11 KiB
"Materials" in GoldSrc
In the GoldSrc games "Material" definitions handle what footsteps and what impact sounds 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 sound like wood.
Note: While Nuclide supports this for legacy BSP files, please define the surface properties inside your material using the surfaceprop command.
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 the type 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[...]
.
When you then walk around your level, the footstep will be aware of you being on a texture marked with the concrete attribute and play a different step sound. In theory.
There's many other types available in games such as Half-Life, a few of them conflict two so porting levels can sometimes be a bit more work than it first appears to be at first glance.
Later Enhancements
Community additions
In stock GoldSrc games, 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
- worldspawn entity key named 'materials_file' with the value
PATH_TO/FILE.txt
- 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.
Nuclide additions
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 material property 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. You'll save a bit of memory that way too.
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
Different games/mods can ship with different material properties. To make your life easier, you can edit scripts/surfaceproperties.txt and define which Material ID character maps to which surfaceproperty entry. This way you can add new materials to existing legacy maps without writing a line of code.
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 Games/Mods
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 Engine Games/Mods
While Source has materials describing a surface with its own $surfaceprop command, the GoldSrc way of describing materials with a 1-character symbol is still used to define which impact effect to use.
The Material ID is used via the gamematerial
command inside scripts/surfaceproperties.txt entries. In Nuclide that's used for compatibility with the GoldSrc system instead.
Be aware that a Source engine game may actually have more surface materials than this, these are solely the IDs associated with impact effects.
In Nuclide,
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 |