Tutorial Recomendations, making a Pokemon themed map!

Gravidea

L5: Dapper Member
Apr 17, 2017
229
102
Alright, so here's the break down of things;

I've been away from Hammer for a long time due to problems with my computer. It's been a few months since I last posted any threads because the computer I was using got trashed, and I lost all my files along with my motivation to create/work on maps. But after saving up some money, I've finally got a new gaming computer and recovered some of my mapping skills. This time I'll have everything on cloud just in case!

When I was mapping before, I came to this site's forums for some recommendations for tutorials that would help me expand my mapping skills. It has been a while since then, and my interest in the types of maps I would like to make has changed. One project I've had in mind is a map much like ColdEndeavour's trade server map, pkmn_goldenrodcity. It is a map that I have played on often and enjoy a lot because of the Pokemon franchise, and this version of the map is a very good 3D display of the map, along with good spawn and health/ammo placements. A lot of hours of my TF2 gameplay have been on this map, as silly as that may seem. This is where my idea comes in.

http://www.gamemaps.com/details/1981

I would like to make a map like this, but instead have it be based off of Sootopolis City from Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire version. The map's name will be pkmn_sootopoliscity and it will trade/hangout map with the same concept.

https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/File:Sootopolis_City_RS.png

Basically, there are a few things that I would need to learn in order to work on this dream project of mine, so I'll go ahead and list what kind of tutorials I need. Feel free to link threads on this site, or youtube videos that you feel are the best explained version of the tutorial. Thank you in advance!

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1: Custom Textures. The most obvious thing that I'd like to learn is how to create custom textures (and how to make them not appear as purple and black checkers for other players when they're playing on the map as well). This will be the most important part, as with this information, I will be able to make the gray rocks, the buildings, the grass, and the trees around the city. I don't need to worry about sky boxes, because even the map by ColdEndeavour just has a default one. I just need to find out how to turn the textures from the game into textures that I can use in Hammer. I remember it was something that had to do with VTFedit, but it was too long ago and some video tutorials are much too complicated.

2: Custom Sound Application. I basically need to find out how to make it so that while you are in the map, you can hear the theme from the original game playing as you fight around the areas. I need to find out how to take a .mp3 file and turn it into music which I can play on the map, at an ambient volume, not too loud. Soundscape tutorials that I've read up on before were much too difficult, or only showed me how to use sounds/music from TF2's sound files. It would also be nice to have the song loop.

3: Teleporting doors. This was a feature from ColdEndeavour's map that I liked. In the Pokemon Series, the overworld houses are much too small to physically fit what is actually inside within the buildings on the TF2 maps, such at the gym. What ColdEndeavour did was make doors that when you walk up to them, it will teleport you inside the house, but instead the house interior is actually underneath the map, that way there's enough space. I need to find a way to replicate this, and make it so that when you walk up to the door of a house, it will bring you inside. This is one of the most important parts of the map, as otherwise the map will be only outside!

4: DJ Room. This is the last one, and I'd say it's the least important part of the map as just using a soundscape will do. The map that this one will be inspired by has a DJ Room. It is a part of the map that allows you to his buttons to change the song playing around the map. In that map, the buttons will play music, but have a cooldown, that way you can't play more than one song, or switch the song over and over again. It makes the map interesting however, because players on each team will like to fight over which team owns the DJ Room, thus adding something interesting to do.

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And that's about it! Not only will this help me with starting this map, but I will be able to make other video game themed maps for trade servers to get a hold of. I've always wanted to do this, so if you could point me in the right direction, I would be very grateful and glad!


PS, If I posted this in the wrong forum section, I'm sorry! Please feel free to point me in the right direction!
 
Mar 23, 2013
1,013
347
1: Custom Textures

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ3oCs-52_U
watch until 8:20. If you want the pixelish look by disabling the texture filter, check the "pointsample" flag in VTFEdit. So you can use small textures without the pixels blending into eachother, giving it that retro pixel look.

For packing custom stuff like sounds and textures, look up either VIDE or CompilePal. The tutorial linked shows how to use VIDE but most people here strongly recommend using CompilePal instead. Look it up~

2: Custom Sound Application.

custom sounds go into the /sounds folder. Using mp3 helps reducing the file size of your map as it's nice compressed format, however mp3 can't be looped so it's better to use them for shorter soundeffects or music that doesn't need to be looped. So for looping stuff you'd need to use the wav format.
Download Audacity and Goldwave (both free~), Audacity is user-friendly and useful for editing soundfiles and cuting so that they are "loop-ready". For adding the loop-cues to the file, read this: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Looping_a_Sound
Now it might be a good idea to read through the creation of soundscapes again. While you can play a looped soundtrack via an ambient_generic, it's difficult to make it play for only specific players, so a soundscape might be the best solution. https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Soundscape. What you need to do is copy a simple soundscape script into soundscapes_MAPNAME.txt which you put in the /scripts folder. Make sure your packing programm packs this file into your map too.
You probably only need to edit the soundnames. I'm gonna make you an example:

"pokemon.bgm.city"

{
"dsp" "1"
"playlooping"
{
"volume" "1"
"wave" "pokemon\Sootopolis_theme.wav"
}
}

"pokemon.bgm.pokecenter"

{
"dsp" "1"
"playlooping"
{
"volume" "1"
"wave" "pokemon\pokecenter_theme.wav"
}

}

"pokemon.dj.song1"

{
"dsp" "1"
"playlooping"
{
"volume" "1"
"wave" "pokemon\gym_battle.wav"
}

}

"pokemon.dj.song2"

{
"dsp" "1"
"playlooping"
{
"volume" "1"
"wave" "pokemon\palkia_battle.wav"
}

}

Edit the marked parts, in this case you'd put your wav files into sounds/pokemon so the script finds them.
Also if you want you can reduce the samplerate of the wav files so they take a bit less file size. Most wav files should run at 44000Hz, in Audacity you can change that to 22000Hz, so they take half the space. Anything below that sounds like crap though and other values might not run in Source.


3: Teleporting doors

Trigger_teleport. Don't forget to check the "Clients" flag on that entity or it doesn't work.

4: DJ Room.

I already put some space for that in the soundscape-script example. You'd need to disabled/enable the soundscape entities with buttons. Maybe use func_button which reacts on being shot. When a button is triggered to activate a sond (and disable all other songs) it can disable all buttons in the room, and enable them again with like 10 seconds delay. This way only one button can be pressed every 10 seconds.

I hope this helps