Team Fortress 2 > Making your First TF2 Map! Part 1

Making your First TF2 Map! Part 1
Difficulty : Beginner

1. Starting Out
Ok first of all open up your steam. Go to Tools, and look for Source SDK it might not be installed, if not install it. Should take around 10 or 20 minutes to install; once finished your Source SDK should look like this -


Click on the button that say Hammer Editor, and it should set up Hammer automatically, if not well then look up "Compiling the Hammer Editor" on Google or Yahoo. It should be completely blank, well to get started click on:
File>New

And four boxes with blank grids should appear, now click the image of the gray cube on the toolbar to the left side, click anywhere in the four squares (besides the first square) and drag it. (Try to make it look like this)


Make sure it is large enough to fit a person, but not too big so that it towers over all the players.

Now right click anywhere inside the box you have made and click the option "Create Object". Now left click the box, and right click in it again, select the option "Make Hollow", a tablet should pop up, for now set it to 16.

Also click the button that says "camera" in the first box, and select 3D Texture, so we can see what textures your putting in there.

2. Textures
Well right now your box should be looking like a big hollow box, with nothing in it, made of brick. If you've followed instructions correctly.


Now then, we want to change those bricks to something more, realistic, or just better looking. On the left toolbar click the image that looks like this; a tablet will pop up, click the "Browse" button, a box with tons of texture images will pop up, lets find the texture we want. I have chosen "brick/brickwall002c" for the walls. Double click it, and for every area in your map you want that texture, just right click the wall.


Yeah my cursor got a little messed up in the image somehow.

Alright same thing, choose another texture for the ground. I chose "nature/blendtogravel004", and that's all for now (we will cover the sky later.)

3. Testing
I'm sure a lot of you are ready to test your map, so lets do it! But before we do it, click the image on your left toolbar that looks like a lightbulb. When you do it should say "info_player_teamspawn" left click your cursor anywhere in the map, on the floor.


There is how it should look like, almost ready, now just right click the "info_player_teamspawn" and click "Properties" when the dropdown box appears. Now another tablet appears. Make it look like this;


Almost about to test, but before click;
File>Save As...
And save it as something, like, "Test" or "test_map". Whatever you want, and now you're ready to test. On the top toolbar there is an image that looks like 3 circles really close together, click it.

Don't mess with anything when it pops up with the "Run Map" tablet, except the button "OK". Once you click that it should start testing the map.
Here is me in the game :

Nothing really there yet, well. That's how it's supposed to be right now.

4. Sky
Now we will move on on how to do the sky. Firstly choose the texture button thing, and select the texture "tools/toolsskybox" and apply it to the roof of your little box.

(Should look like this)
Now you're probably thinking,"How is that a sky?", well it isn't. Yet. First of all click the red X on the texture tablet, basic, but if you don't the next step won't work. Now go to your;
Map>Map Properties...
and a tablet should appear, fill it out just like I will show below.

(The Text you put in is "sky_hydro_01")
And here it is in game.



5. Making Hallways/Connectors
Well now that we've covered most of the basics, your probably thinking, "How could this be multiplayer?" and that is true, a small box wouldn't be fun to play in, so let's make two rooms that connect for now.

Well now we can just make another box, close to the same size as the first one, just like this;


Now do the same process that you did earlier, right click in the box and click "Create Object" and the select that box again and click "Hollow". (Keep it the number 16 for hollowing) This can be blue base and the first one you made can be the red base. Now don't try to do the same looking texture, but not too different, it's gotta be believable (Like if a snow base and a desert were right next to each other it wouldn't make any sense).

Now lets make that hallway; try to make it look like how I did;


Now right click it and click "Create Object", instead of doing hollow, right click it, and do "Carve". Now right click it, and do "Hollow". Now, right click it and choose "Ungroup". Here's how it should be looking like this;


Now that you've done all that, you can delete the two squares blocking the entrance (I'm talking about the square that was selected in the picture above), like this;


Go ahead and texture that hallway if you haven't already. And now the two rooms connect!
Now you can click the light bulb image on the left toolbar, and (if it isn't already) choose "info_player_teamspawn" make one in the other room (the second made one), and change it's properties to "Blue". Like this.

Now it's a two player map!

______________
This is all so far, I will have a second part of this tutorial later, but enjoy!

that's too hard

Not really.

Wow that looks insanely hard

Hmm. I figured it out on my own,