Radiant/Glossary

A

Alpha Shadows A technique for lighting in a map that results in controlled shadows in the finished map. Typically, it is used to project shadows through textures such as grates or glass that are partially or mostly transparent, simulating realistic shadowing on the recieving surface.

B

Brush The basic building block of Radiant. See brush.

C

Caulk A common material designed to 'caulk' or seal a map. In-game, it is a transparent solid texture. It is best applied to all surfaces which a player will be unable to see while in-game.

Clipper The Clipper Tool is used to clip (IE, cut away) parts of a brush in order to alter it's shape. This is generally used to turn a standard 6 sided brush into a brush with fewer or more sides, depending on what is required for it's placement. It has two versions:

• two-point clip cuts along a single plane
• three-point clip can create a cut along all three dimensions, depending on point placement.

D

Detail brush A detail brush is a type of brush that does not block the -VIS stage of the compiler. In short, any brush that does not provide structure/seal to a room, and merely is there to detail the room, should be made a detail brush [ctrl + M]. See also brush.

E

Entity An object used to interact with the game, see entity.

G

Grid A grid is a framework with vertical and horizontal lines in unison used to structure content. The grid, in Radiant, is to the left, where you build your world.

L

Light A light is an entity that creates light and adds color to surfaces of brushes around it. Proper lighting can make any map look appealing. Darkplaces engine have static map-placed light entities and dynamic realtime lights edited ingame (some of them get exported to static lights on map compile).

M

Model A model is a premade piece of geometry which you can put into your map.

N

Npc Npc is an abbreviation of non-player character (sometimes "non-playable character" or "non-player class"). It's a character in a computer game whose actions are not controlled by a human player.

O

Origin The center point of the map, i.e. 0,0,0. Also center of any object and common material used to define origin of bmodel.

P

Patch Mesh

A sub-type of brush used to simulate curves in the Quake 3 engine. It is generated by a matrix of vertexes which can be moved independently of each other to form the curved shape. GtkRadiant has three standard types (Bevel, Endcap, and Cylinder) that will generate most needed curves, as well as the ability to create 'simple patch meshes' that allow for a free-form shaping. Patch Meshes are only visible from one side, and cannot be used reliably for fog, water, or any other spatial type of shader effect.

Prefab

A prefab are a group of brushes which can be imported to your map. The difference between a prefab and a model are that prefabs sill consist of individual brushes whereas models are made out of already compiled polygons.

Q

Q3Map

Q3Map2 The original tool created by Id to compile maps for the 'id tech 3' engine.

Q3Map2

Q3Map2 Vastly improved Q3Map by ydnar.

S

Script

A script is a set of written instructions used by the Quake 3 Engine to produce certain specific effects. There are two primary types - Shaders and Icarus Scripts. Typically, usage of the word script in forums or other media is a reference to the later, while the former is commonly referred to as a shader. Icarus Scripts are used to create effects in-game that can do anything from move a brush or set of brushes from point A to point B all the way to full Cinematics in SP games.

Shader

A script which defines the properties of the surface it is applied to. In fact, all textures which don't have a shader associated to them automatically get a default shader. Shaders are used to make lights glow, make floors be reflective, or make things non-solid or even water. Actually any special property a surface has is set by its shader. There are also many default shaders that come with the game such as Template:GtkRGloss. In GtkRadiant all shaders have a white border around them when browsed in the textures browser.

T

Texture

An image or graphic which can be applied to a surface. See also Template:GtkRGloss.

V

Vertex

The points between which the faces of the brush are drawn, usually the corners of a brush.

Void

The gray area outside of the map itself, where nothing is. If there's a way to get to this area from any entity in the map, the map is leaked.

W

Worldspawn

The entity that contains all the regular brushes in your map, so every brush you create will be added to the worldspawn entity.

Z

Z-Fighting

A common mapping error relating to texture placement and brush alignment. It is cause when the faces of two brushes either completely or partially occupy the same plane, and are textured with either two different textures or the same texture with different settings. Visually in game, it is characterized by that plane showing both textures at the same time on that face, resulting is what looks like the textures 'fighting' to be shown.