[Tutorial]Alien Swarm Map

[Selfrot]

I tried posting this before, but it got deleted and I was banned. So this time I have reviewed the Rules and I'm now posting it with images.

Tutorial made by: me.
Images taken on my PC.
Map made by me.
Every word was written by me.
Credits for this tutorial goes to me.


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Introduction & prerequisites


This tutorial is, in my own opinion and estimated using my own experience as: Easy

Anyone should be able to tag along, and guess what? It's all free!
That's right! Alien Swarm is a game released on Steam for $0,00, and it's a Source Based games, which means: if you buy it, you can make maps & mods for it!


So, here are some prerequisites that you may want/might need for this to play out like you want it to:

• A fairly good computer, able to run the Alien Swarm game on anything higher than the lowest graphic settings. The game engine requires a lot of CPU, RAM and Harddrive power to run correctly and not crash. I recommend Intel i3 or higher, Nvidia 400 series or above and at least 2GB of RAM.
• Alien Swarm. This is downloaded via Steam, and shouldn't take more than an hour to download. So sit back, watch a movie, then come back and proceed to the next step.
• Alien Swarm - SDK. This is downloaded via Steam's Tools page. In your library (List view, not grid), you will find a dropdown box Above the list of games, which should state: All Games by default, but can be named: Favourites and Installed as well. Change this to Tools and proceed with scrolling through the list of downloadable tools to find: Alien Swarm - SDK.
• Last, but not least: a good sense for detail and a lot of creativity as this will be necessary once you start working on your own, outside the box, so to speak.
• These prerequisites are of course not mandatory. I condone the use of ATI cards and AMD processors, although you might want to lower some settings, such being the Rendering distance - if you are running those hardwares. All will be explained.

Once you've downloaded the Alien Swarm game and SDK - you will want to run the game at least Once, before running the SDK. This is to create the necessary files for the SDK to work and also to create a config file.
Once inside Alien Swarm, change the Graphic settings appropriate to your hardware. Once this has been saved, the game should now have created a config file for you.

Close down the game and continue by opening the Alien Swarm - SDK.
A green box will appear, looking somewhat like the old Steam theme.

A bunch of applications will be visible within this little frame. The only application you have to worry about is: Hammer World Editor. Double click it to open it.



Modifying Hammer

Now, don't be alarmed. I know that there are a lot of buttons to press, a lot of windows Everywhere!
But stay calm, all you need to worry about is 1 button: Tools.

You can find Tools in the upper left corner of the screen, after pressing that you will have a dropdown selectbox before you, choose Options.


Now a lot of these are optional. You don't have to use them if you don't want to. You can always change these as time passes to suit your needs.

I recommend the following: 2D views > Arrow keys nudge selected object/vertex.
This allows you to use your arrow keys to move your props and brushes around the map, without using the mouse.

I also recommend:
Defailt to 15 degree rotations - Hold down Shift while rotating an object allows you to bypass this.
White-on-Black Color scheme - This is a lot better for your eyes, as they might get tired after just a few hours looking at a white screen. This is a lot more soothing to look at.

You can leave all other options as is and come back later on if you'd like.


That's it for modifying hammer, you're ready to start building!



Something to walk on

Building a room is one of the most fundamental aspects of the Alien Swarm game.
If you look at each Valve made map, you will see tons of rooms or smaller sections. There're no wide open areas with scattered buildings like in DoDs, Counter Strike, Call of Duty, etc.

In this section I will show you how to build your room. Simple as that.
Please keep in mind, that; having a room, does not mean that you have a working map. There are a lot more to it than that.


If you just started reading this, I suggest you read the other 2 chapters beforehand, as they explains how you setup Hammer.
If you've already read those pages, and you're at the very basic Hammer interface (no map loaded, no nothing) - press Ctrl-N simultaneously to create a brand new map.

Four (4) windows should appear in the standard Grey-ish area. The top left one is the 3D View. It's black now, cause your map has no entities or brushes placed in it, yet.
The top right one is your Top down view.
Lower left and lower right are your Side views from two (2) different angles.
These windows are called: Viewports. We'll be using that term a lot.

The first thing you're required to do before starting Anything, is to check whether your 3D viewport is rendering properly.
Hit the button called: Camera in the upper left corner of the 3D viewport.
Click 3D Shaded Textured Polygons.

Once you've done that, proceed by selecting the Block tool or as I call it the Brush Tool. It's a White/Grey square block to the left of the 3D viewport.
Or use the Keybind: Shift-B.

All Blocks(original state) are converted, during compiling of the map, into brushes, unless you tell the engine to render it as something else. There are A LOT of different Block types to choose from - func_detail (lowers rendering time for large, otherwise untouchable brushes, such being buildings in the distance or decoration in otherwise inaccessible areas. This is just one example.

Now, in the Top Down Viewport, drag out a square (or a rectangle) starting from the faded green/blue line. This Green/Blue line is the exact center of your map. I drug out a square which is: 832 by 832.
These numbers are visible on the left and top side of your selected area.


For now: this is just a selected area, if you select any other tool, this will go away and no Brush have been created.
To create the brush, hit Enter.

This will create a Brush which is 832 wide, 832 long and 64 deep.

To see your brush, hover over the 3D Viewport with your mouse cursor and press Z on your keyboard. This allows you to navigate through your map like any other FPS game.
Navigate so your can clearly see your Brush.


And there's your floor! Continue to the next page to see how you turn this into a room - and to learn a few tricks of the trade.


Making a room.

Once you have your floor setup - you will want something to keep the player from falling into the endless nothingness... You need walls!

Using the selection tool (Shift-S or the Arrow pointing upwards in the Tools sidebar) - select your brush.
Once selected, go down to the lower left Viewport and grab hold of one of the white squares on the top of the Brush, preferably the one in the middle, since the side ones arranges the width of the Brush as well and drag this up to 192 in height (left side of the brush).

Now this doesn't look anything like a room.

Using the selection tool again, right click the Brush inside one of the Viewports, besides the 3D viewport and select: Make Hollow. Many level designers will shun me for using this, but it's acceptable for a tutorial like this.

A box will appear asking you to input a number. I chose: 32.

Hit Ok and you should now have a room!


Now, since Alien Swarm is a Third Person game, you see everything from above at a 60 degree angle.
This complicates things for Developers, since you have to take into account that you shouldn't impare the vision of the Character. Such being: walking behind walls or -- in this case: a roof.

Using the selection tool, select the Brush and hit Ctrl-U. Or right click the Brush in any of the viewports and hit: Ungroup.

Select only the roof and hit Delete on your keyboard.


And there you have it! Your room is complete!

Player Spawn

A map is without question a very poor map - without a spawn location.
If you can't spawn, what's the map for?

Go ahead and select the: Entity Tool (Shift-E or the Light-bulb in the Tools Sidebar)
By default, this is set to: info_player_start, which is exactly what we need.

Normally you would need 4-8 of these, but we'll use 1 for now.

Place your Entity Anywhere on the map, preferably not against a wall, but about one 64grid square away from it.
I placed mine approximately in the center.

This entity should load fine as is.

If your entity tool did not create the entity: info_player_start, then using the Selection tool, double click the entity inside the 3D viewport and open the Class: dropdown selectbox and type in: info_p this should narrow the list down as to allowing you to clearly see the info_player_start in the list.
Select it and hit enter twice. Press Apply then Cancel.

Scratching the surface of theTexture tool.

Textures are what makes your map come alive. That and Props. Lots and lots and lots of props. Even the slightest detail can make a difference.
As of right now, your room should have a very plain Red Brick texture.
We're about to change that.

Using the Selection tool, click the floor brush of your room, then navigate to the right side of your screen to where a small Preview Texture box is visible. There you will find two buttons: Browse... and Replace....

Hit browse. And type into the Filter: -- Nodraw. A yellowish texture with the text: Nodraw should appear. Double click that and you should see it appear in the preview box.

Go over to the Tools Sidebar and press the Apply Current Texture tool, which looks like a Wooden square, opposed to the Brush tool which is a White/Grey square.


Your floor brush should now be a bright yellow color and have Nodraw written all over it.

Now using the Selection tool, select all four walls by holding down Ctrl while clicking all the walls with your Left Mouse Button.
Go over to the texture browser again and now filter: Nolight.

Apply that and you should see the walls as a Dark Red colour.

If you unselect the walls, they should disappear as the background is the same colour as the Nolight texture.


For this next step I will introduce another tool, which is the: Texture Tool.
Hit Shift-A or find the Orange/Green/Blue square in the Tools sidebar.


This will bring up a window similar to the texture browser on the left hand side of the screen.

It should have the Nolight texture selected. But we want something to paint the inside of our walls with. Let's use: concretewall081c.
Hit Browse and filter: Wall then select the concretewall081c texture from the list. If you're having trouble reading the texts - then feel free to expand the window a bit.

Once selected, right click the insides of your walls.
Using the Z key while hovering inside the 3D viewport helps you navigate through the map and texturing at the same time.

Once all four walls are painted, select Browse again and filter floor. I chose: concretefloor050a.
Same principle here: right click the surface you wish to paint.

To colour multiple faces at the same time, use the Ctrl-Left click action to select individual sides (faces) of a brush.


One important thing to know in Alien Swarm is that; you spend 99% of the time looking down onto the map. So it's important that all top parts of a wall or other, is painted with this Nolight texture.


Running your map

This - to me - seemed a little too soon, considering that we have no objectives, no lights, no nothing. But bare with me here.

In Alien Swarm you spend - as previously stated - a lot of time looking down, into basically nothing.
Valve decorate the parts you Can see with pipes, containers, manhole covers and much, much more.

However; to keep people from starring into what we will call: "The endless nothingness", we need something to cover our entire map, to prevent leeks from lights (light going into the endless nothingness) or entities which reflects light, etc.

This particular "cover" is called a "structure_seal". It's the only block besides water with that name. We'll get into water in another tutorial.

Now:
Using your Brush tool, mark an area which is slightly bigger than your room that you've made. Make sure it covers every side of the room.
In the Texture Browser on the right sidebar, select the texture: "Nodraw" - and hit Enter.

Using the selection tool (Shift-S), right click the newly created brush in one of the viewports besides the 3D viewport and select: Make hollow. Type in -4 this time. Meaning it will expand the box outwards by 1/16th of a 64 grid square.

Select the Brush again and hit Ctrl-T or right click and hit: "Tie to Entity."

Close the panel which pops up and continue with pressing: Shift-A or the Texture Tool in the left sidebar.

Mark the top, bottom and all sides of the box which you created (On the inside. The Outside part should still have the Nodraw texture).
Use Ctrl-Left click to select all these faces.

Hit browse and find the Nolight texture again. Hit apply and close the prompt.

Now: the brush you just made should have: the nolight texture on the inside, the nodraw texture on the outside and it should have been set as a "func_detail" (you did that by pressing Ctrl-T).
Select the Brush and once again hit: Ctrl-T or use the viewports to get the Tie to Entity menu back.

Change "func_detail" to "func_brush" and give the Brush it's proper name: "structure_seal".

Hit Enter twice and press Apply then close the prompt.


To compile a map you press: F9. If your map isn't saved yet, a Save prompt should appear asking you to save your "Valve Map Files (*.vmf)". Save this somewhere comfortable. I saved it in a folder on my desktop.

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Keep in mind, the Compile process will add numerous files which can get scattered on your desktop if you don't place it in a folder.
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Don't worry about any of the settings, all should be left as is or at "Normal". If any option is set at anything else, put them back to Normal.
Make sure you tick the option: Wait for keypress when done compiling and make sure that "Don't run the game when done compiling" is not ticked.

Hit Ok and watch that baby go.

Your map should run fine, besides giving you a few errors in the in-game console about you having too few "info_player_start"-entities.

This is a good time to get a feel for the game, see what needs to be improved and how the Nolight texture effects the top part of the walls but also how the Structure_seal comes into play.


Adding a light

So far, we've made a room, a place to spawn, we've textured our room and we've added the structure_seal to make it playable.
Once ingame you should see everything illuminated with a Very bright white colour. We don't want that, we want to make it look good.

For this you will only have to use two tools, and those are the: Entity Tool & Selection tool.

Select the Entity Tool by pressing the Lightbulb button on the left sidebar or by pressing Ctrl-E together.

Place an entity Anywhere on the map, then continue with bringing up the Selection Tool (Shift-S).
Your Entity should be automatically be selected to go ahead and press Alt-Enter or right click the entity and select: Properties.

Change it's "Class:" to: Light. There are a lot of lights you can choose from: light_spot, light_dynamic and so on. You only have to worry about "Light" - as is.

Once selected hit enter twice and go down to: Brightness.
If not already selected: bring this color to White and using the bar on the right side of the panel, brign this down to a grey-ish colour. Not too bright but not that dark either.
Once at a decent colour, press Ok then apply and close the prompt.

Bring this Light Entity up to about 1½ of the "info_player_start" entity's height. So it's about half his height above his head.

Using the tool to decrease the Grid size helps a lot here.

Now here's a neat little trick which helps a lot when you need multiple entities of the same kind in a map. While holding down "Shift", select the entity with the Selection tool and "drag out" to create a copy. Place these with a few 64 grid squares between them (2-4).

Compile your map and enjoy your new lights.

Feel free to tinker with the settings in the Properties panel of the Light - and get a feel for how the system works.


Conclusion

This concludes my Alien Swarm Step-by-Step tutorial for making a runable map with spawn, a light and some other things.


Thank you for reading this guide. It would mean a lot if you share this page with other aspiring Game Developers, and also if you "Like" this.

If I receive enough likes on this one and if you enjoyed this guide, I'll post several more indepth guides for dynamic props, objectives, conditions, etc!

Best regards,
~Selfrot



Keybinds

Here are the general keybinds that you may want to keep track of.

• Shift + S - Selection Tool
• Shift + B - Block Tool
• Shift + E - Entity Tool
• Shift + A - Texture Tool
• Shift + S - Save current Window
• Shift + Ctrl + S - Save all Projects in all open windows
• Ctrl + T - Tie a brush to an Entity
• Ctrl + Shift + C - Carve Tool
• Ctrl + M - Transform/Rotate
• Alt + Enter - When an entity is selected, this will bring up the Entity Properties.

 

[Selfrot]

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