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Source SDK Game Development Essentials
Source SDK Game Development Essentials

Source SDK Game Development Essentials: Develop engaging and immersive mods with Source SDK.

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Source SDK Game Development Essentials

Chapter 2. Grasping Hammer

Now that you have everything installed, I bet you're itching to start creating! We're not there yet because there are still some things to cover. This chapter serves to shed some light on the mysteries of mapping.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

  • Learning some basic terminology

  • Opening Hammer for the first time

  • Navigating the 2D and 3D viewports

  • Customizing your user interface

  • Developing some basic organizational skills

Let us begin.

Terminology


In this book, I will be guiding you through many examples using Hammer. There are a handful of terms that will recur many times that you will need to know. It might be a good idea to bookmark this page, so you can flip back and refresh your memory.

Brush

A brush is a piece of world geometry created with block tool. Brushes make up the basic building blocks of a map and must be convex. A convex object's faces cannot see each other, while a concave object's faces can. Imagine if you're lying on the pitched roof of a generic house. You wouldn't be able to see the other side of the roof because the profile of the house is a convex pentagon. If you moved the point of the roof down inside the house, you would be able to see the other side of the roof because the profile would then be concave.

This can be seen in the following screenshot:

Got it? Good. Don't think you're limited by this; you can always create convex shapes out of more than one brush.

Since we're talking about houses, brushes...

Loading Hammer for the first time


You'll be opening Steam\steamapps\common\Half-Life 2\bin often, so you may want to create a desktop shortcut for easier access. Run Hammer.bat from the bin folder to launch Valve Hammer Editor, Valve's map (level) creator, so you can start creating a map. Hammer will prompt you to choose a game configuration, so choose which game you want to map for.

I will be using Half-Life 2: Episode Two in the following examples:

When you first open up Hammer, you will see a blank gray screen surrounded by a handful of menus, as shown in the following screenshot:

Like every other Microsoft Windows application, there is a main menu in the top-left corner of the screen that lets you open, save, or create a document. As far as Hammer is concerned, our documents are maps, and they are saved with the .vmf file extension. So let's open the File menu and load an example map so we can poke around a bit. Load the map titled Chapter2_Example.vmf.

The Hammer overview


In this section, we will be learning to recognize the different areas of Hammer and what they do. Being familiar with your environment is important!

Viewports

There are four main windows or viewports in Hammer, as shown in the following screenshot:

By default, the top-left window is the 3D view or camera view. The top-right window is the top (x/y) view, the bottom-right window is the side (x/z) view, and the bottom-left window is the front (y/z) view. If you would like to change the layout of the windows, simply click on the top-left corner of any window to change what is displayed.

In this book, I will be keeping the default layout but that does not mean you have to! Set up Hammer any way you'd like. For instance, if you would prefer your 3D view to be larger, grab the cross at the middle of the four screens and drag to extend the areas.

The 3D window has a few special 3D display types such as Ray-Traced Preview and Lightmap Grid. We will be learning more about these later...

Navigating in 3D


You will be spending most of your time in the main four windows, so now let's get comfortable navigating in them, starting with the 3D viewport.

Looking around

Select the camera tool on the map tools bar. It's the third one down on the list and looks like a red 35 mm camera.

Holding the left mouse button while in the 3D view will allow you to look around from a stationary point. Holding the right mouse button will allow you to pan left, right, up, and down in the 3D space. Holding both left and right mouse buttons down together will allow you to move forward and backwards as well as pan left and right. Scrolling the mouse wheel will move the camera forward and backwards.

Practice flying down the example map hallway. While looking down the hallway, hold the right mouse button to rise up through the grate and see the top of the map.

If you would prefer another method of navigating in 3D, you can use the W, S, A, and D keys to move around while the left mouse button is pressed....

Navigating in 2D


Navigating in 2D is a bit different than 3D. Each 2D window has scroll bars like any webpage or text document, but there are some tips and tricks that can streamline the process.

Moving around

You can zoom in a 2D view by scrolling up the scroll wheel. Scrolling the scroll wheel down will zoom out. If you do not have a scroll wheel on your mouse, the magnify tool will be your best friend.

The magnify tool works just how you would expect it to: left-click to zoom in and right-click to zoom out.

Tip

The + and buttons on the keypad will also zoom in and out in 2D views if your cursor is inside one of them.

The minimum zoom (all the way out) is 0.01. The maximum zoom (all the way in) is 256. The current zoom amount is indicated in the bottom-right corner of the status bar, as shown in the following screenshot:

Panning the view is as easy as holding the Space bar and dragging the screen around with the left mouse button. You can also pan the view by using the up, down, left, and right...

VisGroups


A VisGroup is a group that contains different objects that can be toggled between hidden and visible. These are useful for keeping your map organized and reducing visual clutter.

The VisGroups toolbar is located to the right of the four viewport windows. There are two tabs available for organizing your VisGroups: User and Auto. The User tab contains all the VisGroups that you create, while the Auto tab organizes all the individual items into lists so you can activate and deactivate them whenever you'd like.

With the example map loaded, turn of all VisGroups except for World Geometry to see what the world is made of.

You should see something similar to the preceding screenshot. Note that on the left-hand side, you can see the all the entities and special brushes. However, on the right-hand side, you only see the floor, walls, and ceiling. If your map is getting cluttered, try turning off some specific VisGroups to make your life easier. VisGroups will affect the 2D view as well as...

Summary


Navigating in all the viewports is simple once you get the hang of it, and it's vital to be comfortable with your mapping environment if you want to create spectacular maps. In the 3D view, you can use only the mouse, the mouse and Space bar, or the left mouse button and W, S, A, and D controls to get around. The 2D viewports can be easily navigated using a combination of mouse wheel zoom, Space bar and the left mouse button panning. Selecting objects is as simple as clicking on them in either view, and if you want to keep your map organized, VisGroups are the way to do it! The next chapter puts these tools to use. So now that you know how to get around, let's start creating!

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Table of Contents

11 Chapters
Getting Started with the Source SDK Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Grasping Hammer Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Shaping Your World Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Textures, Terrain, and Props Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Importing Custom Content Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Lighting and Compiling Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Triggers and the Input/Output System Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Trains and Camera Systems Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
NPC Movement Basics Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Advanced NPC Scripting Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Source Particle Editor Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

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You can find all of the info in this book free online at the Source website. However it is nicely packaged and worth the price.
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