2 quirks in hammer i never figured out

[poseyjmac]

ive been mapping in hammer for a while, and dodged these issues, but no more!

1. when on the vertex tool and if i mis click and hit empty space, a light blue box appears that can be resized, but what sucks is from then on i can't drag vertices anymore. anyone know how to undo this box thing?

2. and this is related. what IS that light blue box for anyway? sometimes ill create it when i misclick, and then i just continue. i bet it is something helpful i just never bothered to know, but im done being ignorant about it, anyone care to enlighten me about it? i would google it but i just dont know what it is exactly.

 

[Bigcheese]

press enter.

this was bugging me in the hl2 beta hammer for awhile but then i tested some stuff out and it worked.

as for what it dose? i think its for selecting lots of verts.

 

[Ti133700N]

Affirmative. The blue box is a selection marquee that you can use to select multiple vertices. Just drag that box to englobe multiple vertices and press ENTER. Very handy.

 

[poseyjmac]

thanks guys. a very handy tool that is.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

BigCheese: we don't care about your experiences in the Hammer from the stolen build. Stop posting about them.

 

[The Dark Elf]

There's newer _legit_ versions of Hammer out IIRC anyway, whats in the stolen files is apparantly pretty old and not worth looking at.

 

[tundra_cool]

http://www.hltwoworld.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=12978

Change 'two' to '2'.

 

[Wraith]

i also have a few questions about mapping in hammer.

1. how do i make the ouside of the map untextured like the professional maps?

2. how the hell do i check my r_speeds? i made a map which should have decent r_speeds, it lagged a lot for me (like 12 fps) but everyone else hwo played it said it was fine!

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

1) you can use the sky texture on faces that'll never be seen. However, it can lead to some lighting anomalies (as the sky texture emits light if you use a light_environment)

2) Type r_speeds 1 at the console when running your map. Look at the w_poly figure - anything over 800 is too high

 

[Dux]

2)anything over 800 is too high

Multiplayer wise, yes. But Single Player 1500 / 2000 is fine.

And Wraith, mate - drop that 486.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

I'm old-school. I like to keep it below 800

 

[Wraith]

dude here are my system specs:

p4 2.53 GHZ
100 gb HDD
1 gig ram
radeon 9000 128 meg AGP

seriously, it should play half life 1 at a decent ****ing framerate

 

[Ames]

2) Type r_speeds 1 at the console when running your map. Look at the w_poly figure - anything over 800 is too high

Type in developer 1 also so you don't have to keep looking in the console.

 

[Bigcheese]

use nodraw. like he said skybox will mess some stuff up.

 

[Shinobi]

1) you can use the sky texture on faces that'll never be seen. However, it can lead to some lighting anomalies (as the sky texture emits light if you use a light_environment)

it's better to use the null texture

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

I wondered about that at the time I wrote my original reply. I knew sky worked for it, and I suspected there were others (I've not done any HL mapping for a loooong time now). I briefly checked on the ERC and didn't find anything.

I happily stand corrected

 

[Ti133700N]

We could also talk about the clip texture.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

We could, but then I'd have to kill you.

 

[Bigcheese]

or, you could just make a 100% transparent texture in photoshop...

 

[Ti133700N]

We could, but then I'd have to kill you.

You can't, i'm already dead :x

What is annoying though in Hammer is that when you use the clip texture you can't see through the clip brush. When I made de_tchernobyl almost all of the map was covered with clip brushes/texture and it was hard to see where I was going, very annoying.

 

[JFry]

I agree with Shinobi, the null texture is the best choice. It will even reduce your r_speeds. And Ti if you are having trouble seeing things in your 3d view in hammer you can use visgroups to clear up the clutter.