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

As you'll learn later, light entities are crucial in making a map look good. Without proper lighting, even a map with great architecture and texturing would appear badly. Even the simplest map needs at least one light entity. Otherwise, the map would be compiled into a full-bright map (because the compiler would rather have brightness everywhere rather than complete darkness). Full-bright is a four-lettered word in the mapping community. Don't make the mistake of making a full-bright map!

So, let's select the Entity Tool on the left side (just above the Block Tool).

Entity Tool

Then, choose the light entity from the entity selection list on the right side of the screen. We'll leave the default setting for simplicity sake.

Selecting the light entity

Click somewhere inside your box on the top (x/y) view of your map. Then adjust the position of the light entity along the z-axis until it falls inside the box you've created. Make sure that the light is actually inside the three-dimensional box. This is very important. Otherwise, you'll turn out a full-bright map.

Position the light entity inside your hollow box

After the light entity is positioned as above, press Enter to finalize its position. A small red dot with an X in it should appear inside your box.