Vertex Tool Problems

[Masier_koniak]

Howdy.
Before I start, just wanted to point out that I'm a complete newbie to TF2 Mapping, I just watched some vidoes of Crash and thought "Holy cow, now I can make my OWN maps!111!1". I'm new to this forum as well, so sorry if I'm posting the same thing like 23 users before me. I just want an answer, because this bug is the only reason why i have 7 maps now, and noone of them is finished

So the problem is, whenever I save a map that has blocks edited with Vertex Tool (which I found very helpful, but broken) they look different in-game. The same happens when I re-open Hammer, and I don't know what the heck is wrong.

How it looks before I run map.

So far, no crashes. However, it looks unrealistic.

Now, let's try to make it slightly more realistic with the Vertex Tool.

Looks way better, more realistic, at least for me, but...

Welp... You get the point.

Of course, I can make maps (I do them just for myself to play with bots on them, so) without this annoying Vertex but they look kinda ugly and unnatural...

 

[Micnax]

Good start, but cliffs can be made much easier (and less expensive on the engine) by using displacements. They're basically designed for cliffs and uneven floor.

Check out the VDC page on making them: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Displacement

 

[Crowbar]

You are making non planar faces! There's some geometry involved in determining whether your vertex editing is going to result in a valid solid (all faces planar and it is convex), but I guess that comes anyway.
If your solid is invalid (you can check the existence of such with Alt-P error checker), Hammer, before saving map or compiling, will try to make the solid valid by moving vertices around so they make a valid shape.
With non planar faces, you can mostly be getting away with triangulating them (by selecting pairs of vertices which you need connected). If a quad is non planar, one way to triangulate it will result in a convex shape and the other will result in a concave one (takes some stereometry to prove, but it's true), so you'll always find a way.
If the shape however is obviously concave and needs to be kept that way, you're gonna need it made up by several brushes.

 

[Pocket]

And to think, this is how Valve actually had to do it back in the GoldSrc days...