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Tutorial articles

5 Reasons You Should Bind a Key to Suicide in TF2

Team Fortress

Dying is almost always a bad thing in Team Fortress 2 (indeed, most shooters). You aren’t helping your team while dead, you aren’t having fun while dead, and a good many unlocks are dedicated to keeping the player or his teammates alive. Trying not to die is, for the most part, a pretty good strategy and you’ll go far with it.

A Guide to Lighting in Source – Part One

Source

Thanks to our previous Source tutorials you may have created an excellent map, but without lighting your players are going to feel left in the dark.

There are a range of different entities responsible for providing illumination in the Source engine, and the number and complexity of options open to you depends on which game you are mapping for. This guide will begin with basic lighting for Half-Life 2 and other Source 2007 games, before shedding some light on more complicated techniques.

Make Your Source Maps Glow with Cubemaps and HDR

Source

Is your map looking a little bit flat? Does it need that extra zing? Then High Dynamic Range can help you add that warm glow to your creation.

HDR is a subtle effect; a simple explanation is that is the effect of your eyes adjusting to a dark room after being in the bright outside. This means that darker areas will be darker initially, and will then rise to a brightness level more suited for interior gameplay. This dynamic balance of brightness adds contrast to your map, meaning an overall brighter and vibrant experience.

Absolute Beginners’ Guide to Source Mapping

Source

Welcome to the first of our new Modding & Development Tutorials. In this installment we’ll help you take your first steps into creating a map in Valve’s Source SDK.

Creating levels can be challenging, fun and very rewarding (albeit sometimes frustrating) and you will be able to release your creations to thousands of players worldwide.

Fixing Half-Life 2 and Portal Mods on SteamPipe: A Quick Guide

Source

As described in our Roundup, due to SteamPipe a lot of Source mods are in a pretty dire state right now. Whilst there is a lot of information on the topic in various places, the aim of this post is to provide a general fix for Half-Life 2, Episode 2 and Portal 1 that you can use to easily patch up the majority of the casualties and get them limping back into action.