With the largest fanbase of any game ever released and well over 50 awards to it's name, Half-Life by Valve Software is undoubtably one of the greatest games ever. Half-Life's great assets though is it's modding potential and as shown by brilliant titles such as Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress Classic, there is no question as to why more mods exist for Half-Life than any other game. If you havn't given this game a whirl and one of it's many mods you are definitely missing out!
The Skybox is the Image around your map - This tutorial is 100% Necessary if you are making an outdoor map.
Posted by MenZa on Dec 14th, 2004 digg this super bookmark
Basic Mapping/Technical.
[page=Introduction]
The Skybox is a vital element of mapping for Half-life Mods.
There are most of times, a lot of different skyboxes for standard in Half-life Mods.
Here, i can mention the ones for Half-life and CS (You can always use the Half-life ones)
The ones of Counter-Strike are (Thank you for this list, Slowhand :) ):
Okay here's the deal: I Don't really know any names of the Half-life Skyboxes.
If you leave it blank, you will get the Rock Formations of the map, cs_militia.
I know one:
Thank you gecko :)
If you know any Skyboxes from Half-Life, please Email Me at MenZaDK@Gmail.com
Now, lets continue...
[page=Making the Map itself]
You will start by making a map. I made a courtyard with some barbed wire (Check my "Making { Textures Invisible"-Tutorial for more information on how to do this - I will prolly make another tutorial showing how to Rotate/Bend objects).
Just make something basic, like a room without the Roof.

Looks Pretty, dun it ?
Add some little light entities around your map to prevent it from being all dark.
When you're ready, maybe add some dirt underneath the floor and such (Just so that there are no leaks whatsoever in your map. If you just made a yard w/out anything stretching further out than your walls, skip this step (Barbed wire is pretty for adding details and such in your map - think about using it).

Move on to the next step...
[page=Making the Skybox]
Next up, scroll through your textures list and find the texture called "Sky".
Select it and make some walls all the way around your map - make them pretty high - like mine:

I'm here going to add the extra wall which is removed in the pic above. Inside of the big 'cube' it looks like this:

Right now, it doesn't really look like anything in particular.
Now you go up - find the label called "Map" In your 'Topbar' I'd call it.

Click it, and this screen pops up, looking about the same as if you were editing an entity.
Select the text-strip called "environment map (cl_skyname)". Write the name of the skybox you want.
3dm_bikiniBk, 3dm_bikiniFt, 3dm_bikiniDn, 3dm_bikiniLf, 3dm_bikiniRt, 3dm_bikiniUp.
Notice the names are the same, except for the 2 different letters in the end of the name.
Bk = Back. Ft = Front. Dn = Down. Lf = Left. Rt = Right, Up = Up.
Okay. That was some info about skynames.
Choose the skybox you like, and imprint the 1st part of the name, excluding the last 2 letters of the name.
I Selected 'dusk' in my example.
Sae your map, and hit the compile button.
This is what i got:

-Enjoy :)
[page=Conclusion]
Making Skyboxes aren't difficult at all. The trick is, how do you apply them. If you make a map with loads of walls around, like a maze, it is recommended that you place the skybox so that it is put - actually as a ceiling. This will help keeping the w_poly's down, and make the map playable on more computers :)
-Good luck mapping :D
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