Tenfold Towering Turbine Troubles (Half Life Spinning Prop Example + Tutorial)

I recently purchased J.A.C.K off steam for around £10, and it instantly proved its worth. For those who do not know, J.A.C.K is a Quake 1 2 and 3 and Half Life map editor. It will be familiar to Hammer users and provides a few helpful bonuses too.

This purchase means I have been able to look in to Half Life mapping, so you can expect a lot of half life content coming soon.


The purpose of today's post is to show you how to make a spinning object in Half Life map editors (it is pretty much universal). To start, create the object you want to spin using the block tool. Once you have created your object, select it and press Ctrl + t. This should bring up the object properties menu. There should be a box at the top that says 'func_wall'. Change this to 'func_rotating'. Edit the values in the boxes to change how it behaves. If you want the object to spin upon the map starting go to the flags box and select 'start on'. That should be all that is required.

I have made a demo map based on spinning objects. My map is a room with ten rotors stacked on top of each other vertically. The goal of the player is to reach the top of the rotor tower and press the button without getting killed in the process. Its a map that will require a few tries, after which you should find the correct timing. On completion of the map, you can stand on the second to last rotor and get pushed down 1 layer at a time by the machine. The spinning turbines are all func_rotating objects. Below is the download for the map. You may upload it to the steam workshop somewhere if you want but please credit me and/or leave a link to this website. I hope you learnt what you wanted to find out and enjoyed the demo map if you played it. Have a great day!