grass from de_aztec Created 9 years ago2015-01-02 20:58:40 UTC by Kaner

Hello people,

I've just noticed about the grass in the river of the "de_aztec" that they gradually disappear if you get away from them and appear gradually if you approach to them again.

What kind of entity are they? and which model? I tried to decompile with winbspc to see it but no success, cause I found nothing in the river in the *.map file.

Might be related to hint brushes.

I'm not sure it is related to hints brushes, look:

http://s13.postimg.org/viea58f13/de_aztec0000.jpg

http://s13.postimg.org/iog8bw1lj/de_aztec0001.jpg

In that case, no idea really. Better let someone more knowledged answer that.

Hologram maybe? (one of them has fade)

funny ive been wondering about this too recently, this is probably something generated for specific textures by some code in the dll blabla prolly

Iirc, the grass is embedded into that texture. I remember using it on a map a while ago and it popped everywhere, without adding any entities. I do not know how/why it's rendered only at a certain distance.

Could it be related to mipmaps? Perhaps after a certain size they're all just transparent. Although I don't think that would do much for performance.

I guess that would make the most sense. Probably something related to OP video drivers rather than a feature for Hammer Editor/Source.

Does anyone have the RMF/MAP of de_aztec to see it and ensure what's happening?

EDITED***

I googled it: http://forum.17buddies.net/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=1899

the f*** river is empty o_O

as i said its something new in cs game dll, theres no such effect by default in hl, but source for cs is not released

Looking at the map with a viewer there are lot of env_sprites with ikgrass sprite. So its probably a sprite with hologram render (or whats the disappearing one called).

I made a similar thing in one of my unreleased maps with a func_rotating that disappears after a certain distance using hologram + distort.

So, after have analyzed closely the maps de_airstrip and de_aztec I can ensure, as some of you said before, the engine renders automatically random models of grass on the textures pi_ground, pi_groundt and pi_groundw, originally located in de_piranesi.wad.

Furthermore, if you want to get the automatic grass rendering on your own texture, just set the name of the texture to pi_ground, pi_groundt or pi_groundw.

What an oddly specific hack.

There has to be more controllable use of this feature. What about other "models"?

Or textures.