CS: Placing entities/objects from other maps

First of all, thanks to all for the help I've received thus far. I'm
really enjoying editing in Hammer and look forward to flexing those
map-makin' muscles soon.

To that end, I have a problem: I would like to import those large,
static wooden crates that I've seen in the official maps (ie - cbble,
dust2). The problem is that I can't find it in the existing set
of entities. As I type this right now (at work, one evening
removed from my work...) I realize that they might just be simple
block-brushes with the appropriate texture applied.

At any rate, I'm going to assume that this issue will materialize for
other things that I'd like to import, so it wouldn't hurt to know the
answer :smile: I have already encountered the fact that when you specify the
game type (HL2, HL2MP, or CS:S) that it then limits your access to
textures to that particular game type. When switching my map type
from a HL2MP map to CS:S, I encountered the purple & black
checkerboard funkiness. Now, I'm simply working in CS:S mode
since that's the danged map type I'm trying to make anyway.

Okay, so to boil this down: Say I want to grab an entity or an item
built of brushes from another map (which I wouldn't have the texture
for in my basic config?). How would I make sure that the
appropriate texture/entity info is attached to my map? Referring
back to my earlier attempt, I imported a number of entities into the
newly reconfigured CS:S map, but they wouldn't show up. For
example, a bunch of my breakable boxes (the long, double-wide ones)
were "in-game" (I could bump into them and what not), but they were
invisible... until I destroyed them and the pieces visibly fell to the
ground.

I hope that my semi-coherent ramblings are understandable :biggrin: Thanks in advance for your help.

You cannot use mod-specific textures and models in other mods than the
original. Well, you could convert the textures and place them into the
other mod, but that's very hard. It will also cause distibution
problems since the avedrage gamer doesn't know where to put all the
customized files required to run the map. Always set the right game
type before running hammer to avoid those problems.

If you realy want to import that item, i'd recomend you to re-texture
it after you copied it over. After all - there are A LOT of textures
availible so you shouldn't have any problems to find one that suits
that item just as good as the old one.

You don't have to worry about the entity information, hammer will copy it too.

You also mentioned that you would like to create the crates found in
diffrent cs:s maps. Well it's not that hard realy, just make a block
and texture it like a crate. But if you realy realy would like to make
a crate just like that one in de_dust for example, make a prop_static
point entity and in the field "world model" enter:
"models/props/de_dust/du_crate_64x64.mdl" without the ".

If you browse around there you'll find more standard models that you can use in your map.

Good Luck and happy mapping!

Thanks for the tip, RaPtoR. I'm definitely interested in only
creating a map at this point, not modding. Since I'm very new, I
don't want to bite off more than I can chew :smile:

Thanks to your help, I've got it pretty well drilled into my head:
Textures are specific to the game type. Now, what about object
entities? I haven't noticed any difference between the object
types between HL2 and CS:S. Is that right?

Yes thats correct. As i said, browse around in the "world models" to
see them. You can see all the CS:s specific objects in the
models/props/ folder. The rest of the models are shared with HL2.

I'm quite sure that by the end of my first map, I should have a better
handle on how the Hammer file-system works. In the mean time,
I'll stumble around with occasional illumination from you pros. :smile:

Thanks, man!