible respawn time with the highest being the set number doubled. Ex. a 5 second respawn time will have 5 seconds as the lowest and 10 seconds as the highest. The default is 20 seconds.
-Turtle: A player, usually playing as engineer, who constantly stays in one safe area.
-Nest/Engineer Nest: A location where an engineer has set up all 3 of their buildings and maxed out their levels.
-Pickups: Usually refers to Health and Ammo boxes, can also refer to powerups for modes like passtime or mannpower
-Friendly: A player who refuses to attack and instead just hangs around a map. These are not allowed during TF2 map tests.
-Imp: Stands for Impromptu. A shortened term for impromptu map tests.
-Game Day: A map test or server event set for a specific date and time opposed to an impromptu test.
-Dead end: A "route" with no exit. causes players to get stuck with no way to retreat in a fight and/or lead them to an unsatisfying location where they need to turn around, which disrupts flow.
-Flow: How players move from one important location to another throughout a map. Good flow allows players to naturally use intended routes. Bad flow causes players to get lost without knowing how to get to objectives and/or causes them to get stuck in dead ends.
Game Mode Terms:
-Chin Style: A ctf map designed to allow players to easily enter the flag room, usually via a one way door, but is difficult to exit without running into the enemy team.-Gravelpit style: 3 Points where last is locked and capturing both first points unlocks it
-Steeltype: Multiple points (usually 5) where the game starts with only the first and last unlocked, the locked points get unlocked by capturing in sequence starting from A and the game ends at any time if Last is captured
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