how do i play a map

ok i made a map for half life and i dont know how to play it

can anybody help.

To turn a map you make in hammer into a map you can play in Half-Life,
you need to compile it. There is a guide on how to set up the newest
versions of hammer with Steam, which includes a short part on how to
compile the map, that you can read here...

http://www.snarkpit.com/editing.php?page=tutorials&game=HL&id=59

what about on worldcraft cause that is what im using

Worldcraft is the outdated version of what is now called the Valve Hammer Editor. Get the latest VHE over at http://collective.valve-erc.com

This entire site is dedicated to helping newbies out at mapping. There are tutorials for all levels of experience... Search a bit and find what you want.

thank you so much

We do have our own files section here fraggard :razz:

And I'd like to add that the version they suggested has insanely long compile times :rolleyes:

If you're new to mapping, stick wit hthe Worldcraft that came with HL. Not very powerful, but it has very fast compiles so you can get your hands dirty with mapping.

If you set worldcraft up properly, it should run HL when the map finishes compiling. If not, try this:

in the Command line (also known as RUN) type: c:\SIERRA\Half-Life\hl.exe +map yourmapnamegoeshere and hl will turn on and play your map.

(Or your drive name)

No offence mate, but thats rubbish - have you even got the newest
version yet? Compile times don't change based on the editor you use.
They are based on how well you build your map, the compile tools, your
system spec, and the amount of resources (memory) you have free on your
computer at the time. Get the newest version of hammer, take advantage
of its bug fixes, performance increases, and added features.

ReNo said:
No offence mate, but thats rubbish - have you even got the newest version yet? Compile times don't change based on the editor you use. They are based on how well you build your map, the compile tools, your system spec, and the amount of resources (memory) you have free on your computer at the time. Get the newest version of hammer, take advantage of its bug fixes, performance increases, and added features.

I doubt it's full rubish -- it might be that I have bad experiences with mapping compilers, but here's my experiences :

Map made with 2.1, using the ****Q**** tools

Compile amounted to 3 minutes. My mapping abilities weren't good, and the map was very very large -- and had a sky box. Every thing was set on full.

Earlier, with VHE 3.4, I made a map that amounted to roughly 1/8 of the one I made in 2.1 --- Using tools that came with VHE.

After 15 minutes of bogus compile, windows locked up and my resources shot up to about 50% -- I wound up restarting windows. I'm not trying to argue with you or start a fight, really I'm not, but that's the truth of my experiences with VHE and WC.

You do realize that those compilers are terrible right?
I'm surprised they were able to use them to build the HL game ... they allow many things that you shouldn't be able to do (Like mapping outside of the grid as long as some part of the grouping is inside of the grid).

[size=13][color=white][quote=ReNo]
No offence mate, but thats rubbish - have you
even got the newest version yet? Compile times don't change based on
the editor you use. They are based on how well you build your map, the
compile tools, your system spec, and the amount of resources (memory)
you have free on your computer at the time. Get the newest version of
hammer, take advantage of its bug fixes, performance increases, and
added features.

I doubt it's full rubish -- it might be that I have bad experiences with mapping compilers, but here's my experiences :

Map made with 2.1, using the ****Q**** tools

Compile amounted to 3 minutes. My mapping abilities weren't good,
and the map was very very large -- and had a sky box. Every thing was
set on full.

Earlier, with VHE 3.4, I made a map that amounted to roughly 1/8 of the one I made in 2.1 --- Using tools that came with VHE.

After 15 minutes of bogus compile, windows locked up and my
resources shot up to about 50% -- I wound up restarting windows. I'm
not trying to argue with you or start a fight, really I'm not, but
that's the truth of my experiences with VHE and WC.

[/color][/size]
[/quote]

Sure sounds like a solid argument to me!

i've already changed back to teh Q-tools

Hey, it's me half-dude ,

Do you just press f9 in notepad to compile or what?

i made my map but when i log onto steam and try to pick my level its not there

what should i do???

what mod is it for?

We do have our own files section here fraggard :razz:

Like VHE: Snarkpit Edition, too :razz:

http://snarkpit.com/pits/forceflow/vhesnarkpit.htm

Sounds like it isn't your games maps folder. Also, make sure you have the bsp file there --- you play a bsp file, but you work and map off of rmf/map files.

Here's an example:

C:\Valve\Steam\Steamapps\youremail@msn.com\Half-Life\valve\maps

If its not in the valve\maps folder, then Half-Life won't see the bsp.

Alien, what do you mean by that??

G.Ballblue said:
I doubt it's full rubish -- it might be that I have bad experiences with mapping compilers, but here's my experiences :

Map made with 2.1, using the ****Q**** tools

Compile amounted to 3 minutes. My mapping abilities weren't good, and the map was very very large -- and had a sky box. Every thing was set on full.

Earlier, with VHE 3.4, I made a map that amounted to roughly 1/8 of the one I made in 2.1 --- Using tools that came with VHE.

After 15 minutes of bogus compile, windows locked up and my resources shot up to about 50% -- I wound up restarting windows. I'm not trying to argue with you or start a fight, really I'm not, but that's the truth of my experiences with VHE and WC.

Well, for one, this isn't exactly a scientific comparison. In any experiment you are only meant to change one variable at a time, and yet you have changed many (the map, the compile tools, AND the editor...most likely the current state of your computer too), making any results essentially null and void.

Its akin to saying you shot a dog (your old map) with a BB gun (the Q tools) and it didn't die, then you got a pet mouse (your new smaller map) and tried shooting it with a .357 magnum (the tools that come with 3.4), making the mousecage (an unrelated variable - ie. the new map editor) far worse than the dog cage (worldcraft 2.1).

...or perhaps thats a poor comparison :biggrin:

nah. spot on mate. :smile:

Well I changed it, so now it ALMOST is :biggrin:

ah, so you didn't shoot the dog with a bb gun, you shot its cage.

poor lil mouse. :sad:

Errr no, I'm gonna try and explain this silly analogy...

Lets look at the maps, which are the animals in my analogy. As both of these are different maps, they are different animals. The older map is the dog, while the newer one is the mouse. The type and size of animals has no real bearing here, its impossible to take this analogy TOO far without seeing the maps themselves.

Then there are the compile tools which you USE on the maps. For some daft reason I chose to represent this by weapons. Again, the weapons represting the tools has no bearing.

Finally, there are the editors. These are also used on the maps but have no relation to the compile process. In the analogy these are the cages - the cages have no relation to the shooting or the guns, just as the editors have no relation to the compile tools.

As such, there is no direct link between the animals cages and their fate from the shooting - you could quite easily have stuffed the dog into the mouse cage and given the mouse the luxury of the dog cage and their outcome from the shooting would be identical. This proves (yeah, right!) that the editors had no bearing on your compile times.

Oh god, I'll do anything to distract me from mapping won't I!

ReNo said:

• you could quite easily have stuffed the dog into the mouse cage .........

so it was a small dog?

[edit] maybe a large mouse cage? [/edit]

Bah. I know what I know. :razz: And all's im saying is, is that if you use the default stuff that comes with the compiler, the more newer and improved they get (a, la, updated) the slower the compile gets. :razz:

Look Blue you'd better just shape up and listen to Reno or he's going to shoot your dog and your mouse. His posts are laced with subliminal threats. Crazy bastard.

LOL, this post is just plain crazy :biggrin:

Seriously though G.ball, I won't believe you until I have conclusive evidence. For that, I'd need you to run the following experiment. I'll now accept that you are taking editor and tools as one package, rather than as two seperate variables.

CASE 1:
Worldcraft 2.1
Whatever tools it comes with
A map
A freshly restarted computer with no programs running

CASE 2:
Valve Hammer Editor 3.4 / 3.5
Whatever tools it comes with
The SAME map
A freshly restarted computer with no programs running

Compile with case 1, time it. Restart your computer and compile with case 2, timing it. I doubt case 1 and 2 would yield much difference, and if case 2 is longer than case 1 by any significant amount (giving some margin of error for incalculable errors like differing page faults while accessing memory etc...) then chances are its because case 2 is doing a better job of compiling :razz:

And submit your compile log for all to see :smile:

Maybe whats happening is... youre compiling through HAMMER! I'm not surprised it would take longer to compile through 3.4/3.5, that part of the code probably hasnt been touched since wc2.1, since most mappers never use it. It still works, but has become less effective over time as other parts of the program are upgraded and this part is neglected.

In short... DONT COMPILE W/ TEH HAMMRE!!111!!11!!1!!!1!1!

crazyd, let me appologise on behalf of all the *twitch*sane*twitch* people here. editing threads don't normally go this way. at least not before they get resolved.

i asked what mod you were making this for, because some mods need to have a certain entity in the map before they will appear on your maps list. for tfc you would need a tf_detect entity in your map.

if it is another mod, then there may be a specific entity that you need. there should be someone here that's able to tell you what it would be.

a sure way of getting your map to load is with the changelevel command in the console. all you need to do is start up your mod with one of the maps that you can see. once your in the game, enter changelevel mapname in the console. where mapname is the name of your map, of course. :smile: this should load up your level, even without its 'detect' entity.

^^that's all assuming that you did compile a playable .bsp, and it's in the correct mods maps folder.

Good point, and one I hadn't thought of. As hammer has been upgraded, its memory requirements have probably shot up considerably also. Thus, if you compile using older versions, you have more memory available for your compile tools than you would compiling with a new, more demanding editor. Cut out this possibility by, as wilson said...

...NOT COMPILEINGG WIFF TEH HAMREEE!!!1!!1

ReNo said:
We do have our own files section here fraggard :razz:

commits seppuku

ReNo said:
Good point, and one I hadn't thought of. As hammer has been upgraded, its memory requirements have probably shot up considerably also. Thus, if you compile using older versions, you have more memory available for your compile tools than you would compiling with a new, more demanding editor. Cut out this possibility by, as wilson said...

...NOT COMPILEINGG WIFF TEH HAMREEE!!!1!!1

Well why didn't ya just say so ?  :razz:   With that in mind, yes, I can understand how VHe would take longer. =D Also, sorry for de-railing the question.

LOL, I don't think you are the only guilty one :biggrin: I promise thats the end of the matter, I give you back your thread!

both versions all but die when the compilng starts though, giving up any ram they may be using. you can see/hear the ram getting filled up after compiling, as data gets lifted from the HD, and hammer stutters to life again.

i think it's a throwback to when WC was 1^st made, when 16megs was a lot of ram to have on a comp, that it was designed to give up the relatively large chunk of system memory that it would be using.

and seeing as how WC, or hammer, or hlcc, or whatever, dont actually compile anything anyway, i dont think there would be much difference at all.

the compiler 'tools' could have an effect however. different, newer versions, have elements added to them, which have been turned on by default, such as clipping off sky brushes. small things like this have been deemed necessary, whether it's to stop you falling out of the map, or to make it look nicer. so any small addition to the time .rad or .vis takes to do there jobs, and i do believe it would be small, is time well spent.

Hammer's not bad to compile through. It works, it produces the exact same output as if you were using some batch compiler, and the only drawback is it takes a little longer and sometimes appears to have locked up your computer. Go to the bar for a bit and when you come back you'll be ready to play your map!
EDIT: Plus it's easy to use once you set it up and it's built in.

For any compile shorter than about half an hour, I'd use hammer, but longer than that makes it more likely to end up crashing and me having wasted all that compile time.