I'm new to Hammer in general, and am trying to learn about it. I've read the wiki's and stuff, but what would be really helpful is for someone to build a room with all the elements for a map and post the .vmf file to get a look at.
Things I would like to see included would be:
A metal wall with some concrete parts, following portalable guidelines,
falling cameras,
moving platforms,
button / door
ball catcher / deployer
moving wall attatched to a button
- anything else that you can think of...

I know theres wiki's for most of this, but seeing it in a map, rather than reading it would be great. Also, for some reason I can't look at the Moving Platform tutorial on the wiki, it says I need to be part of a group, or something, not sure why.

The prefab pack in the downloads section has

-Ball catcher
-Ball launcher
-button and door (includes switching indicator textures)
-portal cleanser + effect
-small observation room
-medium observation room
-large observation room

They aren't perfect, but they are a good starting point.

The Moving Platform tutorial isn't yet finished. When you click on the link it tries to create a new page - which you can't do unless you register for the Wiki.

If you are completely new to mapping, I'd suggest reading the how-to's at Interlopers.net or HL2World.com, as they have better "Beginner" stuff.

Download VMEX here http://www.geocities.com/cofrdrbob/vmex.html

It can decompile .bsps, works for portal. That'll help you take a look at what people have done.

msleeper wrote:
### DECOMPILING MAPS AND "RE-USING" CONTENT IS THE BIGGEST FUCKING NO-NO YOU CAN DO. DO THIS AND YOU WILL BE BRANDED A FUCK TARD FOREVER AND I'LL PROBABLY BAN YOU. DECOMPILING MAPS SHOULD BE DONE ONLY FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, SUCH AS SEEING HOW CERTAIN ENTITY SETUPS ARE DONE - AND THAT'S IT! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED, EVERYONE.

Just a reminder.

msleeper wrote:
Just a reminder.

Hurt my eyes /tear

I wouldn't plan on just decompiling maps and directly copying, just want to see some of the entity set ups so I can try and re-create them in my own maps in a way that works. This is not a copy+paste operation I'm running here.