How to make a ladder
by Egir Helgrimson

     Making a ladder is no big deal when you've done it once. If you havn't made your first ladder yet, this tutorial is made special for you.

What are we going to do

      We will make our ladder of two brushes. One that looks like a ladder. And one that acts like a ladder, but is invisible.

The brush that looks like a ladder

      Select a ladder texture. I use the {LADDER3A from halflife.wad. The { indicates that the blue area can be made transparently.

     Now create a brush with the Block tool (white cupe). The brush should be 32 units wide and 2 units deep. The height of the brush depends on how high you want your ladder to be. I'll make mine 128.

      The ladder looks something like the picture above. If the texture doesn't fit, mark the object and start the texture application. Click R and T, to align the texture from the right and from the top.

     We need to turn this ladder into an entity and adjust it to make the blue beeing invisible. To do this, mark the brush and press CTRL + T. Scroll down to func_illusionary. Set Render Mode to Solid and FX Amount to 255.

      Now we have something that looks like a ladder, and you can shoot through it.

The brush that acts like a ladder

      What good is a ladder that we cannot climb. Mark the func_illusionarry and press CTRL + C. Then press CTRL + V to paste a copy of the func_illusionary. Press CTRL + ENTER and scroll down to a func_ladder. Mark the brush and give it the AAATRIGGER texture. Place the func_ladder on the side you whant to be climbable. Now it will look like this.

     The only reason to use the AAATRIGGER texture for this func_ladder is that we use that texture to mark trigger entities. It is just a mapping standard, the func_ladder will be invisible nomatter what texture you apply to it.

The ladder that looks, feels and act as a ladder

     This is how the compiled version of the ladder looks like.

     I figured a litle mansion theme was need here ;)

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