Half-Life Mapping ("Caulk" ???) Thread

Okey, I never really got into Half-Life 1 until I picked it up really cheap from a bargain bin a few months ago (and finished the game - I have to say I was dissapointed with the alien levels! lol)

Anyway today I've been doing some playing around in Hammer (for HL1) in preparation for the Half-Life 2 SDK's release. However, I can't seem to find the concept of "caulking" or an equivalent mentioned anywhere... if you don't know what i'm referring to, basically I mean a texture/shader/material/(whatever you want to call it) that I can apply to a face so it is not drawn at all.

When I was mapping for the Quake series there was always some "caulk" texture that I could apply to faces that would stop them being drawn at all (they would actually look into the void) and would save painting faces that would never actually be seen by the player.

Is there a concept like this in Half-Life mapping that I should know of... or can anyone who's mapped for both the Quake series and Half-Life tell me what I should be doing?

Thanks for your time!

-jEFF

I'm not sure HL1 had an equivalent of caulking actually - it was based on the Quake 1 engine originally, remember that

i dont texture places that wont be seen by other players anyways , or i select my texture then place my brush, then the whole block or whatever is textured but im not to sure whta your talkiung baout

cHIs-wK wrote: i dont texture places that wont be seen by other players anyways , or i select my texture then place my brush, then the whole block or whatever is textured but im not to sure whta your talkiung baout

Well that's pretty my whole point (+ questino); you can't *help* but place a texture because every face will have a texture, whether it is set by you or just stays at the default ("AAATrigger" i think).

So are you saying that in Half-Life... there's not concept like "calking" for Quake2/3? Wouldn't this be a bit of a bitch for optimizing r_speeds in your levels?

Thanks all!

-jEFF

I never knew Quake 2 had caulk, but Half-Life is based on Quake 1, which definitely did not have it. The only way you can get faces to not draw is to have them blocked out by the vis. Sorry mate

Optimizing r_speeds is often up to clever map design, custom-made curves (not carved), etc. I'm not sure if Half-Life map tools support detail brushes, but if not, you can simulate that by making brushes func_walls.