Category talk:Level Design

Discussion Archives for "Category talk:Level Design"  Please don't edit the archives. Archive 1 -- 29 June 2005 ~ 5 February 2008

Setting up Hammer

After downloading the sourcesdk through steam, I attempted to use hammer, and when I double-clicked on it, it brought up a window w/ several tabs and forms to fill. The window's title is: Configure Hammer, and I must not have done something right (I hit cancel because I wasn't expecting to see this window and frankly didn't know what to put in the blanks.) because after going through a tutorial (http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Your_First_Map) I began to notice that I don't have all the options that this tutorial says I should. One example is that I don't have a dev devwall filter for textures. Has anyone else encountered something similar to this and can you help me? --Raiden 11:32, 18 Jun 2008 (CST)

Have you launched the game you're trying to map for recently? --TomEdwards 13:15, 18 Jun 2008 (PDT)

Reorganizing this page?

I'd like to reorganize the layout of this page, I think the current layout has grown a bit too cluttered and may be confusing for the new user to navigate. I've seen a lot of the questions on the help pages here and in the Steam forums about topics already covered here on the wiki. I know part of this may likely be due to ignorance or laziness, but another good part is due to users simply being unable to find what there looking for. I've had trouble finding articles myself and there have been several duplicate articles created for this reason as well.

My proposals

1. remove the "Half-Life 2", "TF2" titles that link to the general game info pages, these can be linked to from within the design page of the game (ie: This page lists mapping articles which are specific to Left 4 Dead) (done)
2. pull all the mapping articles from here that are game specific and put them in the level design pages for the games. It doesn't make sense anymore to leave them on this page as they don't help users who don't own the games.
3. remove the "newby / intermediate / difficult" classifications and instead relocate these links into more specific subsections (eg: lighting, sound, enviroment, etc).
4. De-link (orphan) the "Abstract Mapping" section and relocate the useful subject matter there into the subtopics. As it is now, most of the subjects currently listed there simply redirect other pages, if not to the same pages. Very few actually contain useful content themselves and and I see no reason to leave the section listed as it is on the front page.

I've done a mockup for my redesign idea here. Anyway, other suggestions are welcome. --brandished 01:13, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

CleanUp\Reorganize:

It's been close to a month and there have been no replies, so I'm guessing either no one has any problems with my suggestions or they have been overlooked. To make sure the later isn't true, I've placed a notice on the level design page. If within the next week no one brings up any objections or other options to my suggestions, I'll go ahead and start restructuring the category along the guidelines I listed above. --brandished 02:30, 16 March 2009 (UTC)