So you’re putting in lights and you find the perfect settings to light the room, but there’s a problem: the ceiling is almost pitch black! A surprisingly common problem, so what do you do? increase the light’s brightness and suffer a blinding floor? Nope. Read more ...
Just a quick one today to clear up something that possibly isn’t experimented with much when considering lighting, the spread angle from the light_environment. The entity itself recommends a value of 5 degrees to start with however, as my attention was drawn recently to, this is actually quite a large angle. You’ll see on a sunny day, the shadow from a tall building is incredibly crisp. Read more ...
One of the most fundamental aspects of level design is proper scale and dimensions. A door way that is few units too large or too small will ruin the illusion of your environment.A building set to improper scale will destroy the immersion of the player in your environment.Hammer Source has few key aspects of keeping your world on scale and proper proportions.
The tutorial covers:Read more ...
How to keep your map to proper scale and dimensions
Hammer Source character scale, wall height, door dimensions, stairs
Developer textures
Grid values
Hammer Source Map Construction Breakdown takes a look at what elements levels are made up of in Hammer Source. Knowing how a map is constructed inside Source helps you to understand your own process and what you need to do with your own maps.
The tutorial covers:
How the map constructed?
What elements are used?
How everything comes together in Hammer Source.
Hammer Source Interface Crash Course in 15 minutes. The tutorial covers the entire interface to get you started mapping in Hammer Source. Most commonly used functions are covered.After watching the 15 minute video you will be comfortable navigating around the viewports in Hammer Source and you'll be ready to start mapping.
Learn how to install the Source SDK correctly and how to use Valve’s Hammer Editor. Read more ...
Back when I was trying to learn Source mapping, I ran into several issues, most of which involved lighting or water. While I have not mastered Source lighting, I can offer some help to those having issues with water. Read more...
Updates to Source SDK have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:
Source SDK
- Fixed crashes in Faceposer and commentary editor
Updates to Source SDK have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:
SDK Launcher
'Half-Life 2', 'Episode 1', 'Episode 2', and 'Counter-Strike: Source' now default to the 'Source Engine 2009' engine configuration.
Users developing content for these games should manually add configurations for these games in the context of the 'Source Engine 2009' engine or can simply use the 'Reset Game Configurations' utility.
Two cool scenes made in the Source SDK for Half Life 2: Episode 2. The first one was actually inspired by Dead Space, and the train scene was thought up by me with a little inspiration from Mirror's Edge and Split/Second. Enjoy, and I plan to make more! :P
Updates to Source SDK have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:
Source SDK
- The Source SDK was updated today to fix tool problems for some games and mods. We are sorry for the disruption to your work that the SDK issues may have caused for the past week. Thanks very much for your patience.
SDK Launcher
The terminology for Engine Version has changed and now maps to the year of release rather than to particular products. Here are the options now present in the list of engine versions along with the games which utilize them:
Source Engine 2006
- Half-Life 2
- Counter-Strike: Source
- Half-Life 2: Deathmatch
- Half-Life 2: Episode 1
Source Engine 2007
- Half-Life 2: Episode 2
Source Engine 2009
- Day of Defeat:Source
- Portal
- Team Fortress 2
Please note that you may need to re-create the game configurations for total conversion mods that were built using 'Source Engine 2007'. Simply run the 'Edit Game Configurations' utility to do this.
Valve games should show up under the appropriate engine version. If they do not correspond to the list given above then you can either manually edit the configurations or run the [I]Reset Game Configurations[/I] utility.
SDK Tools
There are now tools supporting three versions of Source in the SDK distribution. If you are creating content for a game or total conversion based on 'Source Engine 2007' you may need to run some of the command-line tools now located at:
The command-line tools needed for 'Source Engine 2006' and 'Source Engine 2009' are still located at:
- sourcesdk\bin\source2007\bin
- sourcesdk\bin\ep1\bin
and sourcesdk\bin\orangebox\bin
Like any engine, after a bit of love and attention it can run much better, spend some time setting hammer up how you like it, get something that you like and get it to work for you, it’s your workflow. Read more ...
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Material proxies are a neat little feature of the Source engine that let you alter various properties of a material dynamically. This can produce some neat effects, as the texture position, scale, rotation, transparency and much more can be changed continuously, or even in response to game events.
Take Half-life 2, for example. You know those combine force-fields, that ripple with energy, and fade out as you move away from it? Or in Team Fortress 2, you’ll have seen the rotating radar screen in the 2fort basement. Both those effects are done with material proxies. Read more ...
There are a few things you can do to greatly improve the speed at which you map. I’ll be going through a few of these things, point by point, but you must use them in practice in order to get faster!
Read more...
Updates to the Source SDK have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:
Hammer
- Fixed bug in which the model browser can become unresponsive
- Game overlay no longer attaches to Hammer which fixes incorrect 3D camera position bugs
- Google Sketchup to Hammer exporter now ships in the Source SDK
Updates to Source SDK have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:
Source SDK
- Added source files for ten shipping TF2 maps
- arena_lumberyard
- arena_ravine
- cp_badlands
- cp_dustbowl
- cp_granary
- cp_gravelpit
- ctf_2fort
- pl_badwater
- pl_goldrush
- tc_hydro
- Updated shadercompile binaries and added missing DLL needed for shader compilation
SDK Tools
- Fixed the issues with the following tools: height2ssbump, normal2ssbump, pfm2tga, splitskybox, vbspinfo, vmt_tweak, vmtcheck, shadercompile
- Fixed an issue in studiomdl pertaining to $shadowlod
Hammer
- The texture browser automatically ignores most textures that cannot be placed on brushes or displacements, as well as anything inside a .svn folder for those using svn as their choice of versioning software.
- Added additional auto visgroups for sprites and cubemaps
- Separated the VRAD calls into two sequential while using HDR (-ldr and -hdr) instead of -both
- Model browser is now created once per session
- Displacement brush dial now has greater range
- Added a stop button to sound previews
SDK Launcher
- Added the ability to edit game configurations with vconfig
Source Code
- Added a new template mod that replaces the old 'advanced' source . This template has options for teams,classes, sprinting, prone, stamina, etc.
- Added shader source; fxc.exe, psa.exe and vsa.exe must be placed into the dx9sdk\utilities folder and you must modify materialsystem\stdshaders\buildsdkshaders.bat to set your paths.
- Most tonemap controller options now work in multiplayer. The 'template mod' map 'sdk_teams_hdr' demonstrates this.
- All three mod types by default mount the required appids - Multiplayer uses 218 and mounts 320 for example. Gameinfo.txt contains a new entry 'AdditionalAppId' for this purpose.
- Particle systems can now be defined with a per-map manifest, similar to soundscapes.
- Fixed a number of issues which caused the server to not compile in linux
Multiplayer Source Code
- Players animate with the new animation system that came along with TF2.
- Fixed third person animations and all effects
- Fixed SLAM issues
- Fixed Use of UTIL_GetLocalPlayer on the server in various locations
- Fixed a number of other bugs / asserts
Singleplayer Source Code
- Fixed a number of issues preventing the source from functioning correctly
- Added new vehicle "hl2buggy" so that users may have both the charger and the old buggy
In diesem Tutorial werde ich euch erklären, wie man in TF2 (=Team Fortress 2) per Hammer-Editor ganz leicht ein Portal, einen Beamer oder auch genannt "Teleporter" setzt.
Read more ...
Updates to Source SDK have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:
Enhancements
- Particle Editor, Material Editor, and Commentary Editor are now included in the Source SDK
- Updated SDK source code for Orange Box mods
- Added example particle system files to SDK content
Bug Fixes
- Updated Linux binaries and makefiles for dedicated servers and server plugins
- The Faceposer phoneme editor now pops up a warning message when a phoneme cannot be saved
- Fixed crash in 'splitskybox.exe'
- Day of Defeat: Source now appears in the list of Orange Box games
