I'm a Mod noob, please help!!! Thread

I'm new to the mod scene and have no idea what I'm doing... I downloaded Steam and tried to teach myself how to do this all with the Hammer world editor and Alien Swarm, but I can't get any of my maps to compile and every time I try to add a weapon onto the map I get a big red fat ERROR. Does any one know of any good tutorials or tools that can help me become part of the esteemed mod'ing community??

Thank you kindly,
mrSmee

You can find some good tutorials for getting started with Valve Hammer Editor on this site. Thats how I got started. Tutorials, playing around with the program, and also somthing that helped me, looking at other peoples maps, and seeing how they did it.

Hope that helps you out in some way.

I found some tutorials but they're all about half life. Is it possible to do this without half life or half life 2? I don't have either on my laptop... I have Alien Swarm SDK in my steam tools, no source SDK...

You have to own Half Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2, Portal (The non-promotional version), or Team Fortress 2 to use the Source SDK.
The Orange box has all 5 for $30, or you could just buy HL2 for around $10 I think.

Try these out:

Developer.valvesoftware.com
Forums.steampowered.com

trlestew wrote: You have to own Half Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2, Portal (The non-promotional version), or Team Fortress 2 to use the Source SDK.
The Orange box has all 5 for $30, or you could just buy HL2 for around $10 I think.

or if you have patience you could wait for a sale. Just yesterday TF2 and L4D/2 was 50% off and at least one Valve game is dirt cheap when there's a sale. If you want to save money, wait a month or so when the holiday season rolls around. Steam will be practically giving games away. Trust me, I'm steam oldfag.

True... I should do that.