I been playing ahl for a bit now, and as I was running and diving about I noticed some nice models hanging about. Models you say? well what I mean is, things like plants, now you can make a plant using Worldcraft cant you, but in the valve pak file, in the models folder, you will see models such as vplant1, which is a plant, a very funky plant, and there as other things too, now ive only just discovered this so im not expert, but I thought people could benefit from knowing about putting them in your map. I tried it with halflife dm, I mean I tried putting one in, but Worldcraft kept crashing, I know for sure it works on action hl though, with the action hl fgd file. Now its pretty easy to do, so get yourself the following:

pak explorer - free, small download (58k) to view pak files
hl model viewer - about 100kb, to view models, id get the one at the top if I were you.

Now there both simply programs really, its just a question of opening files, and im sure you know how to do that.

Putting in a Plant

Say you want a plant in your map (action hl one, dunno if it works for say cs or dod) first create yourself a little plant pot, or use the prefab, oh hmm, I could do with a tutorial on prefabs, ill do that after this.

Now once you have made your pot or used the prefab, open up pak explorer. Go to the valve folder and click on models, then look down the list on the right for uplant1, click on it and select "extract to" now since we are making it for action hl, we want to extract it into the action hl models folder. so select that and click ok. Now it'll do that really fast, so that's done. We now have our model in our folder (I think there's a way to direct it so you dont need to extract it but I dont know how as yet).

So we have a plant pot and the plant model in the correct folder. An important note! when releasing your map, make sure you give them the vplant model file as well, its only tiny.

Now all we need to do is insert an env_sprite where we want the plant to be. However, they like to float, I mean if you align it exactly where you want the plant from it'll be floating, so you have to put the x in the entity on the top line. Its hard for me to explain, like in the picture:

You see? if it was not in the plant pot a bit then for some reason it floats. (red square is the env_sprite, green thing is plant pot)

Right then, so we have our entity, what to put in the properties? the following:

Name: Go on give it a name, such as plant (how original:)
Render fx: leave it alone
Render Mode: Leave alone to
Fx Color: Leave this alone as well
Framerate: hmm, well framerate you say? well our plant likes to move you see, I tried putting 0.0 in here, and it still moved, so I put 5.0 in and it only moves a bit (when I say moves, I mean in the game the plant sways from side to side)
Sprite Name: Now here is where you are meant to put in sprites, as you know we have models, however the action hl fgd works a treat, so put models/uplant1.mdl in here, as we put our plant model in that folder earlier. If you try to put this name in when your making a hl dm map, it crashes, or at least it did for me.
Scale: Leave that alone as well, later if you fancy it, try setting it up or down to see the effects, I dont know if it works, but obviously setting to say 2 would make it twice as large, which would maybe add lag. So for now leave it blank.

Now we have added our plant, compile your map, and it should look fantastic, you can almost feel the leafs :)

*Update*

You can make a map using the actionhl fgd file, and still play in hl deathmatch, in other words you can make a map or hl dm using the actionhl fgd file and it will work.