Clipping's a very simple thing, but easy to forget when you make last minute changes Fun fact: For stairs, you should use block_bullet textures instead of player_clip textures, since while player_clip allows explosives to pass through and explode in a position where the majority of the explosion gets eaten by the stairs, block_bullet explodes the rocket early in such a way where it'll cleanly hit across the entire stair geometry. If you've ever had your explosives mysteriously not do damage to someone appropriately using the stairs before, this is why
As someone who makes maps, specifically for Garry's Mod. First stair clipping is always a rather annoying issue, the issue is that you obviously want your stairs to be nice and smooth, however if you take that clip brush flush to the ground over the first step you then get a problem where if you run at the first step from the side it has an extended collision because of the clip brush protruding past the step. Really the only solution for this problem is to make sure that the stair set is set into the wall or surface etc at least one stair length so as you cannot run at the first step from the side.
I usually bevel or make the slope leading to the first step just shy of 45° to lessen this effect as much as possible. I find having one bump upon starting up the stairs usually isn't too bad.
My absolute favourite clipbrush is in Left 4 Dead 2. On the first map of Cold Stream there's a small rock holding up a fallen branch you need to walk over to reach a ledge. For whatever reason, the clipbrush of this rock has been smoothed out over what must have been a completely different and much larger rock model, letting you just kind of stand in the air for a good five feet next to the actual rock
@@PretzelSage Yeah, that's what I figure, but it was never fixed. Cold Stream has a lot of weird clipping but in a "community map weirdness" kind of way. That rock is hilarious.
@@VanessaMagick there are 2 versions of the map on the workshop, if the many inconsistencies and bugs happen to bother you. One is a "fixed up" version of the one we have now, no changes other than scripts and clipbrushes (specifically that rock you mentioned). The other brings back the original models, which also fixes that.
the button labeled "CM" on hammer allows you to see collision meshes for props/models if they have one. if its yellow then the game is using that props collision mesh, if its purple then its collision mesh was turned off and it was probably clipped differently or something. a tip for future hammer videos
EVERYTHING about demoknight is working against you, oh you got slightly knocked back before charging, no charge for you, oh you tapped a pixel on the edge of a corner or some crappy clip brush placement, no charge, oh you actually play well and position properly so none of those problems really affect you, melee hit reg.
You know, I've played Overwatch and TF2 for over 1000 hours each and when I noticed something A LOT in OW that I never noticed in TF2, and that was getting stuck on walls and little objects that stick out of the wall leading to my death and seeing you talk about clipping in the source engine at 1:08 made a whole lot of sense to me. I wish OW would add something like that to their maps because it's a fucking pain to get caught on a lip of a wall while you're trying to back out.
one of the most immediate things noticeable in this video is that you have such a great delivery and commentary voice, something that a lot of larger channels seem to struggle with. top notch editing too! i hope this channel will blow up in the next few months
Uhhh, this would explain why rocketing over slopes felt like it never worked on this map. All the vital slope/trimping staircases aren't clipped properly and it'd just make me think I was performing trimps wrong lmao thanks for clearing that up cutie. Def talk more tf2 nitpicks and gripes!
Love the writing! I like the way you used a common frustration in some players to show the mechanics of an underappreciated part of map design. hook with a 'has this ever happened to you' moment and turned it into a wonderfully written informational video!
This was a very cool video thank you for sharing, insane that Valve has prevented so many soldiers & demos from getting epic kills due to not using clip brushes. I think LED's 'Everything Wrong with TF2's Dustbowl' video deserves a watch as well, it only goes over one map but he talks about a boatload of weird little issues with it. Thanks a ton for the upload
On Upward regarding the stairs next to RED spawn: they can't clip those stairs without causing a visual error when playing. You'd get stuck if you went around the wall too tightly OR you'd go up stairs that aren't actually there. The only way to properly fix stairs like that is to have them be further in and leave a gap for the clip to properly applied. The other example on the other map also has this issue. They'd need to make a recess for stairs to go to make it look and act properly.
great video!! loved the music choice, voiceover and writing. its a niche enough topic to interest a lot of fans and keep the tf2 youtube content fresh, but not too niche so it doesnt make it uninteresting for others. i think its important to create a relationship and understanding between players and mapmakers (along with other community content creators) and this video does a great job of that. id love more videos like this in the future :)
The first clip in a Tris's spy frag movie Sun, Surf and Banana Splits from 5 years ago is a trickstab using the boomerang tree. Tris has recently quit playing the game due to the mental toll it was taking on them but check out that video.
great choice of music! I love hearing about these small design nuances that can have such a big impact. I started making a goldsrc map in hammer a long time ago but never finished it. I've been thinking about getting back into it.
Very true! Upward is known for it's clipping issues: those spots where you get stuck in infinite falling state, those signs where you get stuck forever, angled walls for wallsticking and more. In my opinion most of those stuff add depth to the map but those stairs may indeed ruin experience for some people.
As I map maker I get unnecessarily upset when i find unclipped stairs in official maps lmao However I do want to add that some people do leave the first stair unclipped deliberately as a way to give visual feedback to the player that they have began climbing the stairs, differs between map makers tho. Personally I try to avoid it except for very specific circumstances Also banger video, that's a sub for me o7
that fucking staircase on upward has been bugging me forever. being a mapper, i knew it had to be sloppy clipping but i never bothered to check in-game because i was sure anyway. there we go. nice video bud😊
Awesome to see someone else reference the klikempire, his talks about jank in CS carry over to TF2 way too often, especially when some fixes done in CSGO were never made in TF2 lol.
That command to show clipping brushes are fun to use in all source games. I've seen videos saying "did you know you can stand HERE?" or "There seems to be an invisible wall here" etc. when talking about games (like HL2) but I've never understood why they don't just show the clip brushes instead of trying to guess where it is. I guess they don't even know about it. I'm not even a map maker or anything; I just found it on my own. I personally prefer to use the wireframe version of the clip brush command (which I think is 1 instead of 2) along with the command to show the collision for mesh objects.
I like when theres the jitter at the bottom step. Its another point of feedback for where I am. Its small enough that its not disruptive, but noticeable enough that it helps me navigate where I'm not looking.
I like when the first step is clipped because you get a bit of feedback as to when you've touched the staircase. I've also never gotten stuck on one in my thousands of hours wat.
Jokes on you, I’ve already watched both of those stair clipping videos 😎 They gave me a lot of insight that helped me understand your vid with ease. Fantastic video yo!! I really enjoyed learning about these god forsaken stairs!!!!
I live for these game engine videos. It doesn't seem like it warrants a video, but even as a non-map maker this is so interesting. This is the magic of wonky game engines I guess, lol.
The first stair syndrome isn't really a big problem, and is probably like that because if it was clipped, it would have a small wall of the clip brush you could hit. I'm probably just saying this cause I don't map for tf2, only portal, and in that game, all stairs don't have clips at the bottom.
Heya tf2 mapper here! Awesome video, really explains our mind set when clipping the map, also yeah valve is really WEIRD with clipping in their maps :p
I just watched a video that claimed the first stair cutoff is intentional so that walking down the stairs a player can get a visual indication of when they've reached the end of the stairs
1:20 Getting caught on tiny little details in the walls and fucking dying because of it is my biggest peeve with Overwatch. The number of times I have gotten caught on some miniscule detail of the wall and died is too high to count
ive heard the first stair syndrome stairs are done that way to make sure the stair sits flush with neighboring geometry. if it isnt done that way players could get stuck on the tiny bit of clip brush sticking out at the bottom. so the lesser of two evils.
Nice video! Clipping is a fascinating topic because of all of the weird quirks that naturally arise with it. There are a bunch of different ways to do it, each with their pros and cons. I'm actually working on my own video right now where I attempt to create the "perfect" staircase in TF2 and get around some of the problems associated with staircases that you may not think even have problems in the first place, or arise from so-called solutions to clipping that you'll find in this very comment section...
they always gotta start off with the absurdly obvious shit lmao i came here just to mess around with the absurd video premise but after watching it now im kinda hating lmao this is another one of those videos that could've been compressed into 2 minutes if it wasnt for all the unnecessary fluff, like we dont need a fucking introduction on the map upward lmfao
You can see prop collision models in hammer by clicking the yellow stair icon to the right of the nodraw visibility button. Edit: That is the walkable surfaces tool. It paints the walkable parts of collision models yellow and is filled in instead of just wireframe.
There is another problem on Upward that I wish they would also fix. The spawn door in the tunnel when it is open clips into the pathway above that spawn blocking it.
There are more maps that use push triggers, Swiftwater being one of the ones that stand out in my memory. The tops of most (if not all, of the trees have push triggers to keep people off of them. There is also one random push trigger that is above the payload track's bend in front of the garage that is out of the way of normal game play, it's just up in the middle of the air for some reason?
This video feels like a very old STAR_ video (this is a good thing btw). Way back in the day ster made a video talking about Badlands (or rocket jumping, one of those) and mentioned a specific spot just before the spiral where the clipping was off. Shortly afterwards it actually got fixed because that was back when TF2 had a dev team. If you're wondering where the spot was it's the little perch that faces spiral; there's a wooden plank in the spot that became smoothed out.
slightly more meta-esque type tf2 video. definitely interested to see if people enjoy this kinda content, would be down to do more of it in the future
yes please. I can't consume enough of this type of stuff
you should talk about counter strikes clipping lol you have a feild day with that
Yessss
Always cool to peek behind the scenes and see some of the silly TF2 design shenanigans
when they don't clip the bottom step, that is to make it easier to tell if you're on the stair or not.
my grandma also hates stairs
Bro same
For real
she was so real for this
@@durrbill real
@@durrbillreal
Clipping's a very simple thing, but easy to forget when you make last minute changes
Fun fact: For stairs, you should use block_bullet textures instead of player_clip textures, since while player_clip allows explosives to pass through and explode in a position where the majority of the explosion gets eaten by the stairs, block_bullet explodes the rocket early in such a way where it'll cleanly hit across the entire stair geometry.
If you've ever had your explosives mysteriously not do damage to someone appropriately using the stairs before, this is why
Or just Clip it, it block both player and explosives to not be awkward.
NERD EMOJI!!!11111 🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓
no way it's conga ror2
@@michaeljonathan9715
Clip brushes only stop players.
Block bullets stops players and bullets.
Use block bullets on your stairs.
explosion bugs also can happen on slightly uneven ground and it's endlessly frustrating
I don't trust stairs. They're always up to something.
They're always up to SOMETHING
That's the 143rd time I've complained about stairs
Haha😐
And down
Stair stabs
When I realized the joke I felt like backstabbing you even though we are probably in far away countries from eachother
As someone who makes maps, specifically for Garry's Mod. First stair clipping is always a rather annoying issue, the issue is that you obviously want your stairs to be nice and smooth, however if you take that clip brush flush to the ground over the first step you then get a problem where if you run at the first step from the side it has an extended collision because of the clip brush protruding past the step. Really the only solution for this problem is to make sure that the stair set is set into the wall or surface etc at least one stair length so as you cannot run at the first step from the side.
I normally bevel the edges of the stairs
I usually bevel or make the slope leading to the first step just shy of 45° to lessen this effect as much as possible.
I find having one bump upon starting up the stairs usually isn't too bad.
You can just add another small triangular slope to the side of main clip that's poking out.
My absolute favourite clipbrush is in Left 4 Dead 2. On the first map of Cold Stream there's a small rock holding up a fallen branch you need to walk over to reach a ledge. For whatever reason, the clipbrush of this rock has been smoothed out over what must have been a completely different and much larger rock model, letting you just kind of stand in the air for a good five feet next to the actual rock
Old rock model got replaced when Cold Stream was officially brought over.
@@PretzelSage Yeah, that's what I figure, but it was never fixed. Cold Stream has a lot of weird clipping but in a "community map weirdness" kind of way. That rock is hilarious.
@@VanessaMagick there are 2 versions of the map on the workshop, if the many inconsistencies and bugs happen to bother you. One is a "fixed up" version of the one we have now, no changes other than scripts and clipbrushes (specifically that rock you mentioned). The other brings back the original models, which also fixes that.
I could totally watch a "talking for 12 hours of Upward" if it was made by you
it's like that feeling when you're almost at the top of the stairs but your foot catches on the last one and you faceplant onto the floor.
Thankfully I learned clipping early on and always get suspicious when I don't see enough pink in my maps
I make GMod maps rather than TF2 and I still playerclip everything
omg now i really wanna see someone pull off the boomerang stab. great video btw
legit someone sent me one on twitter like an hour after the video came out LMAO
much appreciated
LMAO@@durrbill can i have a link!?
twitter.com/TheZombers_YT/status/1748154855594807367?s=20
"First stair syndrome" is like that intentionally so that it doesn't affect movement perpendicular to the stairs.
the button labeled "CM" on hammer allows you to see collision meshes for props/models if they have one. if its yellow then the game is using that props collision mesh, if its purple then its collision mesh was turned off and it was probably clipped differently or something. a tip for future hammer videos
oh appreciate that, i tried googling it for a bit but couldn't quite find the right combination of terms to figure it out, much thanks
So THAT'S why playing Demoknight feels like the game's actively working against you.
EVERYTHING about demoknight is working against you, oh you got slightly knocked back before charging, no charge for you, oh you tapped a pixel on the edge of a corner or some crappy clip brush placement, no charge, oh you actually play well and position properly so none of those problems really affect you, melee hit reg.
9:20 bro mentioned Junction like people actually play on it 💀
much as dante was guided by virgil to the depths of hell, i too have taken my own voyages to the depths
I like Junction.
@@Bacxaberreported for terrorism
@@Bacxaberbaxcaber likes junction? SoT has fallen billions must grind Athena
@@uhoh6166on... SAFER SEAS. 😱
You know, I've played Overwatch and TF2 for over 1000 hours each and when I noticed something A LOT in OW that I never noticed in TF2, and that was getting stuck on walls and little objects that stick out of the wall leading to my death and seeing you talk about clipping in the source engine at 1:08 made a whole lot of sense to me. I wish OW would add something like that to their maps because it's a fucking pain to get caught on a lip of a wall while you're trying to back out.
This happens so much on tf2 it feels like mappers purposely do it.
The Librarian hates unclipped stairs.
It’s funny how quickly you went from empathizing with the map creators to completely shutting on them once you realized it was a valve map 😂
one of the most immediate things noticeable in this video is that you have such a great delivery and commentary voice, something that a lot of larger channels seem to struggle with. top notch editing too!
i hope this channel will blow up in the next few months
Uhhh, this would explain why rocketing over slopes felt like it never worked on this map. All the vital slope/trimping staircases aren't clipped properly and it'd just make me think I was performing trimps wrong lmao
thanks for clearing that up cutie. Def talk more tf2 nitpicks and gripes!
Its very possible a few of these stairs are deliberately not clipped to reduce the rollout power of classes in the early stages.
Love the writing! I like the way you used a common frustration in some players to show the mechanics of an underappreciated part of map design. hook with a 'has this ever happened to you' moment and turned it into a wonderfully written informational video!
This was a very cool video thank you for sharing, insane that Valve has prevented so many soldiers & demos from getting epic kills due to not using clip brushes.
I think LED's 'Everything Wrong with TF2's Dustbowl' video deserves a watch as well, it only goes over one map but he talks about a boatload of weird little issues with it.
Thanks a ton for the upload
As a heavy main i just walk up the stairs like a normal mercenary. Never failed me. Not once so.... I don't really have a dog in this fight.
i reflexively jump when i approach stairs anyway.
omg the neuron activation i got when seeing 2kki footage in a tf2 video (which was pretty interesting)
This is what no game update does to a comunity
On Upward regarding the stairs next to RED spawn: they can't clip those stairs without causing a visual error when playing. You'd get stuck if you went around the wall too tightly OR you'd go up stairs that aren't actually there. The only way to properly fix stairs like that is to have them be further in and leave a gap for the clip to properly applied. The other example on the other map also has this issue. They'd need to make a recess for stairs to go to make it look and act properly.
great video!! loved the music choice, voiceover and writing. its a niche enough topic to interest a lot of fans and keep the tf2 youtube content fresh, but not too niche so it doesnt make it uninteresting for others. i think its important to create a relationship and understanding between players and mapmakers (along with other community content creators) and this video does a great job of that. id love more videos like this in the future :)
The first clip in a Tris's spy frag movie Sun, Surf and Banana Splits from 5 years ago is a trickstab using the boomerang tree. Tris has recently quit playing the game due to the mental toll it was taking on them but check out that video.
great choice of music! I love hearing about these small design nuances that can have such a big impact. I started making a goldsrc map in hammer a long time ago but never finished it. I've been thinking about getting back into it.
Very true! Upward is known for it's clipping issues: those spots where you get stuck in infinite falling state, those signs where you get stuck forever, angled walls for wallsticking and more. In my opinion most of those stuff add depth to the map but those stairs may indeed ruin experience for some people.
Let's not forget those cliffs near spiralling bridge that were patched like 3 times and you still can go out of bounds in there xd
I got pushed into the sign as a medic with 90% uber - a moment of silence for the game that valve threw
*its
As I map maker I get unnecessarily upset when i find unclipped stairs in official maps lmao
However I do want to add that some people do leave the first stair unclipped deliberately as a way to give visual feedback to the player that they have began climbing the stairs, differs between map makers tho. Personally I try to avoid it except for very specific circumstances
Also banger video, that's a sub for me o7
5:09 i love the duality of worst stairs possible right next to a clip so good it's z-fighting with the stair prop
babe wake up new durrbill video just dropped
your pfp and name make this oddly funnier
that fucking staircase on upward has been bugging me forever. being a mapper, i knew it had to be sloppy clipping but i never bothered to check in-game because i was sure anyway. there we go. nice video bud😊
It's always a good day when durrbill uploads
disappointed there was no mention of rockets being eaten by stairs
> video starts out with a Yume 2kki clip
Aight I’m instantly subbed
missed opportunity to say "my good friend the clip brush, I keep running into him"
1:38 wall is the spy
This vid made me smash the bell icon. A definite +rep moment, this man is out here making fresh tf2 content in 2024
always kept some of these stairs at the back of my mind to watch out for whenever i played on those maps.
Love when people use a hat in time osts for their vids
when that A Hat in Time OST - Clocktowers Beneath The Sea hits
Awesome to see someone else reference the klikempire, his talks about jank in CS carry over to TF2 way too often, especially when some fixes done in CSGO were never made in TF2 lol.
I love your use of the A hat in time soundtrack
That command to show clipping brushes are fun to use in all source games. I've seen videos saying "did you know you can stand HERE?" or "There seems to be an invisible wall here" etc. when talking about games (like HL2) but I've never understood why they don't just show the clip brushes instead of trying to guess where it is. I guess they don't even know about it. I'm not even a map maker or anything; I just found it on my own. I personally prefer to use the wireframe version of the clip brush command (which I think is 1 instead of 2) along with the command to show the collision for mesh objects.
The biggest dark secret of upward is Everytime I play it I always get distracted by the giant view the map has
I like when theres the jitter at the bottom step. Its another point of feedback for where I am. Its small enough that its not disruptive, but noticeable enough that it helps me navigate where I'm not looking.
I like the Yume 2kki clip there at the beginning. I didn't expect to see that here!
The thumbnail made me laugh, the very thought of a bunch of stairs being pure evil.
I like when the first step is clipped because you get a bit of feedback as to when you've touched the staircase. I've also never gotten stuck on one in my thousands of hours wat.
Great vid + Treat profile photo jumpscare at the end
Jokes on you, I’ve already watched both of those stair clipping videos 😎
They gave me a lot of insight that helped me understand your vid with ease. Fantastic video yo!! I really enjoyed learning about these god forsaken stairs!!!!
clipping hell IS real and you WILL be sent there at the first sign of defiance
I live for these game engine videos.
It doesn't seem like it warrants a video, but even as a non-map maker this is so interesting.
This is the magic of wonky game engines I guess, lol.
Guess this explains why I'm always getting stuck on the stairs outside spawn on 2fort and in the sewer tunnels? Always makes me paranoid lol
The first stair syndrome isn't really a big problem, and is probably like that because if it was clipped, it would have a small wall of the clip brush you could hit. I'm probably just saying this cause I don't map for tf2, only portal, and in that game, all stairs don't have clips at the bottom.
I love clip brushes, not just because they make the game easier to play, but also because it's fun to make them
Heya tf2 mapper here! Awesome video, really explains our mind set when clipping the map, also yeah valve is really WEIRD with clipping in their maps :p
I just watched a video that claimed the first stair cutoff is intentional so that walking down the stairs a player can get a visual indication of when they've reached the end of the stairs
I actually agree with you, getting stuck on a small object is painful.
Clip brush all the stairs.
I focused more on that NomNomNami pfp on steam in 0:14 than the actual video 💀
Literally best shit I've seen all day
Pier also has wooden beams or something after the first point which also have push triggers.
So THAT’S how Muselk found all those extreme rancho relaxo spots...
Nice video, also I saw myself around the 7 min point XD (I remember that uber)
1:20 Getting caught on tiny little details in the walls and fucking dying because of it is my biggest peeve with Overwatch. The number of times I have gotten caught on some miniscule detail of the wall and died is too high to count
ive heard the first stair syndrome stairs are done that way to make sure the stair sits flush with neighboring geometry. if it isnt done that way players could get stuck on the tiny bit of clip brush sticking out at the bottom. so the lesser of two evils.
"these are stairs"
"Dear god..."
"there's more"
"No D:"
thank you for the informative video. made me hire a guy to do an inspection on the stair clipping in my house
myself and many others actually preffer first step of stairs be unclipped
Nice video! Clipping is a fascinating topic because of all of the weird quirks that naturally arise with it. There are a bunch of different ways to do it, each with their pros and cons. I'm actually working on my own video right now where I attempt to create the "perfect" staircase in TF2 and get around some of the problems associated with staircases that you may not think even have problems in the first place, or arise from so-called solutions to clipping that you'll find in this very comment section...
This video just reminds me of me trying to do mapping for the first time and failing to do any proper stairs always
Thus could have been 2 minutes. Now every video has an introduction like some stupid journalist article
they always gotta start off with the absurdly obvious shit lmao i came here just to mess around with the absurd video premise but after watching it now im kinda hating lmao
this is another one of those videos that could've been compressed into 2 minutes if it wasnt for all the unnecessary fluff, like we dont need a fucking introduction on the map upward lmfao
Source spaghetti broke stairs. They worked in Quake, but in Valve broken them since HL1.
we've dealt with it this long, we'll deal with it forever longer
i've been malding over this bad clip for over 7 years now since without it, you could do another amazing rollout from spawn, like the og upward jump
I still LOVE Upward.
i wonder what upward would look like without any of the miscillaneous buildings and such
2:10 Wait, what?! I never paid attention to this since now !
You can see prop collision models in hammer by clicking the yellow stair icon to the right of the nodraw visibility button.
Edit: That is the walkable surfaces tool. It paints the walkable parts of collision models yellow and is filled in instead of just wireframe.
There is another problem on Upward that I wish they would also fix. The spawn door in the tunnel when it is open clips into the pathway above that spawn blocking it.
It does explains couple of wtf moments I had years ago
Imagine an update drops to fix this, only for Soldier to suddenly rocket (pun definitely intended) to the top of the Upward meta.
2kki in the intro mega based
*Stairs has an incline that needs an extra step*
TF2 Players: Well now this map is unplayable
I appreciate the Hat in Time music
Funny that LED also just made a tf2 stair video recently
There are more maps that use push triggers, Swiftwater being one of the ones that stand out in my memory. The tops of most (if not all, of the trees have push triggers to keep people off of them.
There is also one random push trigger that is above the payload track's bend in front of the garage that is out of the way of normal game play, it's just up in the middle of the air for some reason?
deroplat "ornabug" nulltox mentioned.
love that guy
as someone who's just now consistently hitting trick stabs. i need to see that boomerang stab too
A fellow mountain lab enjoyer i see... "hell yeah dude"
Aaah yes, the not only source engine code spagetti, but map spagetti
that's one way to explain your lack of skill
Damn, that Hat in Time music hits hard... 😢
"Falling into weird holes" 💀
this was a nice video to watch, pleasing
theres also a cool push brush on a sign at the 3rd point of pier :D
This video feels like a very old STAR_ video (this is a good thing btw). Way back in the day ster made a video talking about Badlands (or rocket jumping, one of those) and mentioned a specific spot just before the spiral where the clipping was off. Shortly afterwards it actually got fixed because that was back when TF2 had a dev team. If you're wondering where the spot was it's the little perch that faces spiral; there's a wooden plank in the spot that became smoothed out.
I dunno why, i just love Upward.
I could play Upward and Badwater for days.
BABE WAKE UP NEW DURRBILL VID JUST DROPPED