Use nodraw before hollowing out the starting cube, then change the interior textures. This will significantly speed up the map-making process, as you don't need to change every single non-visible face just because you hollowed it out first.

Making Portal tests in Hammer is a pain, you have to use a bunch of crappy prefabs, and have the room be JUST the right size, and the textures have to be JUST right, or it'll look terrible. Just use BEE2 (maybe even edit BEE2 levels). However, once Portal 2 Community Edition comes out, go ahead.

Remember, displacements exist. Use them.

Goldsrc maps may be easier than Source maps.

To bonemerge/parent, drag the parent animation set onto the child animation set. Then, while selecting the child animation set, use the "Zero" preset. Finally, select the child animation set's flexes (if it has any), and set them to default. This method can also be used to replace models.

When recording, make sure that you only record what is needed.

Maps without lighting are useful if you want to use JUST your own lighting.

Remember to visualize in your head what you want to make before making it.

Medic and Sniper's models have similar structures, and bonemerging them will rarely cause any problems.

Stay away from 2fort. I know it's great, but staying on 2fort can prevent you from getting better at TF2. Break away from the endless cycle of 2fort, and try Dustbowl or Doublecross.

Make sure to set sv_allow_point_servercommand to always, so maps like tr_walkway will actually work.

Also, know your limits. There's no cowardice in running from a clearly superior enemy. If you see almost the entire enemy team, run for your life.

Remember, if you rage when getting killed, you're not friendly.

My opinion on TF2 and it's community for some reason:

TF2's community shaped the game into what it is today, and without all of its content, who knows what would become of TF2. A fan-made "Team Fortress 3" animation shows that TF2 is more than just a game. It has references from almost every era of TF2's memes, jokes, fads, and more. Hell, after years of no major TF2 updates, the community revived TF2 from the dead, bringing us some of the best updates, both for people making custom content for TF2, and regular players. One of the more recent updates gave us vscripts, a tool for mappers that simplifies many tedious and complicated things in Hammer. Additionally, we now have a 64-bit update, which improves the performance while also changing the video format to a way more common one.

Remember to mess around. Who needs half an hour long tutorials when you can learn by crashing Blender 50 times in a row?

Subdivide multiple times to lag the hell out of everything.

When importing Source models, remember that with the wrong settings, all the models' parts will be stuffed into one spot.

The bucket values control the weapon's slot. 0,0 is the crowbar, not 1,1.

Make sure that every print name and slot is different.

Remember, when playing Unreal Engine 4 games, check to see if the devs made the stupid mistake of leaving the console enabled BEFORE you use the Universal UE4 Unlocker.

Unity games are literally MORE hackable than UE4, thanks to BepinEx

Gamemaker Studio games are also very hackable, however there isn't a good way to hack on the fly like in Unity

screw clickteam fusion

Default portal size in Portal 2: portals_resizeall 33 55

sv_monster_turret_velocity exists, the default is 100. Controls Frankenturret velocity, obviously

It's "ent_fire !picker", not "ent_fire !pointer".

Interesting Portal entities:

• prop_scaled_cube: Sixense, self-explanatory. Cube that changes size.
• Contraption Cube: Education, with adjustable mass, friction, and elasticity.
• Skull cube: Still Alive, connected to buttons that fizzle the cube. Not as interesting.
• npc_hover_turret: Portal 2 Unused, Turret with P1 core model, with laser and on a rope
• Electricity Fields, Hard Light Bridges, Laser Fields, and Crushers actually appear as early as Still Alive, some of them as early as the Portal Flash Version map pack, which Still Alive is partially based on.
• Adhesion and Reflection Gel: The well-known scrapped Portal 2 gels. Adhesion was scrapped due to motion sickness, and Reflection was presumably scrapped due to either being difficult to use or just that Reflection Cubes were better. In an earlier version of Portal 2, Adhesion Gel was still in the game, just unused. However, after people discovered it, Valve commented out the Adhesion Gel's code in an update, leaving only the Reflection Gel. Unfortunately, due to the update happening before/during the Puzzlemaker update, the archived Portal 2 Education Edition likely also doesn't have Adhesion Gel.
• Walking Turret: Cut Portal 1 sentry, self-explanatory. Concept art shows them going through a portal, meaning they may have been much more deadly than other turrets, as standard turrets cannot shoot through portals, and let's be real, it's nearly impossible to unintentionally die to a rocket turret. This would have been a great challenge if it was in the game, as players would need to be careful about where they place their portals, and it is unknown how players would defeat walking turrets, assuming they COULD be defeated.

Note: All the Meet the Team maps have a lot of modifications and additions. MTM's map was only revealed in part of an SFM advertisement that included an early version of MTM.

• HL1 Trash Compactor: c2a4
• HL2 EP2 Barn Advisor: ep2_outland_07
• HL2 EP2 Eli Death: ep2_outland_12a
• Meet the Scout: cp_well
• Meet the Soldier: cp_granary
• Meet the Pyro: mvm_coaltown
• Meet the Demoman: cp_gravelpit
• Meet the Heavy: cp_dustbowl
• Meet the Engineer: Hydro?
• Meet the Medic: pl_badwater
• Meet the Sniper: pl_goldrush
• Meet the Spy: ctf_2fort

How Nokia can take over the phone war, destroying both Android users and iPhone users:

The Nokia Brick

• The casing will make the Nokia 3310 look weak in comparison, with the strength to survive a drop from a 5-story building.
• The phone will likely have a few games, possibly with a cartridge system for even more games. Thanks to the fact that Microsoft owns Nokia, there's a wide variety of games that could be added, especially since Microsoft has worked with many other companies to make games and whatnot. The games may include classics such as Snake, Pong, Pac-Man, and more. Doom might also be available, and considering the fact that Doom has been run on everything from scientific calculators to McDonald's Kiosks, that's not much of a stretch.
• I'm not sure if it should have a camera, microphone, an actual touchscreen, access to the internet, or Bluetooth, as I'm no engineer or technician, but they would be nice. Cameras and microphones would probably not be included, as you can just go buy a separate camera, even with some kind of protection on it, that camera would likely be the Achilles heel of the phone.

Ideas for changes to TF2

• Taunts attached to weapons can now be collected and equipped separately and can be used for weapons you typically wouldn't be able to, like, for example, Heavy can use his finger guns with the pan, or Medic can taunt-kill with the Vaccinator. The taunts that include a weapon in them can be customized to include any weapon in your inventory, so that you can have Demo's sword, but use one of Demo's bottles in his drinking taunt. These weapon taunts also can be unusualified, of course. Obviously, taunts such as Soldier's backpacks or Heavy's sandviches are purely cosmetic. Duplicate taunts such as the taunt used for 90% of Pyro's flamethrowers are not considered separate taunts, obviously. The phlog is no different, and of course, also does not uber or kritz you or any of that crap.
• Taunts that play randomly instead of normal weapon taunts can also now be collected and equipped separately, now automatically being collected in whatever event causes the random taunts. There is also now a "random taunt" slot, which, as the name suggests, makes the taunt randomly play instead of weapon taunts, but other taunts can be put in the slot as well.
• The taunt kill for the caber now actually works, and there is now a taunt kill for the sniper's melee, inspired by Meet The Sniper.
• New game mode: Meet The Team or Cinematic Mode. This game mode, as the name suggests, is made to be similar to that of the official TF2 Cinematics, such as Meet The Team. Weapons are restricted to the ones used in the videos, which, in this game mode, are modified to be more accurate to the videos. Stock Sniper Rifle is now just a Machina reskin, Demo's sticky bomb launcher is now a "scottish resistance" reskin, Scout has a bat taunt kill from Meet the Heavy, Soldier's rocket launcher has a secondary fire with homing missiles with a damage penalty, etc. This would work better in TF2C than normal TF2, now that I think about it. This is essentially an add-on to game modes, similar to Medieval Mode, where, in the case of cp_degrootkeep, is added onto Control Point.
• New game mode: Hooligans. Unlike Cinematic Mode, this is more of its own thing, although it could be a game-mode addon, all you have to do is remove the objective. As the name suggests, the whole thing is just to mess around. No respawn time, just a time limit to mess around, which can be extended through votes. There is kind of a way to win, though. Whoever's team gets more kills wins.