I was playing CS:S today, and thought "You know what, I want to DO something." So I went looking for hammer tuts, followed some real simple tutorials and made an extremley basic CS:S map. Just a room with 2 spawns, and 2 boxes. But I actually made it, which was super awesome. I plan on expanding into making some actual maps that you know...are mappy. Hopefully I'll be good enough at it eventually to actually continue into working on DOD:S maps who knows!

Here's the pics from my little box-room-map:

http://www.fragspersecond.net/csmaps/basic_room0001.jpg
http://www.fragspersecond.net/csmaps/basic_room0002.jpg
http://www.fragspersecond.net/csmaps/basic_room0005.jpg

do a lot of reading.

have a lot of patience.

you're gonna get errors you have a rediculously hard time trying to figure out and then much more time spent on solving. you're gonna find entities that don't work correctly or don't work at all. but through a lot of perseverance everythign will come out all right.

the search tool is your friend.

probably about 95% of all questions asked have already been asked and been solved. if you use the search tool you will generally find what you are looking for, or you can goto valve-erc.com or some other sites to find what you're looking for. using the search tool and a lot of experimentation i have created maybe at most 10 threads.

it's not always fun and it's an incredible amount of work but with time you can become an excellent mapper.

-glhf
redfalcon

i warn u now, it's not even funny how addictive mapping is.

hahahahah hah ... hah

oh no, it's not funny :(

I figured as much. I had a very tough time learning to skin, and even tougher time going from no art experience to where I am now with photoshop. I'm very farmiliar with the whole tutorial process, and trust me, the search button and me are friends.

I'm not so ambitious as to think I can make a masterpeice my first time out, I'm going to take baby steps, my next addition will probably be 2 rooms similar to this one with a door between them. Then perhaps 3 rooms with alternate routes. My first real map that I'll release will probably be an extremley simple de_map. I don't settle for less than my best, so I plan on working real hard. Hopefully I'll be competent in time to re-learn everything for DOD:S. :)

Originally posted by BLU-82
i warn u now, it's not even funny how addictive mapping is.

yup it is REALLY addicting... even when ur not very good at it...

Addictive yes, but moreover for me something to do when Im bored, home, and using my PC.

Its pretty cool, actually. Getting into how games are made rather than simply playing them is much more fufilling. Take your time and have fun. GG.

I'd say think about the map alot before making it. Figure out what you like best about maps out there, what works and what doesn't. I do a lot of graphs of maps - reduce current maps to sets of graphs - a movement graph and a shooting graph for example; areas are vertices, edges are movement/shooting between the areas. I find this helps me vary the layout from current maps that I like the gameplay on while maintaining the types of interactions/gameplay feel. Have fun, that's the big thing :)

I used to map quite a bit, and made some pretty sweet fun maps, but never acually finished and released one. they were run on an old clan server, but most were only half done, execpt my custom version of dod_hill, which played like old school dod (1.3b) with no objectives just killing.

A good starter hint is to make your map layout so you have all the rooms and make sure they are sealed off. the worse part about mapping is when you have a leak you cant find. This happens when you get too fancy and make odd shaped walls and whatnot.

Once you have the rooms layed out, start tweaking and chopping up the brushes so you can shape them so its not boring. remember to use like of triangle shapes and splitting squares in an X shape will give you bumps or holes in the ground.

Just practice a lot and never release a map that has fullbright.

Mapping is awsome! But take it from me, dont use cut allot because it makes it sloppy. dont be afraid to use allot of brushes to create what you want!