Here you go. Watch this if you want the basics for now. It will help you get a map to compile and eventually I will be covering making a commander map and doing the entity work that I know. Have fun, be nice. This is meant to help new people who want to learn how to map which there are quite a few who have added me and asked for help when I show them my new maps. Hopefully this will encourage a ton of people to start mapping to bring new maps to Empires. Feedback? Leave it here. Edit: Before everyone says "But dahnald, there are already like 500000 mapping tutorials. You just wasted your time". Well, they don't focus on Empires, nor do they go through how to get a map properly compiled from what I have watched. The mapping tutorials that I have seen give me a vague idea of what to do or are not part of a series on how to get to the end result. They are broken up more into specifics whereas this is to get a map working from not knowing anything. Hopefully anybody can pick this up and get a map working, even if it's just an infantry map. Give a server a map, entertain people for a day. Teach the people how to map, make them give their soul to Empires.
the red lines are not just only grid subdividers. the red lines are where vvis cuts visleaves automatically (they are always at 1024 units and multiples thereof and cannot be changed) yes, i know that visleaves and the PVS are probably no topic for the first tutorial, i just wanted to tell. also the way you made the skybox (by just scaling the hollowed block down) made me cringe, but i guess, "if it works it aint stupid" what are the topics for the next tutorial?
Time for Dz's input! Hurray! Make sure you read and apply all of these notes. Kill that manifest window, it's useless for you and only takes space, drag it out and then kill it. Voilá, more space for the 3D view! Not sure why you're having the map window as not full-sized, full-size that shit! You shouldn't have to use the texture tool after creating a brush, instead pick the texture and then create the brush. At the texture browser to your right. Never make a whole skybox around your map. It increases compile time for just being lazy. Best way is to make the ground with no space between it and the world then 4 walls and a ceiling manually. Never run vvis on fast. It causes the compiler to do weird things. Better to optimise your map instead. Compile without rad if you want a fast compile (it's just lighting) Enable the console for Empires! It's going to increase your loading of the map a lot. Just right click the game in your steamgames, go to properties, launch options, type: -console Then you just type map _mapname_ in the console. If you do a change in hammer, just recompile and type map _mapname_ again, no need to use the create server option again. Keep it up. Oh and small unrelated thing, enable file extensions in Windows. https://www.file-extensions.org/article/show-and-hide-file-extensions-in-windows-10
i always build everything out of nodraw textured brushes and only apply materials where i need them. is that excessive or good practice? also concerning optimization, its probably good to learn about it relatively early on and consider it in your map layouts. IMO
Optimisation is definitely important but not "first steps" material. Then again, nuclear is almost completely unoptimised and takes 1,5 minutes for vvis compiling. ....and then there's my attempt at fogtown which i manually shut down 9 hours in
I do it too, mostly out of habit. However, no it doesn't really help optimization Source kills all the faces touching the void. So the only real thing that it gives is that you can hide nodraw faces in hammer to look into it, if you have a map like hl2 with lots of corridors. Click this button in the top toolbar to toggle: I vaguely remember me poking at you to func_detail lots of shit, no?
for "normal" empires maps its probably best to just func_detail every brush geometry since barely anything is big enough to block visibilty anyway (use mat_leafvis 3 to see visleaves ingame) and just put huge nodraw brushes under the displacements to cut line of sight (disps do not block visibility) that ofc is only true for our huge open maps. if its rooms and corridors - like fe. district - you better build the rough shapes out of worldbrushes and use func_detail like it is intended for detail (like the name hints already).
So, the reason that this is so "Cringy" at first is because I'm going about it the way I learned it. I want anyone who watches these to get the basics first and then go into more complicated issues such as visleafs, nodraw etc. I first want a person to be able to make a map before I get into anything that is complicated. What will be next: 1. Basics of a commander map 2. Making a minimap 3. Basic Optimization 4. Advanced Commander map features (x2 Refs and such) 5. Making an Objective map (Some research already done) 6. 3D skybox 7. Advanced Optimization 8. Making custom textures with VTFedit 9. Entity work 1 (Explaining how to use triggers with entities) 10. Entity work 2 (Explaining the math/logic inputs) 11. How to spawn in the new bots and get them to have different weapons/selecting different spawns 12. How to make the new bots move around/kill (Using trigger/a new entity ) 13. How to make bots cap a point The Skybox is actually the way Destroyer taught me at first just to get my map to compile so blame him I'll get more into the advanced stuff later on, again this is just getting a map to compile in the order I learned it from multiple sources including Destroyer, LordDz, Misfire and other youtube videos. This is, from start to finish, how to learn hammer.
Thanks, I'll keep all that in mind and probably go back over and redo some stuff. I know already that a couple people I sent this off to found it helpful so hopefully more people will start mapping and I'll try to crank out the other videos when I can to allow them to make decent maps.
I posted the topics for the next 11 videos. Critique away! Edit: The bot tutorials may be a bit eh considering it's a new feature that I have to learn how to use before I can teach it. Hopefully it doesn't take long.
Thanks for pointing that one out, now it's basic optimization because I probably can't teach the entirety of optimization in one video. Edit: Also, I'm kind of a novice on Optimization so it will all be dependent on me learning it/putting it to use a couple times. Edit 2: I'd also like to say that I was able to make Trenchassault and Forestattack perform better. Yay.
we should put our heads together before you start that one and 7 (also looking at lorddz id really love to know what he knows that i dont, im sure its quite a fair bit)
Agreed, some help would definitely be welcome for optimization. So far, I know about nodraw, visclutter and from my decompiling of King something about Hint's being used for optimization. I could try to do the 3d skybox containing the entire map like Palmbay for an even more advanced optimization one. However, I'll probably just hack apart King to figure out the advanced optimization, that or any other map I can get my hands on that has decent optimization and reverse engineer it. That's what has helped me the most in mapping, the ability to reverse engineer and figure out why it works which is also why I'll probably be throwing up Trenchassault to be public so people can see the work LordDz did if he is OK with that of course. It contains two nice systems, the flag capture system that only drains tickets if you have more flags and the cool artillery system.
Yay. And we MAY need some help with the "optimization" tricks. And hopefully the bot tutorials will help even people who come back to map. Perhaps a minigame where you have to survive an onslaught of bots coming at you....
Tutorial 8 is live. Basics of commanding. I show you how to make refineries, pre-placed refineries, place commander vehicles and the barracks. Now people should be able to make their own commander maps. Here is the list of the next tutorials planned - 9. Minimap, .res, and the .txt file 10. Basic Optimization 11. Advanced commander maps 12. Objective map with custom cfg 13. 3D skybox 14. Advanced Optimization 15. Custom Textures with VTF edit 16. Entity work (Triggers and entities) 17. Adv. Entity work (Math/logic entities) 18. Spawning in the new bots and getting them different weapons 19. How to make a bot move around via the triggers and new entity to assign movement 20. Super Adv optimization (Keef level shit) Any feedback or suggestions on what to do that would help people? Also, if you can help out with the "Optimization" videos, I would appreciate it!
