Hi Splak
Recently I picked up a new hobby in designing Source maps, more specifically TF2 maps, in Source SDK. It's been a few days since I've started and I've made little but good progress since then (screenies to come!). Today I thought it would be a cool idea to share my progress with you'all from the start (now) and as time goes by post more and more content to see how it all develops. It also wouldn't hurt to try and keep an active thread in the recession of active threads around here heh.
As I said before, I'm using Source SDK and Hammer under it. If anyone becomes inspired, as long as you own a Source game, you already have Source SDK and can make your own maps (or even weapon skins) immediately! Check around your Tools section in Steam, install it, run it, and GLHF. I'll update more, fix up some stuff, post more screenies, and possibly some tutorials as time goes by - so stay tuned!
My first "map" I made the day I started (3/2):
Just a huge room with environmental light, a sky box and spawn points.
The 2nd day I decided to practice on making buildings as a good place to start, heres the first result:
As you can tell, it's quite shitty. Blockish? No doubt. Weird textures and odd door placement? Check. Inside there's no light, but it has DOES have a working door (slides up when you get near it) and a no-entry visualizer icon when enemies try to enter (lets red team enter in an out, but not blue). Most of this was good learning on getting used to Hammer. Also, ignore the random and floating ledge on the right o_O
2nd house (Blue teams!) on the opposite side:
Much more developed! Whoo-hoo! Roof is kind of misplaced but at least it's not a solid flat roof. More realistic textures for the walls and two doors to master how to actually do them (not so easy at first). Wanna take a peek inside?
Working lights yaaaaay. Medivieal resupply locker (for cool points) with the working "renergize" function. Implemented room lights, don't ask where the actual light props are though, lol. The ladder leads to the roof - I must have spent a good two hours figuring out how to to first make one, size it correctly, get the right brush entity, and function overlapped properly just to realize ladders DON'T EVEN WORK in TF2. ... gave up for the night after realizing that.
That's it for now. Got lots of time to spend on working on it today. Gonna fix up blue's house a little more and then completely re-do Red's later. After the houses are finished, space them apart, throw a capture point in the middle, some obstacles and whatever else I happen to learn and want to practice in there, and presto - map3 done hopefully by tonight. Thanks for reading, and watchout for later posts!