Mumblings from a Hammer beginner
And now I am finding myself in a fight to the death with Hammer, every evening I take a few hours to torture myself and each day I sink deeper into this swamp of information. The tutorials on YouTube are really helpful - hey guys I am going to show you how to make an entry door, oh, don't worry about the textures not fitting, we'll just focus on the door.
Three days later I found out that the textures DO matter, and also that there is a bit more to it than just have two open and close "fields" - sound aint working but someone on the forum told me kindly that i might be using the wrong door instance, I left it for now, time to crack on with the puzzle. I have breakable glass - great, it is nodraw as instructed by an other YouTube video, and glass on the other side, not nice looking glass btw like that guy had- I only seem to find this nasty stained dirty glass, but I suppose that is all I deserve at this moment. Problem still is do that if you stand in the wrong place you see this lovely yellow nodraw texture - but leave that for now, I will fix that later... Next is my first room, I created it in a 32x32 grid, I made it hollow using 32 thickness, and I swear, you must trust me, nothing frigging fits! I am bashing away at these textures but they refuse to listen! I tried sweet talking, cursing swearing, begging, but it just won't do... no worry, I will fix it later, time for the emancipation grid, found a lovely wiki about that, followed it to the letter... and now I am looking at this ugly blocky grid, and the emitters are simply not there after the compile.... but well... I will leave it for later I think.....
Just the normal ramblings I suppose, but I aint giving up... one of these months my first map will be ready... and then I can spend the following two months fixing all the bits on my todo list:
-broken Turret is not talking like one
-fog is not foggy
-Laser emitter refuses to fit nicely in the wall
-Discouragement Field - don't even friggin go there, just don't ok!
-textures between walls and ceilings never fit
etc etc
Ooh, you know what, I feel a lot better after typing all that, anyway, back to my map and get that cube dropper installed, I wonder if I need to cut out the ceiling.... shouldn't be that hard... I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
Hammer's a lot more elegant than the PETI editor and you can do far more with it, but yes the learning curve is steep.
Your glass seems to be a func_breakable_surf, use func_breakable instead with whatever glass texture you want on ALL faces (no nodraw necessary).
To align textures, click the pretty-colored cube on the left and you can stretch and shift them, or click "Align Left", "Align Top", or "Fit".
Your fizzler models disappeared? If they're prop_dynamic you need the model to be fizzler_dynamic.mdl, if they're prop_static it has to be fizzler.mdl. It's an old holdover in Source from the HL2 days. You could also just use the fizzler instances from /instances/gameplay.
Doors are a huge pain, I've never gotten one to work, sorry. Maybe try using the PTI door instances? They seem to work well if you want worldportal doors.
The easiest way to make a discouragement field is to use the instance from the VDC. If you haven't been there, it's the best way to learn Hammer. While Portal 2 was downloading for me I read everything in the Portal 2 category and all the pages from the List of Portal 2 Entities, that's how I know hammer. Mostly theory, I haven't made many maps myself.
Good luck! And I'm glad you're trying to use Hammer instead of just hacking apart the PTI instances and pretending you know how to use it, it results in MUCH better maps.
... But all that fun reading this letter, I swear it was becasue I saw myself so damn reflected into it 
I bet almost all of us did!
What I mean is, dude, all that you're describing is absolutely normal, mate. I want to cheer you up and tell you this: the most important thing you seem to have inside yourself is that courage to continue on, to face the problems and never give up. I assure you that one day, only one of all that bunch of problems will suddenly disappear, a couple of adjacent textures will match, or your fizzler props will be seen after a compile, and right then, right in that moment, you'll feel something awesome! Promised. And after that, there'll be another of those moments, and another... and like you said, your first map will be released and it might not be perfect, but there it is... it'll be a first one, but better ones will come. For sure 
I assume you have already watched like a thousand tutorials, but there are many good tutorials and also bad ones, maybe you hadn't good luck. I offer myself to help you everytime I can. Just add me on steam. My name there is the same as here, josepezdj.
Anyway, visit Solarchronus channel, I use to recommend him because I started with his tutorials and because I really liked his educational way of explaining things and his neat mapping.
Also, check LpFreaky's clean mapping guide, it'll help as well.
Cheer up!
Keep it up
never give give up, never render!
If you're a beginner mapper, I recommend using those first, and once you think you're confident enough to do everything from scratch, then hold on tight, take a deep breath, and do everything from scratch.
Just don't blame me when Hammer crashes and you forgot to save everything.
CaretCaret wrote:
That's nice dear
Shane wrote:
I know how you feel about door frames, aligning the textures is a serious pain in the ass.
Uh... no? Unless you are doing it completely wrong...
Turn texture lock on. Copy and paste the door and frame from the example map zoo_mechanics. Align where ever you want it... make sure to turn texture lock off when you're done. Change textures to your liking.
Sometimes, you don't even have to turn texture lock on, if you are working on a large grid size.
So far I have just used the pre-created door frame instances and removed the unnecessary nodraw brushes.
128 are the units of the distance between the lines in the tiles of the textures like for instance "black_floor_metal_001a.vtf"... So it's very easy to align the textures if in there you only put the following numbers: 0, 128, 256, 384, 512, 640, 768, 896 and 1024.
Textures like for instance black_wall_metal_002c.vtf, due to the fact that the tiles are double size than in previous example, distance between lines is 256.
This way you will all have your textures forcedly aligned! Ofc, there are more things to consider here, but that rule should do by now 
josepezdj wrote:
128 are the units of the distance between the lines in the tiles of the textures like for instance "black_floor_metal_001a.vtf"... So it's very easy to align the textures if in there you only put the following numbers: 0, 128, 256, 384, 512, 640, 768, 896 and 1024.
One of the benefits of being a computer science major is that those numbers just come off the top of my head.
Yay verily.