The Official Facepunch Mapping WiP Thread v18: Source Engine and Friends - Developers

You've done amazing progress, and you're a quick learner. Very nice job. However if you want to go the extra mile for the visuals, you can try to work on your cubemaps in combination with the shadows caused by -StaticPropLighting. It can really make a difference.

Some tree things https://i.imgur.com/wypjPPi.jpg https://i.imgur.com/lOCyprG.jpg

Thank you, everyone one has been a huge help. I have learned a lot in a short time span, it's kept me busy. It's been about 5 days of work, and those 2 hallways + the server room is all thats really completed hehe. I will pick up the pace though, as I get used to all these new level building habits. I am not much of a quick learner, lol. However; I have used hammer for years, so there is a lot about the editor I already undertsand. After having visited other editors in recent years, I realized that mapping was all about technique. This is simply something I never really fully developed for hammer editor, but for these past few days, this community has really been bringing me up to higher standards. As far as cubemaps go, I am way ahead of you hehe. I already got them strategically placed, I will be getting into advanced tutorials on them when I am good and ready. Thanks for the advice!

Oh oops, I actually meant "lightmaps" instead of cubemaps. But cubemaps are also good.

Heh. Only issue with my light maps is that, if I had them any smaller, VRAD will just crash. This is due to the sheer size and design of the level, its not like a typical hammer map, this is a large underground area. I have to make all the outside have a light map size of 128 in order to compile it.

Oof, that'll make the lighting really bland. What's the error? Maybe if you make one big brush into several smaller ones, it'll work better.

I do have a lot of super large brushes. The next thing I am doing is going through and making the main area, this way I can work on chopping everything up and applying really good lighting. This will probably stop VRAD from dropping dead. Then I will work on shrinking light maps for smooth shadows.

Super large brushes make VRAD have a stroke when attempting to cut them up, that's the reason VRAD is crashing. If you start hitting brush limits as a result, remember that you can simply convert any func_detail stuff to displacements. However, that will cause the edges to be smoothed if you have multiple displacements together. To avoid that, just move the edges 0.00001 units away.

I have a suggestion: Because of limitations of Source engine - creating whole detailsed town is almost impossible, but we have a beatiful thing, called skybox ! So everything is very easy: add some floors to already existing tower (must be very high-detalised) and move the rest of facility into the skybox! (Right by the borders of the tower).

The advice is most valuable, thanks. I will keep all of these in mind, I am gonna build up the area first and just go from there. I can probably leave my geometry alone if all goes well.

That's gorgeous! Are those textures/models from somewhere or custom?

THe grass and rock I made, and the trees were from the Cry-Engine 3 SDK

This is how it supposed to be ( I decompiled a map and added that skybox ) : View from main map (i'va added some lights in gmod) https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/133429/27815185-1599-4641-8792-f9ea9739628c/20180716235237_1.jpg https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/133429/925625ab-0f28-4101-9123-90f2ff167d5f/20180716235221_1.jpg And THIS is actual size of that big room ( scale comparsion ) : https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/133429/865d88d3-b82a-4f70-b31e-bbe8132842da/20180716233640_1.jpg By that way, you could use tiny skybox props, or made your own using propper tool to make your map look like how do you want . ( omg my grammar )

Anyone can give tips or maps with good examples of creating non-baked destruction? I saw many DMM tutorials and videos but I heard that physboxes are bad for multiplayer - they cause lags. I created destructible bridge using Proper and Voronoi algorithms, but I don't know what type of prop_physics I should use (I need chunk collision with players and other stuff). Using prop_physics_multiplayer makes players teleport sometimes, at least from my point of view.

I love how you actually took the time to show me what you mean, this is awesome! If you wanted the .vmf though... could just ask, this way you get the full version. I am not too crazy about map security, trust me... if you are at a point in your life where you are out right steeling people's hammer maps just to take credit, then you already have enough issues... ANYWAYS, I am gonna still hold on the idea till I know for sure. I still want that area to be open so players can use it to build giant robots out of trash or what ever ridiculous concoction they want... The only thing I would use it on really, is things like the walls, even then, only if I really have to. Mostly because players could get into the sky box causing strange visuals to appear inside the facility, lol. Also, is there any particular reason you used a displacement on the ground for the skybox? I always like to know these things, lol.

Theres a very strong reason to use displacement: Your floor "Covers" the worlds center, but the entity required for skybox, which is called "sky_camera", can't be inside the solid geometry ( brushes ) - your map wont not compile. And as we all know, displacements DO NOT counts as a solid geometry So the sky camera feels good there

Wow, I haven't worked with many skyboxes... I should make note of that.

What am I doing with my life: https://s.gvid.me/s/2018/07/17/jyW886.png

Looks very organized.

Meanwhile I still never use visgroups, everytime I attempted to make them it was either a mess or I never used it in the first place

https://i.imgur.com/jiIUjob.png

Visgroups are always useful when as the maps get huge https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/109950/9824a446-9efd-4977-8e8d-6a1f006ae1ed/vis.png

I guess since everyone is sharing there's, I will go ahead and share mine .... My VisGroups I mean.... https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/293415/b6d6930f-1986-4b20-acdf-e00f91f09845/funny.png ....

Ugh. Can't remember where all my big maps went. tv_studio https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/132403/48503fbf-3581-4c99-8d3c-29314101b6ba/rubbitch2.gif and big_town https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/132403/400217e3-de06-4572-b6aa-9f3d3578a83e/rubbed.gif

Honestly... I probably should start organizing my crap, just look at this mess: https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/293415/1a38116d-fd22-4533-b010-ee7dddaf5f16/funny2.png You guys, and no migraines: https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/293415/51ba58a4-8934-497c-a748-105e475ead9f/images.jpg Me: https://media.giphy.com/media/9JgjpeyN48rdtzIvOZ/giphy.gif I am still trying to find the damn floor!

I didnt know you could make sub categories. How do you do that? My first map I didnt even use custom visgroups, imagine the hell that was. Now I got it neatly with about 12 different groups but if I can make categories I can make it even cleaner. One thing that kinda worries me is sometimes it acts up on you. When you select groups or solids or group something that was already in a custom visgroup, it tends to bug out on me.

Ooh I like this. Here's mine: https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/132366/71abdabd-e6a2-4cce-87db-dcee00a12eb6/image.png I was about to say I wished it was possible to reorder VisGroups without dragging them in and out of other VisGroups or manually editing the VMF, but then I noticed the little arrow buttons on the bottom there. Still learning new things about this old-ass editor

Oh I wouldnt have thought this was the way so myself. Well that makes it alot easier to hide and show alot of stuff at the same time, thanks I will try this later

I wish, it's mostly old removed trash. This one is actually organized: https://s.gvid.me/s/2018/07/17/Qi1302.png I also group stuff pretty religiously: https://s.gvid.me/s/2018/07/17/heG068.png Lets you see on the 2D grid much better. Grouping nests, which is suuuuuuuper nice: https://s.gvid.me/s/2018/07/17/kWi550.webm

Look no further(well gotta skip to 1:15): https://youtu.be/47HR2jewQms?t=75