I'm a rather newbie mapper. I know all the very basics of HL mapping and such. And in this post I will not asking about technical questions but talking about some issues I have with HL mapping.

If you could help me somehow I would greatly appreciate that.

I will make a list of my issues to ease the read:

1- This a personal issue really, but everytime I start making my first "serious" map I end up get bored and not making nothing "solid" in the map.

2- I need a way to scale my map to the player viewpoint, but without compiling it up a hundred times to get it right. One way is to import a player model in Hammer, but when I set-up the env_model entity and load up a DoD player model in Hammer, it doesn't show up. CS player models work fine. Also, I can't open DoD player models in HLMV.

3- I wish textures were catalogated by categories. I hate searching for textures of the same category but with different "code" names that don't have anything to do with what they really are. Obviously the search function don't fix that at all.

4- One zillion entities to set-up a simple flag? How about one entity to rule them all? I mean, an entity where all is already set-up and you only have to chose the flag models and the capture sound. This could apply to other things as well.

5- Where can I find DoD prefabs? Like chairs, trees, doors, etc.

6- Is there a way to know how Hammer units compare to real world measures? Like, how many single units I need to create a 2 meter door that scales to DoD scales? Too complicated to understand?

7- This is more a dream, but it would be cool to playtest the map in Hammer, with the actual game viewpoint, and if possible, pre-visualise (sp?) the lighting... :D

Ok, take a :carrot: ;)

BUMP

Oh, I wish Hammer had a feature to play with the textures like they were brushes.

I mean, the possibility to scale, resize and move with the mouse, like you do with the geometry brushes. And more textures in a single brush. That would be awesome to save some w_polys in maps.

I'm too lazy to do the quote thing for every question, so I'll just add italics to my text. Plus, it just looks plain sexy.

1- This a personal issue really, but everytime I start making my first "serious" map I end up get bored and not making nothing "solid" in the map.

I think everybody has a problem with this. You pretty much have to force yourself to work on the map when you get around 60% done.

2- I need a way to scale my map to the player viewpoint, but without compiling it up a hundred times to get it right. One way is to import a player model in Hammer, but when I set-up the env_model entity and load up a DoD player model in Hammer, it doesn't show up. CS player models work fine. Also, I can't open DoD player models in HLMV.

A player unit is 72 units tall.
A good stair-height (for 1 step) is 16 units
A good window height is 40 units
A good door height is 96 units
A decent ceiling-height for a normal room is 128 units
and so on.
You learn this by doing, so it will take some time until its automatic.

3- I wish textures were catalogated by categories. I hate searching for textures of the same category but with different "code" names that don't have anything to do with what they really are. Obviously the search function don't fix that at all.

No fix here, unless you want to create a custom wad for each map, renaming each texture as you paste it into the new .wad file.

4- One zillion entities to set-up a simple flag? How about one entity to rule them all? I mean, an entity where all is already set-up and you only have to chose the flag models and the capture sound. This could apply to other things as well.

Hey, where's the challenge in that :)

5- Where can I find DoD prefabs? Like chairs, trees, doors, etc.

Brushbased prefabs arent really used anymore. If you do feel the need to add some random fluff to your map, then go into your models/mapmodels folder, and add some neato models to your map.

6- Is there a way to know how Hammer units compare to real world measures? Like, how many single units I need to create a 2 meter door that scales to DoD scales? Too complicated to understand?

Look at the answer to question 2

7- This is more a dream, but it would be cool to playtest the map in Hammer, with the actual game viewpoint, and if possible, pre-visualise (sp?) the lighting... :D

Yup, that's a dream :(

Thank you man.

Models, prefabs, etc. (http://www.mapping-area.com/hl/index.php)

The site is in french but you will have no problems finding what you're looking for.

Enjoy.