Before you start asking me questions or even reading the rest of this post, please read and understand
this beginner's tutorial. If you have no prior knowledge of Hammer, you should be fair educated after a couple hours of wandering around on the
Valve wiki and just messing around in the editor. Also,
this is another excellent source of swarm-specific help.
How do I make steam and smoke emitters for my map?The entities env_steam and env_smokestack are the best options. Be sure to set them as initially on and check emissive under the flags tab.
How do I make an opening door?Create an asw_door entity; it looks just like a door prop. Position it appropriately. Create a brush and give it the asw_door_area property and in the door option field, put the name of your asw_door entity.
But what if I want the player to need to hack it?Create the asw_door and the asw_door_area normally. Set the asw_door's Auto Open field to No. Place a prop_dynamic to represent the terminal, and be sure to give it a name. Then place a brush and give it the asw_button_area property, and mess with the hacking related fields as you wish. Set the Panel Prop Name field to your prop_dynamic. Add an output for OnHackCompleted to EnableAutoOpen for your asw_door.
I want to spawn aliens.Use the asw_spawner entity, the fields are quite self-explanatory. If it's not where your marines are going to be around to see it, set Start Burrowed and Allow Spawn if Marines are Near to No. Otherwise make them Yes.
What if I want the aliens to wait to spawn until the marines are nearby?This is useful for surrounding the players. Create your asw_spawner and change its Spawner State to Wait For Inputs. Create an asw_marine_position trigger brush and give it an output OnStartTouch to StartSpawning with the name of your spawner. You can give multiple spawners the same name and all of them will be affected.
What are some tips for good lighting?All light entities are created with an HDRColorScale of 1. This is evil, with few exceptions. Make it lower. Also, they start with a 50% Distance and 0% Distance of 0, which makes it use the Quadratic distance. This results in confusion regarding how far the light actually reaches. Use the % Distances instead. Additionally, if you were to want a red light, give it a dark red color; the color of the light ingame is always much brighter than the one you've specified. Lastly, if you have a light_spot, create a point_spotlight with the same fields as the light_spot and in the same position. It makes a visible beam of light along the spotlight's path and results in much prettiness.
Why are the aliens waiting around? They won't chase me.That's because you didn't place any or didn't place enough info_node entities. They form a grid of places the AI can move to and from.
I want bumpy snowy terrain!Use displacements, find
details on the Valve wiki. Be careful not to have any big changes in height, they'll make the marine bug up and stop being able to move if the difference in height is greater than just a few units.
How do I make objectives?Use the entites with objective in their name. Most of them are easy to understand. To use asw_objective_destroy_goo, you'll need to place asw_alien_goo entities. For the asw_objective_escape, you'll need a asw_marine_position trigger that outputs MarineInPosition to the objective entity. It's wise to make the previous objective, if any, be required to enable the trigger and have it disabled initially.
Feel free to ask me questions via this topic or PM.
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