Will add more later on, just creating thread to have somewhere to paste it in. The manifest window Kill it. It only wastes space. Easy Camera Control Press 'Z' in 3D view, move with WSAD, scroll for faster movement. Focus the selected entity in 2D views Select it in 3D view, press CTRL + E. Focus the selected entity in 3D view Select it in 2D view, Go to View -> Center 3D views on Selection. Proper grid size Try to stay on a grid size of 16-32 when making brush stuff, only go lower for details. Hiding shit easy Really useful for checking what's behind something. Select it, Press 'H'. Unhide with 'U'. Align something to the ground Select the thing, CTRL + X, CTRL + V in 3D View. Copy paste easily Shift drag something and it will copy itself. Move props ignoring grid Select prop, ALT + Drag. Select all models of a certain model Open the properties for your prop, copy the World Model (.mdl) text Go to Map-> Entity Report, Set Key/value: MODEL = your model. Shift click to select multiple entities. How to align trees to ground (Instead of doing it for every tree manually) Copy paste tree in the 3D view it will align the origin with the displacement then select all the trees and control+M -16 on Z Cordon Tool Click on to make a box around what you want to see. Press to only render this. Will stop leaks. I will kill you if you release your map with this on. How to use carve You don't. How to make a skybox using hollow You don't, stop being lazy. Use the cordon tool if you don't want to make a skybox right now. Invisible capture points (instead of nodraw) Use the invisible texture for capture points, allows you to see whats under it without having to hide it.
Yay double post! Here's how I did things in minigames, in case you guys wanna look at it. https://www.dropbox.com/s/0q35ra2gl5r2fzm/emp_minigames_2017c.7z?dl=0
It would be great if you could add this to the wiki so people don't have to go through multiple forum posts
It's not that hard really, and most maps would be relatively easy to make via just making it rather open with some hills/mountains. You could do a LOT with just hills/mountains and no structures. Structures take the longest time... gotta get every detail right or it sucks.
Alpha versions are easy to do and ugly as sin. But if you have a prototype that plays well (nuclear), polishing it makes a lot more sense and you have better motivation for it. What I'm saying is, I believe you have the patience to create a basic map and get it to a testable state. You should worry about looks only after you got the gameplay down.
