Caulking (computer games)

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Caulking is a process used in computer-game level creation/editing (or mapping) for the generation of a level, or map, that is less demanding for the computer's graphics card to render in-game than the map would be otherwise. A surface is marked with caulk is not rendered during gameplay for efficiency reasons, and is generally shown as bright pink within the map editor. The term is most commonly used when editing maps with Radiant and Hammer variants.

Inevitably, certain sides of some objects (e.g., walls) in a game scene will never be visible to the player during normal play. The person making the map can apply the caulk texture, instead of a normal texture, to these surfaces when building the map. The caulk texture then instructs the game's graphics engine not to draw that surface in-game, reducing the time taken to render the scene and ultimately making the map smoother to play. In the case that a surface which was not meant to be visible inadvertently becomes visible, possibly due to a mapping error, some game engines support drawing caulked surfaces using flat shading.

The conscientious mapper will caulk every side of every building block (or brush) in a map that will never be seen by the player. This is easily done by caulking all sides of a new brush by default, and then by only applying normal textures to those sides that will be seen in the game.