Ok... I have the exit signs in my map. The door and the arrow. Where I have them, I place them as overlays. But... there's isn't an overlay version of the exit door sign. So I use the one that is there. When I run my game, half of the door signs flicker. And sometimes the arrow does too, even though I use overlay version.

Is there a trick to getting the exit signs to not flicker? I've tried moving the overlay a little off the wall. The brush ID is correct. The fade is set to no fade. I've tried upping the render order on them. They're lit. I'm running out of things to try.

Suggestions?

i have found that if you don't have an overlay texture it will always flicker but you can texture a brush and build that brush into the wall (cut a little square hole out) and when you texture that brush and hammer merges everything it will look just like an overlay should

Wow... that works surprisingly well! Thank you!

I think this problem is mostly common on ATI GPUs. On my nVidia GPUs, I've never had problems with flickering overlays with textures that aren't supposed to be overlays.

If you want to use a texture as an overlay or decal, you could create a material (.vmt file) in the materials folder with the following text:

"LightmappedGeneric"
{
    "$basetexture" "THE TEXTURE YOU WANT TO BE DECAL"
    "$decal" 1
    "$decalscale" 0.25
}

I'm using a NVidia 8800 GTX, so...

I think I will convert the errant textures to overlays. I'm just hesitant because they're Valve's textures.

Well, the material will be made by you, so I don't see any legal problems with it. You're just telling the game how to render a specific texture.

I missed a line in the vmt file in my last post. I think the texture can glow in the dark:

"LightmappedGeneric"
{
    "$basetexture" "THE TEXTURE YOU WANT TO BE A DECAL"
    "$decal" "1"
    "$decalscale" "0.25"
    "$selfillum" "1"
}

Yeah there is nothing illegal about creating a new VMT - you can even name it something new so that you don't override an existing texture and people who play your map won't have any issues at all.