How To Make Stairs

 

I got a post on the forum asking about stairs and I remembered how at first I found them hard to suss. It sounds stupid but when you have only just got used to editing, stairs sound really hard. Anyways read on as the secrets are unlocked.

First of all be warned I have used a lot of piccies on this one, if you have a slow connection go make some tea or something now.

Ok I have started as usual with a block for the floor and a player start for size.

Right now all you need to do next is copy this floor and move it up and over to the right. Select the block and hold SHIFT and drag it to clone it. Like so:

Brilliant! all we need now are some steps in there to fill the gap. Make another block the same width as the floor, but make it 4 grid units (or player width) in the side view and place it at the edge of the floor.

Once you have done that keep cloning the steps until it reaches the top floor. (you may need to adjust the floor here to fit onto the stairs)

That looks smart. Give it a quick texture and...

Even better eh? Now if your stairs are enclosed in a corridor then a good technique is to have two walls and texture them seperately. Like so:

Obviously I would have another wall but for the sake of displaying it I left the wall off.

BUT what if your stairs are in a warehouse for example and have no walls? They would look stupid with joined blocks on the edge. A good trick here is to give the underneath of the floor a sloping effect. To do this select the bottom stair, clone it and move it under the second stair:

Now once you have done that leave it selected and clip it diagonally with the stairs. Use SHIFT-X to bring up the clip tool, then press it again to toggle what parts are clipped. You should have the below:

Once you have a triangle left behind, clone it up to the next stair and so on:

Excellent, now you should have some neat looking stairs to have in your maps.

 

Well, that pretty much covers stairs for now, try things like handrails and such. (Have a look at the cs_siege stairs in the sewers :P) REMEMBER not to keep your cs maps all on one level. Varying heights in maps keeps them exciting and interesting.

 

By blink-(1)(8)(2)