I was wandering if there is any more places to get reading material on modding Half-Life 2, and more indepth usage of the hammer editor. I got the book Half-Life 2 mods for dummies and now I'm hooked. I'm still very new to all this and I want to get as much information as possible to become more experienced in useing as many tools as I need to create my vision. If anyone can guide me in the right direction it would greatly be appreciated.

hmm.. well I am not 100% sure of what is exactly in the book, but you said you want to create you 'vision'. Therefore I would check out the tutorials on Half Life 2 .

You might find some more useful information there which could help you in creating something you want.

Hope that helps!

The book is pretty much a huge mapping tutorial with some introductions into other aspects of modding.

I really need to answer warren's question with another question, what do you want to know? Are you set on mapping and now want to learn more about texture creation or modeling? Are you trying to figure out ways to create fancy brushes? Did you want to go all out and start manipulating the code of the game?

Usually, when I have a question, I start over at the Valve wiki site. Then I hit up google. Google usually then points me to 3 or 4 sites with good information. Below are some links.

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SDK_Docs
http://www.valve-erc.com/srcsdk/
http://www.hl2world.com/
http://forums.thewavelength.net/
http://www.halflife2.net/
http://www.chatbear.com/unity2/4991/unityhome?v=flatold