Level Design & Mapping Using Valve's Hammer Editor: Survey Results

Recently I posed a series of questions to the various modding communities that use Valve's Hammer Editor to create environments, levels, maps, and campaigns. I want to thank that entire group of 46 participants that submitted a response to the survey (the full list is at the bottom with website links) and I will conduct more surveys in the future. The answers below are just some of the highlights that I selected to share, and in cases where the same answer appeared frequently between participants I made a note of it.

How long have you been using the Hammer editor?
Experience of participants ranges from 1 month to 16 years (including WorldCraft experience).

What projects have you created using the editor?
The most commonly mentioned games were Left-4-Dead 1/2, Counter-Strike: Source/Global Offensive, Half-Life 2, and Team Fortress 2.

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For people just starting with the editor what key pieces of advice can you offer them?

• internethandle: "Use the large grid and ctrl-w."
  
• Filip: "...this..."
  
• novalin: "Make many, small test maps before you dive into something you really care about."
  
• Punishment: "Hammer can be frustrating. Don't give up."
  
• Wouter Pleizier / Blueberry_pie: "Compile early and often...save frequently...learn the hotkeys"
  
• George "Noface" Campbell: "Learn how leaks, areas, and visleaves work...Use [this] to check your compile log for errors..."
  
• Arran Seaton: "Never use [the] carve tool"
  
• David Zetterdahl "LordDz": "Don't do a hollow skybox."
  
• Nijbu: "Focus on map layout and game play before visuals."
  
• Oliver "FRAG" Curtis: "func_detail is a crucial element to map optimization..."
  
• Peter Brev: "Learn the hotkeys"
• Leafo: "Patience."

What do you find to be irritating when using the editor?

• TZK203: "Bugs, missing features, crashes, error messages, layout, slow loading, horrible user interface, [expletive] dynamism, and no scaling."
  
• internethandle: "missing features: proper lighting preview"
• Punishment: "...It's difficult to import textures and models..."
• Jacol: "Long compilation process"
• Bernt Andreas, Brickinator: "Messy displacement techniques"
• SM Sith Lord: "No decent lighting preview..."
• Rectus: "No inline error detection. For example if you use the vertex tool, it could mark invalid faces immediately"
  
• Hopna: "Water can be quite buggy sometimes..."
  
• Jess Nielsen: "There is no snap to vertices with the vertex tool and there is no undo inside the vertex tool."
• The_Blazer: "Insane slowdowns when editing properties of several entities at once...[or] when moving several brushes to world or to entity."
  
• Fauckers: "Constant crashes..."
• Sam Morris: "... no particle viewer..."
• BlazingOwnager: "The lack of a "mass rename" or "Find/replace within selection" option..."

If you could add one feature to the editor what would it be?
Overwhelmingly, the most popular response to this question (43% of those surveyed) was the desire to have some form of real-time preview mode so that designers can properly see the lighting of their environment without having to compile. 

• Punishment: "A system of managing assets with drag-and-drop functionality..."
  
• Jacol: "Real Time Engine Preview"
  
• Brickinator: "A prefab Workshop."
  
• marnamai: "Real time lighting in the 3D viewport"
  
• Arran Seaton: "...fully dynamic lighting support..."
• Nicole: "Model scaling"
• Hopna: "A tool for adding lots of vegetation in a short time..."
• Text_Fish: "Load reference images behind the grid..."
• BlazingOwnager: "...a way to fire triggers from within the editor...[and]...the ability to edit the nav mesh in the editor..."
• RainingMetal: "An edit lock to prevent people from stealing your work."

When preparing to start a new map/level/campaign how do you start?
The answers to this question ranged from no 'preparation work at all' to a very robust process of pre-production.

• Filip: "Just Dive into the tool..."
• Punishment: "A layout drawing...followed by reference images, and then blocking out the level with developer textures."
• Brickinator: "I usually write down a ton of ideas and then just mess about until something works in the editor..."
• Arran Seaton: "Always plan things out on paper first..."
• SM Sith Lord: "Gather tons of reference photos, think real hard of a layout. Sketch the layout on paper..."
• Nijbu: "Grid paper layouts..."
• Oliver "FRAG" Curtis: "I usually start with a drawing that I've done in my design journal then elaborate on it with reference images to better define the design..."
• Roflmahwafflz: "I think about an idea for a few days then i just build it based off of compiled thoughts..."
• BlazingOwnager: "[I] spend a lot of time doing prep work on custom entities/scripts before I even make the first room of an actual map..."
• RainingMetal: "Think of a gimmick. Something that will make your work unique."

What is an important and often overlooked element in map making?
The most popular response to this question, by far, was lighting.

• novalin: "It takes way longer than most people think. It's very rewarding, but it's a ton of work."
  
• Punishment: "Lighting. Good lighting can enhance an otherwise mediocre level, and bad lighting can tarnish an otherwise good level."
• George "Noface" Campbell: "Optimization."
  
• Bernt Andreas: "Texture alignment"
• Arran Seaton: "Sound design is...heavily overlooked, yet it adds so much mood and character to a level."
  
• David Zetterdahl "LordDz": "Gameplay."
• Ark11: "Originality"
• Rectus: "Giving the players a sense of purpose."
• Garrador: "Subtle details... [if] it feels like something is missing...something IS missing."
• HoliestCow: "Flow"
• Marcy: "Be sure to set fade distance on props..."
• Sam Morris: "...decent HINT/SKIP brushing."
• needadonut: "Dynamicity. Adding in those extra details will make even the simplest maps really great."
• BlazingOwnager: "The nav mesh. So many people still rely on automatic nav mesh generation, and frankly, it's terrible."

What is your work process like?

• Arran Seaton: "Pace yourself. It's stupid to burn yourself out. And always get feedback as often as possible, it usually helps drive your creativity if you know you're going in the right direction..."
• SM Sith Lord: "I make very long check lists of things to fix/address when I am testing the map and then work my way fixing everything on the lists."
• Nicole: "I usually concentrate on one area per session but switch to another when I feel that I'm not motivated enough anymore."
• Oliver "FRAG" Curtis: "Lots and lots of chiptune music blasted into my head for a few hours and then a coffee break and repeat."
• Devieus: "I polish one area at a time."
• needadonut: "I make a checklist of items and things to do and add. I like to accomplish 1 thing per day so I can work at a steady pace."
• BlazingOwnager: "I like to immerse myself in work and will often blast 12-16 hours in a single sitting and then take an extended break."

Any funny or crazy editor stories to share?
The majority of responses involved some form of corrupted or lost files.

• novalin: "Someone decompiled my first map, added a couple of extra rooms, posted it, and claimed it was there. It took a few sleepless days to get it taken down."
• George "Noface" Campbell: "The first decent map ready for public release mysteriously disappeared."
  
• Bernt Andreas: "Corrupted map files..."
• marnamai: "renaming a map, compiling it, running ingame under wrong filename, go crazy when you can't find out why the map didn't update ingame."
• SM Sith Lord: "I once made a map for a drunk guy guy based on a drawing that he drew on a paper plate at party. It featured huge beer cans in the center of the map."
• Oliver "FRAG" Curtis: "I spent about a year on a map...came home one day and a power surge had fried my hard drive... [I] found a really early backup of the map...and decided to start from there...and I eventually ditched the map and started on a new one. About a year later while clearing out my external hard drive I noticed a map that was labelled "recovery"."
• Text_Fish: "I'm still working on a CS:GO map for which I built the basic brushwork in WorldCraft for CS 1.6."

If you have ever collaborated with other developers please share your experience.

• Jacol: "I think it's a good thing, you can finish the whole map way faster, if you pick the right person, it's very easy and rewarding."
• Brickinator: "'Ideas people' are just dead weights in modding as they constantly suggest the impossible and contribute nothing tangible."
  
• marnamai: "I am able to get much more done by myself when I don't have to rely on other people or wait for assets."
  
• Arran Seaton: "I've worked with very unorganized teams who only use steam IM, all the way up to my current indie project where we have two Skype meetings each week and milestones and targets to hit. It's really about the dynamic of the team and how motivated each individual is."
• Oliver "FRAG" Curtis: "Collaborating with other developers can be a rewarding experience, you can bounce ideas off each other and then iterate a few times until you all come to an idea that everyone agrees on."
• Marcy: "...We would both focus on one part of the map, and later merge them together. We always made sure that we worked on the same scale."
• Sam Morris: "It's fine, but there are no easy ways to merge changes between revisions done by multiple people."

Have you ever used any other level editors? If yes, which ones and how do they compare?
The most commonly mentioned editors in this response were Unreal/UDK, CryENGINE/Sandbox, & Unity.

• TZK203: "I've used Unreal. It's everything the Source SDK should be... without, unfortunately, a good community alongside that isn't dead."
• Wouter Pleizier / Blueberry_pie: "The CryEngine editor has nice terrain and foliage editing tools, but it seems somewhat unwieldy for indoor (or other non-natural) environments."
  
• Jacol: "...for me the best editor is the Hammer..."
• David Zetterdahl "LordDz": "Warcraft 3 Editor - The trigger editor is so much easier to use over Hammer's entity based triggers."
  
• SM Sith Lord: "...JED...had far superior object and grid rotation features that allowed you to build things on-grid even at very odd angles."
• Nijbu: "Unreal engine; the brush building is more painful and harder to get started with..."
• Text_Fish: "Radiant for id Software games is clunky. Unity is very versatile if you have a good range of meshes to work with, but the lack of basic brushwork makes iteration difficult."

Do you have any interesting Easter eggs in any of your designs?

• Brickinator: "My L4D2 campaign has graffiti featuring the names of my friends whom I have claimed all died in a zombie apocalypse."
• Ark11: "A guy wearing a traffic cone on his head."
• Rectus: "I have a bunch of them in my latest campaign. The interesting part is that they are all lethal to the players."
• Oliver "FRAG" Curtis: "I can't tell you that, it would ruin the Easter eggs!"
• insane3004: "End of the Line has two... one appears after 25 minutes of surviving... the other is out in the open... but I am not sure anyone has even seen it..."
• Marcy: "One involving a sex doll. Need I say more?"

Survey group: TZK203, internethandle, Filip, novalin, Punishment, Wouter Pleizier / Blueberry_pie, Jacol, George "Noface" Campbell, Bernt Andreas, Brickinator, marnamai, Arran Seaton, David Zetterdahl "LordDz", SM Sith Lord, Ark11, Nijbu, Nicole, Rectus, Hopna, Jess Nielsen, Oliver "FRAG" Curtis, Garrador, The_Blazer, DerpyBlade or Alex, HoliestCow, Peter Brev, unknown, SotaPoika, Text_Fish, Mr Funreal, Roflmahwafflz, Fauckers, Rev_deaddiet, insane3004, someone, Marcy, Sam Morris, Leafo, Devieus, 4echo, Element, needadonut, Dan, BlazingOwnager, RainingMetal, & RuninWivSizors.