1. Introduction
2. A Quick Tour of Hammer
3. Constructing the Basic Room
4. Placing a Simple Light Entity
5. Placing a Spawn Point
6. Compiling Your First Map
7. Loading Your Map in the Game

We're almost there, and it's so close we can taste victory already. But first, we have to go through this painfully slow compiling process. Depending on the complexity of your map and the power of your hardware, a compilation could take anywhere between a few seconds to days. I've heard people spending more than three days compiling a single map. But it's a necessary evil to overcome before the game can load your map.

Now, here is a very important thing to remember. Have you saved all your hardwork yet? If not, go ahead and press Ctrl-S right now. Since it takes so long to compile, there is no telling what will happen during the process. The electricity could go out, a terrorist might bomb your apartment, your cat might pee on your keyboard...who knows. It's always a good idea to save your map source before compiling. This will save you immeasurable grief later, I promise.

For testing purposes, name your map firstmap.

Press F9, and a dialogue box will pop up. It's important to read carefully what each option says, especially during your first few times compiling.

Compile options

Make sure you check "Normal" for Run BSP, Run VIS, and Run RAD. And check the option "Don't run the game after compiling". Leave the additional parameters blank, and press Enter.

For this small map, it should take just a few seconds for the map to compile. You can see the compiler generating a long list of messages during the process. Just ignore them for now.

When the compiler is finished, the last few lines from the compiler message should read:


And there should be an elongated button at the bottom of the message box that reads "Copy to Clipboard". You don't need to click the button.