nuclide/Documentation/Materials/MatGoldSrc.md

Materials: GoldSrc

Material definitions handle what footsteps and what impact effects are played against each texture in the game-world. So when you walk on dirt, you can hear the difference; or when you shoot wood with a gun it will have splinters spawn instead of black bits and smoke.

Note: While Nuclide supports this for legacy BSP files, you are encouraged to define the material of a texture via the surfaceparm command in a Material instead.

Details

Usually, a game in the GoldSrc engine would provide a sound/materials.txt file, where each line defines the properties for a single (or a series of) textures.

For example:

C CONCRETEWALL

Will make any surface concrete that starts with the name CONCRETEWALL. In vanilla Half-Life, the second argument (name) can only be 12 characters long.

It will also only compare the length of characters of the name above. So for example if you were to define:

C CONC

Then CONCRETEWALL would still be marked as concrete, and any other texture that starts with CONC[...].

Community Changes and Additions

In stock GoldSrc, the materials.txt can be overwritten by a modification, and users could customize the file on the client-side only for themselves. This means there was no map specific materials, and mods could not inherit Half-Life's materials, so mods would always have to manage a nearly duplicate file if they desired custom texture sounds.

A few mods tried to remedy this problem, the following below is methods documented so far:

• maps/MAPNAME.mat

Introduced in The Wastes (2003)

• maps/MAPNAME_materials.txt

Convention by Andrew Lucas, creator of Trinity SDK, modeled after MAPNAME_details.txt

• materials_file PATH/FILE.txt via the worldspawn entity

Introduced in Sven Co-op 5.0

All these methods are supported by Nuclide, as one goal is to implement conventions by not only Valve but the community as well.

In addition Nuclide has also implemented a way of giving modifications their own inheritable materials file:

sounds/materials_UNIQUENAME.txt

The idea here is that any mod or even map pack can include ONLY the textures used, and no longer will anyone have to manage a near-clone of materials.txt

For repackaging or modding purposes, if you desire to give your map custom sound definitions, we recommend The Wastes its method for individual maps, while the Nuclide method should be used for Mods or Map Packs. We find these to be the most clean and efficient way.

NOTE: We recommend only using materials text files for GoldSrc related modding purposes. It is inefficient for modern projects as there are much better standards already supported in Nuclide. Keep in mind, it takes memory to load big text files, and lots of text files adds up over play sessions.

Material List

In Nuclide, this is the currently supported list of material IDs:

Material ID	Material Name
B	Bloody Flesh
C	Concrete
D	Dirt
F	Flesh
G	Grate
H	Alien
K	Snow
M	Metal
N	Sand
O	Foliage
P	Computer
S	Slosh
T	Tile
V	Vent
W	Wood
Y	Glass

Game differences

Listed below are definitions for various games and mods. Only the changes and additions are listed since the rest are identical.

The * indicates these definitions are not implemented in Nuclide

GoldSrc

Arrangement

Material ID	Material Name
B	Blue Texture
N	Snow
R	Red Texture
U	Slime
X	Yellow Texture
Z	Black Texture

Counter-Strike

Material ID	Material Name
N	Snow
X	Grass
Afraid of Monsters: DC, Natural Selection, and Snow War uses the same definitions.

Cry of Fear

Material ID	Material Name
B	Random Twig Snap
H	Paper
I	Mud
O	Sand
P	Snow
R	Gravel
U	Grass
Y	Broken Glass
Z	Carpet

Gunman Chronicles

Material ID	Material Name
G	Wood
T	Rock
V	Sand
W	Unknown/Unused?

Firearms

Material ID	Material Name
B	Sandbag
N	Snow
U	No impact or decals, just smoke effects

Heart of Evil

Material ID	Material Name
U	Mud

Hostile Intent

Material ID	Material Name
A	Sand
E	Foliage
N	Snow
R	Carpet
U	Mud
Z	Grass

Household DEATH!

Material ID	Material Name
H	Wood (Creaky)
I	Grass

Night at the Office

Material ID	Material Name
T	Carpet

Opposing Force

Material ID	Material Name
O	Snow
Science and Industry uses the same definitions as Opposing Force.

Poke646

Material ID	Material Name
M	Metal/Grate
T	Wood/Tile
G	Carpet/Grass

Wasteland Half-Life

Material ID	Material Name
B	Barrel
I	Sand
N	Tinroof
R	Rust
U	Drywall
The Wastes uses the same definitions.

Source

While Source has materials describing a surface with its $surfaceprop command, the GoldSrc way of describing materials with a 1-character symbol is still used to define which impact effect to use.

So be aware that a Source engine game may actually have more surface materials than this, these are solely the IDs associated with impact effects.

Alien Swarm

Material ID	Material Name
11	Steam Pipe

Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop uses the same definitions.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Material ID	Material Name
11	Mud
12	Sand Barrel
13	Sand Barrel (Penetration)
14	Metal Shield

Half-Life 2

Material ID	Material Name
A	Antlion
B	Flesh (Bloody)
H	Flesh (Antlion)
K	Snow
L	Plastic
N	Sand
I	Clip
O	Foliage
X	Fake
-	No Decal

Half-Life 2: Episode 2

Material ID	Material Name
E	Antlion Egg Sacks
Z	Adviser Shield

Insurgency

Material ID	Material Name
A	Fruit

Day of Infamy uses the same definitions.

Left 4 Dead

Material ID	Material Name
J	Grass
K	Mud
Q	Asphalt
R	Brick
U	Cardboard
1	Clay
2	Plaster
3	Rock
4	Rubber
5	Sheetrock
6	Cloth
7	Carpet
8	Paper
9	Upholstery
10	Puddle

Portal 2

Material ID	Material Name
R	Reflective