By Custom Elements, I refer to just about everything, including models, textures and sounds. I'll no doubt get a lot of headsmacks for asking this - it's a question that could apply to virtually any Valve game, I imagine, but TF2 is the only one I wish to map for - but I'll ask anyway. How do custom elements work when releasing a map? For example, I have been on servers with additional sound effects added to the game; these files wind up in the TF2 files. I have also been on a server where any class can wear a tiny party hat that I'm certain isn't Valve's work. While I am also interested in these things (importing custom hats would be cool), the main thrust of this question is whether I can simply include my own textures in a map. Granted, it will all work on Hammer and on my computer, and it would work on anyone's if I simply provided a rar with my map and all the necessary files in their correct paths, but say my friend was renting a server and was able to include my .bsp in their map rotation. Would these custom elements be installed automatically, as has been done on my computer? If not, how do you go about doing this? Is it viciously complicated? Thanks in advance.
Oh yeah, you can. It's not hard at all really. You merely have to pack in the textures into the bsp. There are many ways you can do it. BSPZip is the program which is default in the source sdk, but I find that it is fairly difficult to use at times because it is command prompt. A good median is Pakrat (you can google it, I think), which scans for custom textures used and packs them in.
(the tiny party hat is by valve, it is for party mode (tf_birthday 1) which is enabled globally on TF's birthday)
TMP, that looks like a great program (exactly what I'm looking for, in fact), but I just spent twenty minutes trying to install it. Seems that Java doesn't want to co-operate with my computer, and they don't have a normal windows installer. I guess I'll have to get used to the command prompt! Thanks a lot though! Edit - If anyone else is thinking of doing this, I just found Hawk's custom objects tute. It is amazingly in-depth. http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=838
Kaiser, PakRat doesn't annoy just you. In fact, Terr is making a replacement for it here. Although it's a WIP, I still find it better than PakRat.
Yeesh. Map corruption - sounds like I was better off not installing it, lol. Let's hope Terr's project comes to fruition!
I don't see what's wrong with Pakrat, it takes about half a second to pack the custom content into the bsp and couldn't be any easier to use. Scan and save.
It looks like Terr's Map Packer will become the standard for implementing custom elements in maps soon enough.
