nodraw vs. nodrawnonsolid

(aaa3) #1 
textures/common/nodraw
{
	qer_trans 0.3
	surfaceparm nodraw
	surfaceparm nomarks
	surfaceparm nonsolid
	surfaceparm trans
}

textures/common/nodrawnonsolid
{
	surfaceparm nodraw
	surfaceparm nonsolid
}

today i examined the common.shaders also with rereading the shader manual (i was actually searching for smth and used the occasion at the same time to make sure myself on stuff i believed to know) and im surprised to found out that plain nd is also ns, then whats the purpose of a dedicated ndns shader? also, if its not solid it can’t be structural, then whats the purpose of trans in it? and also, if smth is not solid then stuff will pass through it, then why to have nomarks? (and just to b*tch, one would expect ndns to be transparent in radiant yet it dont have qer_trans while plain nd has; why? ;p)
and, being curious, what happens when some1 deliberately makes structural a brush in the editor with either of these textures (which both have nonsolid parm in 'em). [ok not textures but shaders -.-]

yet another edit, i found this in some shaders:


	surfaceparm structural
	surfaceparm trans

erm… i’m completely lost :S

(aaa3) #2

another question; (edited title, ) what’s the point of making clip brushes structural? (i saw it on official map sources, dl-ed long ago but opened just today. not all but most of the clips were str) (p.s., off topic, i today flew around in radar in devmap, and jsut now realized its a beautiful map even with atmos and foli turned off)
and, a theoretical question, in practice not useful; but as structural brushes already creating bsp splits parallel to all their faces (and a bsp split equals a portal, isnt?), and for some reason we putting a hint into some doorway or window with the surface parallel to and touching the neigbouring structural brushes (“exatly fit into the hole of window”), if we have luck during the compile, isnt compiling creates a portal exactly the same place even without that hint? (then the hint is only there to make things sure.)
a variant of this question; isnt it unneccessary - in lucky cases! - to have a hint brush spread through all the width we want the portal / isnt it possible to use a small hint with a face in the same plane instead of the fullsize hint? under “lucky case” i meant that the compiler dont introduce splits (which is random depending on where it starts splitting) crossing the plane we intend the portal (obviously then the split created by the “mini-hint” would only extend until that crossing split and would not continue behind it)
another variant, if we have a cube and hollow it and remove 1 face from the six, and wanting to put a hint to that face, isnt it unneccessary? as 4 brushes all have a face in that plane we want the split.
ofc the more complicated the structural structure of the map the less we could rely on this (in practice, depending on the intended size of the portal, i bet less than 1% of the cases we can omit a hint in this manner)

(eiM) #3

and, a theoretical question, in practice not useful; but as structural brushes already creating bsp splits parallel to all their faces (and a bsp split equals a portal, isnt?), and for some reason we putting a hint into some doorway or window with the surface parallel to and touching the neigbouring structural brushes (“exatly fit into the hole of window”), if we have luck during the compile, isnt compiling creates a portal exactly the same place even without that hint? (then the hint is only there to make things sure.)

Yes. =) If I’m not mistaken you got it totally right