by mh » Wed Sep 29, 2010 2:17 pm
There may have been a feeling at the time that 3D geometry was going to be sufficient for everything, or maybe it just got lost in the general rush-job that was getting Quake finished (however Quake II didn't have it either, which leads me to suspect the former), but either way, yes, it's something that Quake engines should have had a long long time ago.
RMQ is also going to be using it, by the way () and we've chosen a texture name beginning with '{' as the standard. I've written a full general implementation, including the ability to have such surfaces on translucent brush models and fullbright colour support, but I'm not certain how much those last features are going to be used.