A. This F.A.Q. is a list of the questions we frequently get asked in email and in the message boards. The F.A.Q. is maintained by Brian and Kabaal so send any comments/flames to them.

A. You probably forgot to include the origin brush with your rotating brush. The origin brush is a brush textured on all sides with the ORIGIN texture.

A. Make sure your sky brush is textured on all sides with the SKY texture. The light_environment won't affect brushes with they SKY texture only on one side.

A. If you place a light in your level and don't go into it's properties, then it will be a "bad" light. This is caused by a bug in WorldCraft.

A. Make sure you are running QRad or HLRad. Not running these will make your level be compiled in fullbright. Running QRad/HLRad will solve this problem. You may also have a leak in your map that will prevent lights from appearing properly.

A. This happens when part of a point based entity, such as a monster, protrudes into a brush. You can fix this by moving the entity away from the offending brush.

A. If you get this in your level, then it means Half-Life isn't finding the .wad files. This is most likely caused by WorldCraft and Half-Life not being installed on the same drive.

A. The HUD is part of the HEV suit. If you don't have the HEV suit, then you won't see the HUD (unless you're in deathmatch mode). The solution? Place an item_suit entity in your level.

A. Yes and no. It all depends if we have time and more often then not, we don't. Your best bet is to ask in the forums as there are many people there eager to help you out.

A. Func_ladder brushes are invisble in the game. This is so you can make any type of ladder or climbable surface, even invisble ones! You can find more information in the ladder tutorial.

A. A leak is when part of the void (the area outside your map) is making contact with the inside or there is an entity in the void. Make sure the level is 'sealed off' and no entities touch the outside.

A. The Half-Life engine can only render so many polygons in one frame. When the "budget" is hit, no more is rendered until there is room in the "budget". Reduce the amount of detail in the area to solve this problem.

A. WorldCraft was originally built for use with Quake 2. This means compile tool were also built for use with the Quake 2 engine. While Half-Life is based on a BSP map system, just like Quake 2 was, there are many differences that make the compile tools packaged with WorldCraft cause many problems. As it is, the original compile tools are no longer being updated, while newer version of Zoner's Compile Tools are always being made, so this ensures that you will have a more stable and smoother compile. Zoner's Tools also have features that the previous compile tools never supported, such as the ability to make brush based entities block light and cast shadows, as well as many other things.

A. This is just a general error saying that Half-Life can't find the map you want to run. If you are running your map straight from a compile, you're probably not compiling it in the right directory. All maps need to be in the respective directory, so for regular Half-Life, your BSP needs to be in ' Half-Life/Valve/Maps ' directory, for Counter-Strike it will need to be in Counter-Strike/Valve/Maps ', etc. You get the idea. You'll see this error message even if you're creating a single player map.

A. They are both pretty much the same thing. Hammer is just a more up to date version of WorldCraft. The name just changed. Hammer is also know as WorldCraft v3.4.

A. Go to THIS SITE HERE. It has nearly every error possible explained and seems to be rather complete. Just find your error and click the link. If you still can't find your error, ask about it in the Search for it in the Editing Forum. If you still can't find the answer, then feel free to ask about it in the Editing Forum (not the General forum). Please search first though. Many of the forum members become tired of seeing the same questions over and over again, and since Half-Life and Vlatitude are many years old, chances are someone has had a problem similar to yours before and has asked about it.

A. This is most commonly caused by having a really large brush. Sometimes a brush doesn't necessarily have to be too large, but if the texture is scaled down too small on it, you can still get this error.

The way compiling works is that on a standard texture scale (1.0) the compiler will break that texture up according to it's scale. In the case of 1.0, it doesn't have to. However, when you scale down the compiler has to make more cuts. The lower smaller the texture becomes, the more the compiloer has to cut. If it has to cut an insane amount of times, you can get this error.

On the flip side, scaling too large can give you this error as well. The solution? Find the offending brush and cut it into two or three smaller pieces using the clip tool. This will generally solve around 95% of the problems associated with this error. However, in some cases, this error can also be generated when you have an invalid shape. These generate floating point values that cause problems during compile. You may not know what that means, but WorldCraft usually does. Go into WorldCraft/Hammer and click on map > Check for Problems. This will point you to the offending brush and either fix it for you, or allow you to delete or fix the brush yourself.

A. Try This Site

A. Hop on over to the Valve Collective. They are always on top of it.

A. Yes, it is very true. Half-Life 2 has been confirmed and is currently scheduled for a late September 2003 release. There are some fantastic articles on it floating around the net. A list of them can be found here at Planet Half-Life

Currently, the word is that Half-Life 2 will run on a mid-range 700Mhz PC and a DirectX 6 compatable video card (minimum requirements). The recommended PC specs are a Pentium 4 2+ ghz or AMD-equivalent CPU with a DirectX 9 compatable video card. Bear in mind however, that these are the specs given before the game has gone gold and they are bound and likely to change.

An SDK has been planned for release and Valve has made several statements that they will continue to support the MOD community with Half-Life 2. No specific date has been given on when an SDK will be released, however you can probably safely assume that the game will be open to mapping and mods right out of the box.

As for the mapping, very little is known at this point and much is still under the "rumor and speculation" catagory. We do know that Half-Life 2 will use a modified version of WorldCraft/Hammer. This will definately allow for a very sensible learning curve to those already comfortable with WorldCraft and Half-Life mapping.

On the whole though, we'll just have to wait and see and of course keep our eyes peeled for official press releases from Valve Software.

A. It is still very early to say. As many of us here at Vlatitude have either a) dissappeared due to school and the "grown-up life", as I like to call it, or b) have very little time due to the "grown-up life", no definate promises can be made. However, that does not mean it won't happen. We here at Vlatitude have been awaiting Half-Life 2 for a long time and will more then likely update Vlatitude to accomodate new content specifically for HL2. We would definately like to see some tutorials up here.

If this happens, the older Half-Life tutorials will remain on Vlatitude. We will most likely catagorize each tutorial accordingly.

A. There has not been any definate decision on this yet. Of course, we don't have the manpower nor the energy to make tutorials for all those wonderful game engines out there. There have been some talks in the past of adding sections for UT2k3 or maybe Quake 3, but that still has not been decided yet. As of now, we'll say no. However, upcoming titles like Half-Life 2 and possibly Doom 3, look to be more of a possibility.