The Simplest Possible Introduction to Stairs

So you want to make stairs. Maybe a normal staircase, or a spiral.

Stairs are not a special type of brush or structure. In Half-Life 2 and its mods, a staircase is merely a set of individual blocks short enough to be walked over. The highest step size is 18 units, but that's a little tall for good-looking stairs; in this tutorial, we're going to use 8.

Remember to read the basic introduction to Hammer before beginning.

We're going to start with a basic room. The player spawns in a little hole and needs a way to the top level.

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I'm going to make a staircase down to him. I will accomplish this by first pressing the [ key until my grid size, shown in the bottom-right corner of the Hammer interface, is 8 units.

Next, I will create the top stair. I am starting on top in this case because I don't want to calculate how far away from the top floor I should build the bottom stair; it is easier, in this case, to start on top and move down. The top stair will align with the top floor, and I have made it two squares (16 units) thick.

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Now it's time for the second stair. The second stair will be the same thickness as the first, but I will place it north of the first stair; that is, the south side of the second stair will be flush with the north side of the first stair. Finally, I will use either the Side or Front view to make the second stair one square (8 units) shorter than the first.

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With the same method, I will make a third stair: a new block, north of the last one, with the same thickness, but one square (8 units) shorter.

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And so I will continue the process. In this image, I'm halfway finished:

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And now I'm done. The final stair will be the one whose top is eight units above the ground. Since this is a complex set of brushes, it will most likely confuse HL2 and the map compiler. To minimise confusion and speed up your compile times, most staircases will need to be made to func_detail entities: just select them, press Ctrl-T, and choose func_detail from the drop-down entity menu.

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With the Texture Application Tool, we can also change the textures on our staircase to make it look more like a staircase.

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Remember, the stairs can be whatever height you want, as long as the height difference between each stair is less than 18 units. They can also be as thick or as thin as you want, and as long or as short as you want. On a four-unit grid, you could even create individual platforms that act as stairs.

Click here to download the linear staircase example map

There's another type of staircase called the spiral staircase that can be a little tougher to make. A spiral staircase is essentially a linear staircase turned around on itself to create a spiral.

It's possible to make a spiral staircase by hand, but for our simple case, we're going to use the arch tool. The arch tool creates a set of brushes automatically to form a rounded shape like an arch, cylinder, or spiral staircase.

To access the arch tool, we need to have our block tool selected. On the Hammer interface, usually on the right side, there's a toolbar with which we can change the setting from "Block" to "Arch":



With "Arch" selected, we will be able to make curves instead of normal rectangular blocks. The arch tool does not create truly round curves; it automatically builds a set of brushes in a circular formation that are shaped so as to appear rounded.

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The arch tool always creates objects that are rounded in the Top view. In the Side and Front views, they appear flat because their top and bottom faces are always flat. This is important to remember if you want to create a sideways round object, like a pipe running lengthwise on a wall: with the arch tool, you would have to create a vertical pipe, then rotate it to be sideways.

In our case, we don't have to rotate, but we do have to select the right area:

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This is the bounding box of the arch before we've pressed Enter to create it. The length and width of this box usually represent the size of the entire curve after it's created. The height of this box represents the height of each individual piece.

When we press Enter, we'll be given an options dialogue box. I have chosen the following options:



"Wall width" will be the width, measured from the inside to the outside, of each stair. "Number of Sides" will be the number of stairs. "Arc" will be the total degree measure of the rounded object; I want a full circle, so I have chosen 360. "Add Height" will be the amount by which each successive stair is moved up.

"Start Angle" represents the angle at which the front face of the first stair will be placed. Recall from trigonometry that the 0th degree lies along the positive X axis; thus, a start angle of 0 would give us a first stair like this:



In my example, I want the first stair to be accessible from the north, so I set the start angle to 180; this flips the normally south-facing stair around to the other side.

With those settings and that bounding box, we'll get an "arch" that looks suspiciously like a spiral staircase:

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As before, this structure should definitely be made into a func_detail entity (select it, press Ctrl-T, and choose func_detail), especially since its sides are angular and several of its vertices won't align to the grid. Also as before, we can use the Texture Application Tool to make the staircase prettier, and we can add some extra embellishment on top as well:

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(The extra embellishment should also be a func_detail entity.)

Just for fun, let's stick a cylinder in the middle of the arch. I'll go back to this toolbar and choose the Cylinder option:



I'll want to use the same number of faces as the arch has sides, so that the faces of the cylinder line up perfectly with the brushes in the arch.

Next, I'll draw the cylinder's bounding box so that it fills the hole in the centre of the arch:

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When I press Enter, I'll have a beautiful cylinder in the middle of my spiral staircase. Again, this cylinder should be a func_detail entity.


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Click here to download the spiral staircase example map