You are Kovac, a senior agent in the covert Special Black Operations unit. You're deployed to Black Mesa to halt the next phase of the science team's plan after HECU forces are unsuccessful in stopping Freeman from launching the Omega Satellite delivery rocket... ...but you fail, the procedure ends up creating massive portal storms in the sky sending you and your team through a void to oblivion and back. You wake up almost twenty four hours later; the military has withdrawn, and everyone and everything besides your fellow Black Operators are now a target. To make matters worse, another hostile and more powerful alien faction has appeared in the chaos, further complicating the situation. The incident can no longer be contained, you must link up with other Black Ops units and prepare to wipe the facility from the map once and for all...
This is a demonstration of the work in progress thermal vision mode which has recently been finished enough for use in gameplay. The red colour is designed to reflect the goggles the Black Ops wear, since the HECU nightvision is green, it makes sense that the operatives would use thermal imaging instead, which renders in a variety of colours that can include red.
It works by rendering anything that has a heat source in white, so in this case; any living creatures, Kovac plus the weapons he carries, and hot steam pipes. Any enemy models automatically show up with a heat signature, and fade to black when dead, special entity properties can be applied to any brush or prop model with a simple flag check. This allows for some unique puzzle elements to be implemented, such as finding a valve in pitch black to shut off a potentially fatal steam jet.
The general concept for the look of the mode is inspired by the Predator heat vision in the first AVP games by Rebellion and Monolith. There is a limitation to what can be done in the code without the engine source, so hot objects only appear as one colour. From internal feedback we've had already, the visual rendering isn't perhaps very easy on the eyes, so we'll be looking to improve that, so the mechanics remain the same, but with much improved readability. The sound effects are also likely to change in the final version as well, everything is subject to change.
Programming and graphics by James.
Sick
Pretty cool
Coool.
Nice!
Beautiful
Ya I agree the color spectrum requires some additional work. It may be hurtful to the eyes after a short while and may potentially even turn you tired as some sort of hypnosis effect.
That being said it feels as this is even worse than the op4 goggles due to the fact that in this mode you even get to see lesser textures than with op4 night goggles aka that light bulb around the player.
That makes me as a fellow mapper sad of course if players later on won't see your detailed maps. Also not sure yet if bright rooms will or will not interfere and and thus the player noticing the differences. Would be silly if they run around with thermal vision even though they are long again moving in broad day light.
Another difficult subject is regarding all sorts of pipes and other map related brushes that somehow simulate something that's heated up. How will you display all that ? Though in the test vid the pipes are already shown up heated. So I assume it's a new entity class?
Either way I do love the idea and concept of it and wish you best of luck that you can still improve upon it in some form or another.
I would expect people would turn off the vision mode when in fully lit areas!
Yeah so anything that emits heat is a custom entity which shows up white like that, so if I apply said entity to the pipes, or a kettle, or a furnace etc it will show up clearly in the vision mode...
Hopefully by the next update we'll have it in a more finished state that appears in actual gameplay!
some sfx on the hot pipes would be more immersive
That sounds very good. As stated before best of luck to you guys.. I can hardly wait to see it in the next update. :)
Ya wasn't sure whether people would see whether they are in dark areas or lid areas while being active with thermals.
Virtual boy enabled!
If the red ends up being too much, I figure the grey you'd see in real life thermal imaging might look cool, especially with the red hud and the red crosshair.
this looks really cool, I like that some pieces of geometry are also lit up to make it easier to find the way around
This looks great, especially considering the lack of proper shader support & limited GoldSRC engine access you guys have!
I have a few suggestions on how you could make the thermal vision a little easier on the eyes:
- Change the warm objects hue from a bright red to a more orange-yellow tint colour. This palette is called Red Hot by FLIR, if you want to search for it. I would post a thermal palette comparison site, but apparently Moddb doesn't like web or photo links being posted in messages for some reason :/
- Change the red filter to a greenish grey or a blue colour, and making warm objects either a bright orange or red shade. These two palettes are called Lava and Arctic, respectively by FLIR.
The "scrolling down scan line" effect could be toned down a bit, it looks like it could interfere seeing your crosshairs, and also be a bit fatiguing to look at for a while.
Keep up the amazing work!
Will there be a hazardous course?
You mean Boot Camp for assassins?
Yes!
This comment is currently awaiting admin approval, join now to view.
This comment is currently awaiting admin approval, join now to view.