Regarding the flags applied to material ID names, I have a question that'll help me with my maps...

I know that the ^ flag makes it climbable; always applied to a ladder. ! makes it render only, no collision. $ enables a fog plane. - makes it breakable, @ makes it collision only, & is AI deafening, and % is two-sided.


So, I'm assuming that when you apply a % material to a SINGLE polygon, regardless of what direction is flipped, it renders both sides; just as a box would if it were 1 unit thick, except that this time, it's completely flat... Am I right?

Meaning if I made a vertical plane, converted it to Mesh, sized it properly, and material'd it with "ladder%^", would it render as a flat ladder?

Or, am I wrong, and you simply apply that material to the two seperate sides of the ladder, and that enables you to see through all but the ladder itself? I'm not really sure how it works.


Also, if I were to create a two-sided wall in a base that had a ! material flag, would that mean I could walk straight through it, into the other room? It's just an idea I had to create a really complex secret room.


I just need explanations on how each flag is applied, how to use them, and such... I understand most of it, but I'm just not really sure on some of these things.

In the Halo PC Editing Referance it says that your supposed to make all ladders with the %^ sign at the end. yes, if you put a polygone over a door and put a ! sign at the end it would make a secret door.

Okay, good. I assume with breakable glass, I can just make a box within the window (slightly smaller than the window to avoid overlapping faces) with the - flag, and a glass shader. Am I right?

Also, like water being /just/ a plane, I assume any face that has a ! material, doesn't need to be an enclosed (box) face, but can be just a standalone face. Correct me if I'm wrong...

And, again, I understand that all ladders /should/ have the ^% tag, but not all of them do. I'm asking if the % tag means it can be a standalone face, and will render properly [from both sides, and as a climbable surface], or if I have to make it a thin (1 unit) box with that tag instead.


If worse comes to worse, I'll request that if anyone has free time, once I finish working on my model [as in, I run out of ideas on what changes I could make to it], I could send the .max (or .3ds if you're using a version other than 9) and you could fix any obvious modeling errors -- not /really/ obvious; I'm usually good at getting overlapping faces, open edges, and errors like that fixed on my own -- that could prevent it from rendering. I'm not going to texture it until after everything in the model itself is finished.

When I have technical questions like this, I just open the tutorial .max file and look there. If you ladder has the % tag, it can have opend edges and doesn't seal things, so don't use it to help your map conform to the sealed world rule becuase it's just like the ! tag only it's collidable.