Building outside streets in Hammer

How would you approach the construction of city 17 like streets in Hammer? Would you build a rectangle with sidewalks and road already made and then fill it in with buildings? Or would you build the sidewalk and road with the buildings as you went along? That's what I did for my courtyard map and it worked well. Although that was only an arena map, whereas doing it for a complex set of streets might be more difficult. When I was a beginner mapper, I would have done the first method. Now I would try the second one though, as it is less restrictive. Does anyone know how to make a building and then rotate it so that it lines onto the grid?

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Just Kidding

Just Kidding

You'll have a very difficult time rotating a finished building and realigning to grid ( unless it's a model, but even then your nodraw solids inside it would need to be fixed ).

Much better to approach it by building it in-place, using slope ratios and the clip tool, and then adjusting windows/doors etc to gridlines with the vertex tool. You'll still have to make compromises in sizing here and there but it won't be noticeable.

The more rectangular and "power-of-2" your layout, the more engine-friendly it is. Try and make your solids so that all the horizontal and 45 degree vertical hinting works properly, then tack on details to form protrusions etc. When you turn off details and props in visgroups, you should be left with a fairly simple system of solids. So the answer to your first question is that the streets and sidewalks are determined by where the visblocking of the buildings ends up, not the other way around

No matter how grid friendly I try to be, something always ends up in the tiny grid sizes

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Just Kidding

Just Kidding

Building streets just to "build streets" is a bad idea, generally.

Always make sure there's an interesting shape and gameplay area. Something that looks inviting, a place you haven't seen in dozens of other maps before. Then make a few little sketches (the uglier, the better) of the area. In these, try to identify areas that are just long-winded, boring areas with nothing interesting to them. Condense them until you have something exciting literally around every corner. In fact, even the corners themselves should have something special to them.

Now you can start building.

Getting the right amount of detail to both get things done and not run into problems later from over-simplification is one of the hardest thing there is for a mapper. I'm still figuring that out. I usually try to make sure all walkable areas or gameplay/optimization relevant walls are exactly to-the-unit like they should be in the final version. Then you can cut out or add detail as you polish the map.

Sticking to a 16, better 32-grid is essential for something as big as an entire house! If you don't do that, you'll be screwed, soon. For skewed angles, use the vertex tool and snap all the edges to grid in there. Don't use rotate. In fact, never use rotate, ever, ever.

Ahh, been a while I wrote things like this.

Haha, thanks Reaper47. The reason I would build street for the sake of it is because all I want is my work to look like any run of the mill Valve map, or else they end up as some sort of freak show I try to mimic official maps just for the professional look rather than gameplay. The game play is build around the map in my maps, rather than vice versa. Brings back good old memories of the Snarkpit talks on here. The days of Orpheus and Leperous were good memories. Now the days of the new guard are good memories as well Thanks for the info about building stuff and then rotating it. Next time I am in that situation I will try to angle it with Vertex manip.

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Just Kidding

Just Kidding

Trying to figure out how Valve did it isn't that much of a bad idea. You'll notice their brushwork is extremely simple, it is just spot-on when it comes to proportions, texturing, model-(ab)-use (they never abuse) and lighting. Valve build their stuff from photographs. They went to Prague and made a million pics and used them as reference. It's the only way you can make a street look as lively and natural as you see them looking in HL2. I'm not there yet. It's very difficult and takes years to really "get".

Just try.

Anytime I'm designing a recognizable area (any place people could recognize), I always look for reference shots. I have a good 10GB of pictures copied from the internet and pictures from my camera about places I've thought about mapping, or just looking for inspiration, -or if I stumbled upon a cool pic I think I would use later. It ALWAYS helps me, and I highly recommend it.

Based upon books I've read and my own experience, gameplay (a heated topic) is normally better off if planned ahead before aesthetics. You're building a level. The player knows they are playing a game. It's a level first, and the next best piece of game art (err. Valve quality environment) second. The world looks and is the way it is because it's based on the layout, or the progression of the story. If you think: "hmm, I want the player to be able to get out onto the street!" -You would have just made a gameplay decision. You didn't just start to map out a brush or two and think: "hey, this could be a street!" -no; there was some forethought (if little) that went into that decision. -My proposal is: -why stop there? Go ahead and flesh out (on paper, or on some other form of fast prototyping) as much of the idea as you have patience for and that time will allow! It's 10 times easier to scratch on paper 10 buildings than it is to build them out in Hammer, only to find you don't like the way they fit, and decide to delete them.

You've probably heard this before, but a good level has all aspects covered equally. A devotion to just one or two of them will deliver a sub-par experiences. Gameplay is just as important as visuals, visuals are just as important as sound, and so on... You're not just building a level, you're building an experience that needs to be developed all around. ESPECIALLY single player! SP FPS is meant to tell a story, otherwise, what's the point in playing by yourself. -You can assume the role of a character that the progression of the world centers around. By this fact alone, a player won't believe in the quality of the world, no matter how good it looks if they're not having fun in it. -That's where gameplay arrives knocking at your door asking for a place to sleep... You need to invite it in, and let it have a seat by the fire. -Give it some cookies and nurture it next to all your other best mapping buds (visuals and optimization).

-Aggh! I just made some weird allusion I'm gonna regret later I better stop now; I must be getting tired.

-In short: Think about gameplay first as it helps structure your visuals (very rarely does it work well the other way around). And, give each aspect of level design the same amount of attention!

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

reaper47 said:
Trying to figure out how Valve did it isn't that much of a bad idea. You'll notice their brushwork is extremely simple, it is just spot-on when it comes to proportions, texturing, model-(ab)-use (they never abuse) and lighting. Valve build their stuff from photographs. They went to Prague and made a million pics and used them as reference. It's the only way you can make a street look as lively and natural as you see them looking in HL2. I'm not there yet. It's very difficult and takes years to really "get".

Just try.

Thanks Reaper47. You were not obliged to reply to this thread again, although your post is highly valued Are you saying to tell me that Valve never have a piece of pipe sticking out of the level? That they never have a model somewhat embedded inside a brush? Valve like to build their shit to match real architechure, that's fine by me. I prefer to go for an overall feeling in my maps, I am not too big on details. All I want is reasonable brush work and fun gameplay.

Riven said:
Anytime I'm designing a recognizable area (any place people could recognize), I always look for reference shots. I have a good 10GB of pictures copied from the internet and pictures from my camera about places I've thought about mapping, or just looking for inspiration, -or if I stumbled upon a cool pic I think I would use later. It ALWAYS helps me, and I highly recommend it.

Based upon books I've read and my own experience, gameplay (a heated topic) is normally better off if planned ahead before aesthetics. You're building a level. The player knows they are playing a game. It's a level first, and the next best piece of game art (err. Valve quality environment) second. The world looks and is the way it is because it's based on the layout, or the progression of the story. If you think: "hmm, I want the player to be able to get out onto the street!" -You would have just made a gameplay decision. You didn't just start to map out a brush or two and think: "hey, this could be a street!" -no; there was some forethought (if little) that went into that decision. -My proposal is: -why stop there? Go ahead and flesh out (on paper, or on some other form of fast prototyping) as much of the idea as you have patience for and that time will allow! It's 10 times easier to scratch on paper 10 buildings than it is to build them out in Hammer, only to find you don't like the way they fit, and decide to delete them.

You've probably heard this before, but a good level has all aspects covered equally. A devotion to just one or two of them will deliver a sub-par experiences. Gameplay is just as important as visuals, visuals are just as important as sound, and so on... You're not just building a level, you're building an experience that needs to be developed all around. ESPECIALLY single player! SP FPS is meant to tell a story, otherwise, what's the point in playing by yourself. -You can assume the role of a character that the progression of the world centers around. By this fact alone, a player won't believe in the quality of the world, no matter how good it looks if they're not having fun in it. -That's where gameplay arrives knocking at your door asking for a place to sleep... You need to invite it in, and let it have a seat by the fire. -Give it some cookies and nurture it next to all your other best mapping buds (visuals and optimization).

-Aggh! I just made some weird allusion I'm gonna regret later I better stop now; I must be getting tired.

-In short: Think about gameplay first as it helps structure your visuals (very rarely does it work well the other way around). And, give each aspect of level design the same amount of attention!

My maps are just from a vague picture I have in my mind. I like the flexibility of doing it that way. Only problem is when it comes to adding details I occasionally lack inspiration. I have never plotted a layout on paper before. Why limit yourself that way anyhow? There will probably be a technical problem which will stop you from doing what you want anyway. Plus it is far more exciting to make it up as you go along.

Funny tangent you went on there, treating all of the aspects of mapping as entities I disagree that single player games are for telling stories. What about just for the fun gameplay?

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Just Kidding

Just Kidding

Flynn said:
Why limit yourself that way anyhow?

If you think of it as an limitation, you're really looking at it the wrong way! There are no limits to your creativity!

It's just that building a brush takes about 3-5 seconds. Drawing a line takes about .5 seconds...

Replacing a brush by a new one takes about 5-10 seconds. Drawing a new line takes about .5 seconds.

There's just less time between your idea and something you can look at, something you can judge, dismiss or expand. Sketches can speed up the planning phase considerably and give you surprisingly valuable feedback on how the final level will look and feel.

I'm getting a deja-vu right now. I think I gave you the very same tip ages ago. I don't mind, though. I'll write those lines into mapping forums over and over till the end of times. It's just really helpful and you should give it a chance.

Yeah, you should really draw up a floor plan of what your going to build before you build it, unless you have a pretty solid and thought out design in your head. I mean, if you start building your map and find out alot of it needs to be modified and improved because what you have isn't as good as what you had expected, you've really just wasted alot of time and will need to spend more time fixing everything. Reiterating over your design is an extremely natural process, your always going to build something and either find it just doesn't work and you need to try again, or it can be improved alot, but alot of your reiterating can be done on paper to save time!

It is also a good idea to base what your building off something else and really define what you want for your level. If you want to build a "streets" map, it'd be really useful to google search some pictures of streets or play a game and get some ideas for your streets, if you want streets like what you see in Half-Life 2, you'd better get your ass onto Half-Life 2 and take a bunch of screenshots to take note of what they did. Alot of your "missing inspiration" can be gained through this material your basing your level off. You don't have to copy everything 100% but you might decide you like the way the pipe comes off one of the buildings, or you like the way the buildings have depth and you want to emulate that, or you like part of the architecture on the.. left side of the building, whatever. For example, when I was building a particular space for Night Terror, I played through a certain section of Gears Of War and the HL2 chapter Ravenholm for ideas, I also knew this spot near my house which I took alot of photos of because the spot had ideas in it for what I wanted to make.

As for what order you should approach building this level, I would build really rough roads and footpaths and really flesh out the buildings first, work on the exterior and interior if there is one and if you find your building is too large or small, you can adjust the building and the footpaths and roads around it since there really simple at this stage. You want to have everything there at the same time, don't build the buildings first or anything. Once your happy with your buildings and their placement, you can work on the roads and everything else!

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Aaron's Stuff

reaper47 said:
Building streets just to "build streets" is a bad idea, generally.

Always make sure there's an interesting shape and gameplay area. Something that looks inviting, a place you haven't seen in dozens of other maps before. Then make a few little sketches (the uglier, the better) of the area. In these, try to identify areas that are just long-winded, boring areas with nothing interesting to them. Condense them until you have something exciting literally around every corner. In fact, even the corners themselves should have something special to them.

Haha. Your shitting me dude. I am 100% not creative enough to do that. If I took that approach I would never end up making maps. If I can just get a normal city 17 looking street with a few baddies in it then I am more than happy.

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Just Kidding

Just Kidding

Please take these posts into the HL2 editing forum. This board is for general talk mostly, normally nothing pertaining to "how to's" in mapping related.

I would design the playing area first then the fillers later as they're less important.

I'm too damn lazy to read all that stuff so if it's been said all ready whatever, i did, however, read the original question

the idea of building a platform and placing buildings on it is just no good: why you ask?

the amount of server time it would take to run a map like that would be crazy
the map requires every surface be rendered so to save time, create your streets around your buildings not under, this way the surfaces processed are minimilized, also, if you haven't already: realize the awesomenocity of the "nodraw" texture, it's instant win

Topic has been moved to the HL2 Editing boards now.

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202