Quote from Marise on August 12, 2011, 9:56 am

I started out not paying much attention to how the brushes were aligned, and based on feedback here I started caring. Now I am trying to finish a map which I began before I knew the importance of sticking to the grid, and it's been a real hair-pulling experience getting things lined up. Not about to rebuild the whole thing! And it's a decayed theme map, so I'm also working on details like foliage. I have spent way more time on the visuals than on the puzzles and I'm still not 100% happy with it.

My next map will be perfectly fit to the grid and aligned from the start.

Quote from MasterLagger on August 12, 2011, 10:31 am

I also realize that people whine about tiles not being aligned properly, and I don't mean so out of line that it is obvious, I mean the person actually took a photo show the wall tiles being half cut near the floor, it was also aligned with everything else in the room. I fixed the entire map so the tiles were whole tiles and aligned but still, I've seen tiles cut in stranger places.

I think we have a few OCD Players as well.

Quote from HMW on August 12, 2011, 11:00 am

** Raises hand slowly after chickenmobile **

Yes, I do that too, compulsively. Everything has to be aligned to a 16-interval grid or I get this... itch! I put all brush entity origins at the center too if they're not used as pivot points.
(It does actually look less cluttered in Hammer's 2d views.)

On the other hand, grouping things like relays together according to function is an actual good idea if you are making anything slightly complicated.

I'm not as obsessed about textures being 1 pixel off, unless it's easily fixable. (Some of my maps have angled walls where it's nearly impossible to get a whole number of tiles on the wall, due to rounding errors.)

Quote from satchmo on August 12, 2011, 11:00 am

If the textures are not lined up, the size of the brush is probably the culprit.

You have to create brushes in dimensions that fit the power of 2's, and of course, completely sticking to the grid. Never decrease the grid to less than 8 unless in a few situations (fizzler, laser field, etc), and use a grid of 16 or more the majority of the times.

Quote from ChickenMobile on August 12, 2011, 11:06 am

satchmo wrote:

You have to create brushes in dimensions that fit the power of 2's, and of course, completely sticking to the grid. Never decrease the grid to less than 8 unless in a few situations (fizzler, laser field, etc), and use a grid of 16 or more the majority of the times.

8 is a good grid size to stick to, however I use the minimum grid size for accurately positioning models or in some cases, vertices on oblong shapes (which coincidently fit into models). I would never use ALT+Move in order to get something to the right position. It seems... wrong.

Quote from MasterLagger on August 12, 2011, 3:48 pm

Minor complications cause me to use ALT+Move, but rarely.

Quote from Vordwann on August 12, 2011, 6:11 pm

Recently I have been organising/aligning my point entities a lot...

Quote from satchmo on August 12, 2011, 7:56 pm

Just wait when the drug reps for SSRI's get a wind of this thread . . .

Quote from Mevious on August 12, 2011, 8:12 pm

I used to fall into the trap of wanting everything to be perfect back when I mapped for hl1 and 2. One day I realized I was wasting my time aligning point entities and making sure everything was organized and perfectly named. I made a conscious effort to break out of the pattern of attemped perfection and my productivity shot way up. I was suddenly able to actually finish things rather than obscess over tiny details, and I haven't regretted it.

Instances help a lot with this because they allow you to quickly make an isolated feature and not care how messy it is in the context of your maps.