This tutorial is designed to help you efficiently set up a Hammer installation for DoD:Classic, and get you started on mapping.

Begin by downloading the following files:

• Mapping Setup Files

Once you have the mapping files downloaded, open the zip file and copy the "Valve Hammer Editor" directory into your Program Files directory. Once the files are placed in the proper directories, you can set your Valve Hammer up for mapping. It's not really as hard as it may look at first glance. We'll do a quick rundown:

1. Open Hammer.
2. Go to the Menu "Tools > Options..."
3. General Tab:

There's not really anything important here. If you have a good processor you can turn up the undo levels above the default of 50, so that you can back up a long, long way if you find you've made a mistake during a session.

4. 2D Views Tab:

Most of this stuff will become pretty self-explanitory as you progress in mapping, but for now it may be Greek to you. Let me put it this way: the top box, "Options," should pretty much look like mine does in the pic; none of that stuff will affect your mapping much at a basic level.

However, in the second box, "Grid," you should change the Size dropbox setting to 4. The default setting is quite huge, so you'd only be able to draw very very blocky structures on the grid. Setting it to 4 means that at the smallest there wll be one grid line per 4 units of space in the game. By the way, a character, when kneeling, takes up about 44 wide by 36 high units...so that gives you some kind of perspective. Thus, the smallest area a character could fit through width-wise is 11 grid lines wide...because each grid line represents 4 units, that's 11x4 = 44. You can always see what your size is in the bottom right of the main editor window. It'll say "Snap: On Grid: 4" when configured correctly, and you can adjust it on the fly by hitting [ and ].

You can leave the rest of the stuff here alone for now.

5. 3D Views Tab:

Lots of stuff to set up here. The Back Clipping Plane basically determines how far away you can see things in the 3D View of the editor. I always have mine set to max, so I can see a long distance while editing. Model render distance is self-explanitory - to get a better idea of how your map will look as you work, turn it up so you can see models from farther away.

Ok, as for the "Navigation" box, this stuff all affects your 3D movement. In the 3D viewer in the editor, you can hover your mouse over its secton of the window and then push "z" to go into WASD movement mode. So depending on how fast you want the camera to move, change these settings at your leisure.

6. Textures Tab:

This part is pretty simple. The texture files you load here will be added to your texture library in the editor. You simply point the editor to where the .wad files that you installed are located. Using the files I provided, they should be located in the Valve Hammer Editor directory under "special wads". By the way, you should copy all the wads from the "special wads" folder to your "dod" folder as well, while still linking hammer to their special wads location.

7. Game Configurations Tab:

Ok, first click on the "Edit" button next to the Configuration dropbox. A box will pop up with a few buttons...click "Add" to create a new Configuration, and name it whatever..."day of defeat" is a good name.

Next, for the Game Data Files, click the "Add" button and point the editor to the fgd file that you installed, which should match up to the pic if you used my install.

Make sure texture format is WAD3 (Halflife / TFC) and map type is Halflife / TFC.

PointEntity and SolidEntity default class is what kind of entity you will be ready to place by default after selecting the entity tool. It's personal preference really, but I like to have the model placer for my pointentity, because I use that the most and it's handy to have 1 click model placement.

Game Executable Directory is your "day of defeat" folder, which contains the folder "dod", not the "dod" folder itself.

Mod Directory is the "dod" folder.

Game Directory is pretty much as shown in the pic, with your email.

RMF directory is where the editor's saved maps will be placed by default. Before you compile a map it is saved as an rmf file, which can only be viewed by the editor.

And you're done with that page. Last one!

8. Build Programs Tab:

Make sure your "day of defeat" configuration is selected and then set the paths up as shown in the pic.

Game executable is the "hl.exe" in your "day of defeat" folder.

The tools should all be set up almost exactly as shown in the pic, so I shouldn't need to explain that. Those are the compile tools, by the way...the version I'm including is the newest available for original DoD and has the best optimization for compiling.

Finally, point the final path to the "maps" directory of your "dod" folder. This will place the compiled map directly in your steam folder and make it playable once you run DoD.

And that's it! You're all set up to map. Be expecting many more tutorials on everything soon.

Mapping Basics << Proceed to Mapping Basics