Making TFC/FF Ramps?

[GenghisTron]

I'm learning Hammer in the hopes of helping to port over more maps to FF, but I'm stumped as far as creating the walk-way ramps (Like the two beside the spawn in 2fort). I've been messing with the vertex tool trying to make a variant of stairs, but I'm just failing hard. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Also, I must say I'm glad I decided to pick up mapping. I've watched most of the tutorials on interlopers and read plenty more, and mapping is WAY easier than I thought it would be. I'm sure optimization and all that will own me, but as far as the geometry and conceptualization, it's not difficult at all.

[squeek.]

Care to post a screenshot of what you're trying to make? I don't think I know what you're talking about.

[Hawk Eye]

IIRC, you take a square block the size you want of the ramp.

Then use the vertex tool or w/e it is, and merge corners together.

*._____*.
*.______.    (It's a 3d box, I swear)

Then merge the left side to:

_______*.
*.______.

Did my ASCII art help?

[squeek.]

Ah, yeah, if you're just trying to make a regular ol' ramp, do what Hawk said.

[GenghisTron]

I had someone help me minutes after I posted this thread, and I ended up just making a huge brush and using the clipping tool, and made the ramp about 4 uniformally units thick.

I'll still be updating this thread with questions, and I intend to turn the answers into tutorials for other people who become new to mapping (like me) who can't find tutorials specific to FF map making, since most tutorials I've found out there are for HL2DM/DOD/etc.

My next question is.... how would I go about making a huge arched ceiling follow a path? For example, in the map I'm making now, there's a huge ramp that goes from the front door (Think of that TFC map with the huge ramp, and the flag room was a gigantic spiraling ramp with water at the bottom... the name escapes me) and nearly to the flag room, and about 3/4's of the way up it takes a 90 degree turn. I'm making the ceiling arched, so it's economical for concing. In other words, (and I'm going to use 2fort as an example again) I'm trying to make the spiral from the ramp room/spawn area, down to the flag room and scale it up a few times.

[Dr.Satan]

pic man...use pics, it'll be 100x easier to help if we can all see what your talking about

[GenghisTron]

Lol, don't worry about it anymore, I scratched that idea.

[Hawk Eye]

But yeah.. even if it's just MSPaint pictures, it'd go a long way. I got what you meant on the arch, though.

[GenghisTron]

Alright, I'll include pictures next time I have a question.

[totoro^vi]

For the arched ceiling you can copy and paste your arch brushes, rotate them, and just put them together at the corner of your roof (overlapping them). Then just lop off the overlap with the clip tool. That will line up the ceiling but it will be a hard 90 degree turn.

If you want to have the arch of the ceiling itself curve around the 90 (since much of FF is curvy) you'll want to use the torus tool.

[GenghisTron]

Alright, new question that doesn't involve a picture

What units do you guys usually try to stick to when it comes to using the gridlines? I've found that shit can get really unsymmetrical when I leave the comfort of using 1 unit gridlines. I'm somewhat anal-retentive, so unsymmetrical shit irks the living hell out of me.

[Elmo]

use the bigger grid whenever possible.. 16 minimum walls - 32 are good

Seeing as you seem to be in the early stages of using hammer have this (post attachment) that I wrote and intended to finish () - the red writing is where I had intended screenshots of the example.. i had barely started.

I had an example map which I was testing some theorys on but that might get confusing so i didn't add it in

I wanted to go into using visgroups to keep things tidy

Go to your FF folder /source/maps and load up ff_monkey.vmf use the vis groups to hide stuff (func_details, tools, props) and look around the map in hammer

[Elmo]

hmm where the hell is the attachment ... i'll sort it later sorry g2g

[MonoXideAtWork]

Originally Posted by GenghisTron

Alright, new question that doesn't involve a picture

What units do you guys usually try to stick to when it comes to using the gridlines? I've found that shit can get really unsymmetrical when I leave the comfort of using 1 unit gridlines. I'm somewhat anal-retentive, so unsymmetrical shit irks the living hell out of me.

For buildout, I use 32 unit grids. I don't need to make anything smaller than a player can crouch (32x32x32)

[Elmo]

ok its there (attachment 3 posts up)

really is a crap document but I thought if there's anything useful in it then its not gone to waste and there's no harm in sharing it even if it is crap.

I put most of my effort into the vmf I made for the tutorial but because of the crap state of the document you'd learn more from seeing the source of ff_monkey as I said.

[GenghisTron]

Alright, new question;

What is the tracking distance for SG's?

[squeek.]

#define SG_RANGE 1050.0f
#define SG_RANGE_UNTARGET 1155.0f

[GenghisTron]

You're amazing. Thanks so much!

[GenghisTron]

I don't know why my map is doing this, but I've turned off all lights by this pillar, but for some reason it's still lighting weird. One quarter is dark (the portion facing the yard) and the rest is a significantly lighter than the rest.

I don't think it has to do with lighting, though, because I have two spotlights which are shining right on the dark(er) spot in the yard, and it looks exactly the same, there's just light on top of it (second picture).





Here's one with all my current front door lights on.







I'm getting hung up on it because I feel it's a problem with the way I built my map, otherwise this wouldn't be that huge of an issue.

[GenghisTron]

Also, to add, it's textured with the same texture (duh), and it looks perfectly normal in Hammer. Come to think of it--I haven't put any cubemaps in, but I doubt that would be the cause... right?