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Want to learn how to map? Here you can find tutorials for setting up worldcraft, basic mapping, and more complex mapping.

(*NOTE* sorry about the quality of this tut, i'll make it better latter. This was a tut i wrote for a school report, it's still useful for learning how to map, but is full of stupid coments, since i didn't think anyone but my teacher would read this. I got some big usless parts out, but there is still plenty of small things i havn't reached yet.)

SET UP
Before you can start making your own map you have to
set up World Craft. World Craft is the 3-D level
maker that the people who made Half-Life used. To set
it up, open World Craft and go to the options bar on
the top of your screen and open the “tools” bar. This
will bring up a new window that will ask for the
location of your Valve folder and the location of the
Half-Life folder. In the area where it asks you to
list the wad files you will be using only the
Half-Life wad. Wad files contain the textures that
the game uses. Once that is done, four screens will
appear. One dark one shows what your level looks like
in the game, and the three other screens that have
grids show your level from a top view, side view and
front view. These are the screens where you make your
level.
BASICS
By now you’re probably wondering what you make your
level with. The answer is simple, brushes! What is a
brush, you may ask? Brushes are cubes that the
program uses as the content for the level. In other
words, brushes are the chunks of “land” that make up
the level. Say you wanted to make the “ground” for
your level. Click on the picture of the white cube.
This is the brush tool. Make a 1000 by 1000 by 100
size cube in the grid; now you have your “ground”.
Say you wanted to add a rock to your level. Create a
30 by 30 by 30 brush somewhere on top of your ground
brush.
CLIPING
Have you ever seen a square rock? Let’s use the
clipping tool and vertex tool to make that cube look
more like a rock. First, select the rock by clicking
on the selection tool (the red mouse icon); then, in
the grid click on the brush. Now click on the vertex
tool (the skeleton cube with highlighted corners) and
in the side and front view grids drag the cube’s top
four corners into each other so that the cube becomes
a pyramid. If you want the rock to look even better,
click on the clipping tool (the line with two round
ends) and drag a line in the side view that goes
through the rock at an angle. When you let go of the
mouse button, the part of the rock that is above the
line should be highlighted with thick white lines, and
the part of the rock below the line should be in
dotted red lines. The red lines mean that if you hit
Enter that part of the brush will be deleted and the
white part will be kept. Since you want to keep the
lower part of the rock and get rid of the pointy top,
hit “shift x” until the top is red and the bottom is
white. Now hit enter to get rid of the top of the
pyramid and make a better looking rock.

TEXTURES
By now you should be able to see something in the
first non-grid screen. If you can’t click on the
camera tool (the picture of a camera), then click and
hold the mouse on the first screen. By moving the
mouse you can look around your level. As you will
see, your “ground” and “rock” brushes have an ugly
pinkish Half-Life logo on them. This is because the
brushes are covered with the trigger texture.
Textures are the pictures that the game displays on
each brush when a player looks at it. To change the
texture of your ground and rock first select them,
then click on the texture tool (the cube with a green,
red, and black side). Once you click on this, a new
window should pop up. First click on the “browse”
button; this will cause yet another window to pop up
showing all the textures. At the bottom of the window
where it says “filter”, type in “dirt”. The window
will now show you only textures with the letters
“dirt” in their name. Pick one you like and then hit
“OK” in the texture viewing window and “apply” in the
first texture window. Now your ground brush is
covered with a dirt texture. Do the same for the rock
brush, but type in “rock” under filter. Now you need
to make some walls for your level. Make another brush
that lines up with the “ground” but doesn’t overlap it
or leave a gap (called a leak) between the two
brushes. Give this wall a “cliff” texture of your
choice. Make a ceiling for your level and give it a
“sky” texture. As its name implies brushes with sky
textures look like the sky. This helps the illusion
that a player is realy outside; also when combined
with the entity “light_environment” brushes with the
sky texture emit light.
ENTITIES
In case you are wondering what an entity is, entities
are either points that affect the area around them, by
giving it special properties, or are normal brushes
that are given special properties. An example of a
point-based entity is the “light_environment” I
already talked about. To make it, click on the entity
tool (the white sphere) and chose “light_environment”
from the pull-down list. Now click in the grid where
you want to place this entity; since the placement of
this entity makes no difference, you can place it
anywhere. Make another point-based entity; this time
click on “info_playerstart”. Put this entity where
you want the player to start, but make sure it isn’t
touching any walls, floors, or ceilings, otherwise the
player will be stuck when they spawn. An example of a
brush-based entity would be making it so the rock
breaks when it is attacked enough. To do this select
the rock and click on the “to entity” button in the
upper right corner of your screen. From the pull-down
list pick
‘func_breakable”. For the properties, set the giblets
to rocks (this is what the rock will break into when
it’s destroyed) and the strength to 100 (this is the
amount of damage the rock will take before breaking).
COMPILING
Now you have a basic, pointless, but playable level.
However, you still have to compile it. Compiling the
map changes the map from a .rmf file, which is what
World Craft uses, to a .bsp file, which Half-Life
uses. To start this process, just click the run
button (picture of a keyboard), but getting this
process to complete correctly is another matter.
First make sure you have no leaks, which are caused by
gaps in your level, by having a point-based entity
outside your level, or by having a brush-based entity
border your level. Another thing that can cause
errors is having an invalid brush; to stop this, look
under “check map for problems” in the edit bar. If
you have a problem, then it will tell you and it can
fix some of them for you.
ADVANCED
Now this may be a level, but it gets old fast. You
don’t do anything, you have no goal, so let’s spice it
up! Say instead of making a single player Half-Life
level, you wanted to make a multi player level for
Half-Life. To do this add a few more playerstarts for
the other players. Now make a “hill” or area the
players must stand in to win the game. Make a square
brush that’s over the ground and give it the trigger
texture. Click “to entity” and give the brush the
entity “func_teritory”. In the game any brush with
the trigger texture doesn’t show up in the game and
can be moved through so it wont impead a players
movement. But still most levels are more then one
cube room. In the next few paragraphs I’ll tell you
how to make things like trains, ladders, switches, and
doors.
LADDERS
Ladders alow players to move up and down, giving a
greater 3-D element to your level. There are two
parts to a normal ladder, the brush that looks like a
ladder, and the brush that is actualy climbable. To
make a brush that looks like a ladder make a normal
cube brush that is tall, wide, but realy thin. Cover
all of its sides with a ladder texture (type “ladder”
in the texture filter). As you can see there is a
blue color in between the ladder steps. In order to
make this blue part invisable turn the “ladder” into
the brush-baced enity “func_wall”. Make the
rendermode solid and set the render number to 255.
Now you have the part of the ladder that the player
can see, the next part is what changes the player’s
movements. Make another brush on the side you want
the ladder to be climbable. It should be the same
size as the ladder, but this time give it the
“aaa_triger” texture and give it the brush-baced enity
“func_ladder”. In the game players won’t beable to
see the func_ladder, so don’t worry if it looks odd.
DOORS
Say you wanted to make a door. You will need to make
a brush that is the shape and size of the door you
want to make. If you want to make a door the “slides”
in a lateral diretion or up or down change the brush
into a brush-baced enity into a “func_door”. From
here you can set things like the speed at which the
door moves, and how much damage it does to things it
crushes. If you want to make the door rotate around
an area make a brush and cover it with the origin
texture. The center of this origin brush will act as
the hing of the door. Make sure that the origin brush
and the door brush are all one func_rot_door. Also
make sure you set an amount for the door to rotate.
If you wanted to make a switch just do the same thing
but use func_butten and func_rot_butten respectivly.
Just put the name of what you want enity you want the
switch to affect in the switch’s “target name”
property.
TRAINS
The last entity I’m going to talk about is
func_train. This entity can be used in many ways but
is complex when compared to the other entities I have
gone over. To make a basic train take the brush or
brushes that you want to be the train and make them
the brush baced entity called “func_train”. Select
the train and hit “alt + enter” to view the entity’s
properties. From here you can set the train’s speed,
damage on crush, the train’s rotation speed, and it’s
first stop target. Under “first stop target” you can
put what ever you want but for the purpose of this
tutorial put in “train1_stop1”. Now in the center of
the train make a point baced entity called
“path_corner”. Go into this entity’s properties and
set it’s name to “train1_stop1”. This is were the
train will start in the level. Set the “next stop
target” to “train1_stop2” then make another point
baced entity with that name at the place you want the
train to move. The other options like “set new train
speed” and “set new train rot speed” are
self-explanitory. The flags will make the train do
different things when the train reaches the stop. The
flag “wait here for retriger” means that when the
train reaches the stop it will wait at the stop until
it is retrigered. The flag “teleport” means that the
train will teleport to its NEXT stop when it reaches
THIS stop.
Thought the ideas i have covered seem to have limited
use many things can be done with them. Switches don’t
have to open doors and doors don’t have to be doors.
Switches can be a metal support beam that blocks a
player’s path and the door it targets can be a big
pipe that falls down when this support is moved.
Trains don’t have to be trains. They can be
helicopters flying around in the sky, or rocks rolling
down a cliff-side. The possibilities are almost
unlimited when you know how to make brushes, lights,
sounds, and entities work together in harmony.

(sorry about the stupid conclution)