Learning Radiant - Hour 1

I remember when I first downloaded and tried to use Radiant.  In the manual there was a quick tutorial on making a simple room, starting with a hollow cube.  I remember that I could make the cube just fine, but when I clicked the 'Hollow' button, the cube got deleted.  This annoyed me greatly, and I set the editor aside, to be learned when I had more patience.

Well, starting it up again (to learn it in earnest this month) led to the same problem.  I tried hollowing out a cube many times, but it never seemed to work.

The manual's tutorial simply doesn't work for me, and I can't yet find the problem.

So instead I found a decent resource on how to use Radiant, and I tried making the room based on what it showed.

I made six separate thin cubes that would serve as the sides of a hollow cube.  I grabbed a random texture from Half-Life (the only game I have that Radiant works for) and applied it to the cubes.

This worked without problems, so I added a light and a player start, and compiled.

My BSP disappeared.

In fact, my light disappeared too.  The compiler detected no errors at all, so I don't know why almost everything went boom.

That green thing is a player start.  The gray is where my light and walls should be.

I can only imagine there is a problem with the way I set up Radiant, like the directory structure is off or it points to certain folders or game files incorrectly.

So next, even though my BSP seemingly went away, I decided to test it anyway.  The online resource seems to indicate that there is no way to test in-editor, so I went into Half-Life and tried to load up my test map.

It can't find it.  Half-Life can't find anything but Team Fortress and Opposing Force.

So I seem to have at least three problems I have to figure out before I can move on: compile disappearance, hollowing disappearances, and Half-Life finding the file.

This is going to be a fun month.