Hi everyone,

i was used to map on q3-engines, so firstly some basic questions:
1.Is it necessary in half life 2 to put the nodraw texture on the faces you cant see (as foleyman didnt in his tutorial, but i cant imagine you neednt)
2. Where the hell are the visportals?

Another thing is, i have added some vehicle on my multiplayer map, but i want them to be staffed with a machinegun, just like in the game. How can i manage this?

would belucky, to get an answer, Brian

I haven't had the time to run these kinds of tests yet. It's quite possible the HL2 is using an older type of portalling where the portals are built for you. This would mean there would be no visportal brush.

To force a portal in the old method is to place a HINT brush where you would have placed that visportal. I didn't check if that texture is available yet either.

As far as no-draw or caulk on non-visible sides.... I believe that you should place no-draw or soemthing on non-visible surfaces HOWEVER it's not necessary on the following:
- brush faces that butt up against each other
- brushes faes that face outside of the map and into the void

These brush faces should automatically be ignored.

Foyleman, while I don't disbelieve you, did you find anywhere in actual documentation that says that about the no-draw/caulk issue? As in the butting faces of brushes are ignored, as well as surfaces facing 'into the void' being ignored?

no, i did not find this anywhere. This is based on my own experimentation with quake based games prior to Call of Duty.

With textures facing outside of the map... a player cannot reach outside of a map and therefore those textures are never displayed. I don't know if those textures are loaded, but the brush faces are never drawn. This is proven when you go into a spectator mode that allows you to fly behind the map.

What needs to be done is someone needs to run a showtris or equivelent for hl2. is there a showtris command for hl2? Then you will see what is drawn and what is not. This is how I can determine these things in the older quake games.... oh and Doom 3 too.

I think this is the cmd line you are talking about

Quote:

mat_wireframe 0/1 This toggles off and on the display of wireframe detail for all brush and model objects in view. It is useful for showing you how your map's brushwork has been split up by the engine. It is also useful to show you just what is being drawn in any given view. You will need to activate cheats with sv_cheats 1 to use this command.

Found this here
www.valve-erc.com/srcsdk/Levels/optimizing_and_checking.html