Darkness

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#1

I’ve complained about a lot of changes, but there’s one which I don’t so much dislike as I just don’t get, and that’s the lack of any real darkness in Black Mesa. One of the original Half-Life’s most innovative features at the time was the HEV flashlight, and the game made pretty good use of it, including areas of either complete or partial darkness, and many air ducts with no illumination of any kind. It was such an integral part of the game that it’s even time-limited and runs out if you use it too much.

Black Mesa has a flashlight, but I honestly kept forgetting I had it, because I simply never needed it. There are almost no places that are dark enough for a flashlight to be relevant, aside from a few dark corners that aren’t all that important. What baffles me the most, though, is why it was seen as necessary to put lights INSIDE the air ducts. I get making the game brighter overall, but why put lighting inside the only places where it logically should never exist? It’s an air duct with constant airflow. Those lights would be caked with dust in no time flat.

More than anything, though, it just feels like Black Mesa “fixed” the concept of darkness, and I do miss it. Half-Life combined a lot of elements, including survival horror to an extent, and losing those dark, claustrophobic moments - losing use of the flashlight - just seems baffling to me. Especially now, since the flashlight is unlimited, why wouldn’t you make more use of it?

#2

just stop com planining !, if you dont like it, dont play it
if you think its nog good enough just make your own remake of HL1

#3

Heaven forbid I point out an inconsistency and ask for discussion. If you don’t like people complaining about Black Mesa, why keep clicking on threads clearly questioning design change decisions?

My point stands: If the game has a flashlight, wouldn’t it make sense to design more sequences that make use of it? Or at least, not remove the sequences that did make use of it by adding lights in places they don’t seem to belong?

Incidentally, thins brings me to a question that may actually be answered by Half-Life 2 - is it me, or does Gordon’s flashlight have VERY sharp falloff? It seems like I can’t form a light spot on a wall more than about 10 feet ahead of me as the flashligt just seems to diffuse into space beyond that. This did strike me as odd, but it strikes me much more so now that I’ve replayed through the original Half-Life and noticed the flashlight there can cast a light spot at almost any distance I’ve tried it at, and easily all the way down a 50-foot air duct.

Again, I don’t know if this was done specifically for Black Mesa or if it’s from Half-Life 2 like the Magnum is. But even Half-Life 2 had set-pieces centred around the flashlight.

#4

If you don’t have anything useful to contribute to a thread, please don’t contribute at all. The whole purpose of this forum is to discuss the game, get support and/or address possible issues.

Not sure if this is related, but there is a bug with the flashlight and certain nVidia drivers: https://forums.blackmesasource.com/showthread.php?t=13495

#5

Personally I used the flash light a great deal. Perhaps my brightness settings are darker than yours.

#6

That’s actually very likely. I tend to set my gamma higher than normal in games. I believe Source likes to default to 2.0 and I always have it at 2.2. I could have my numbers wrong, I don’t have access to my game rig right now.

Thing is, though, I have Half-Life (again, not Source: Half Life) set just as bright and it still presents me with areas of severe darkness. Admittedly, that’s mostly in the air ducts, and I think that’s the most perplexing part to me - why put lights inside the air ducts? I’m not even questioning the realism of it, just as a basic design decision. Air ducts were the game’s primary source of darkness. Without them, at best we have twilight here and there.

Not that it’s a big thing, mind you. I like seeing what I’m doing, after all. But having darkness here and there breaks up the game’s feel, and I used my flashlight quite a bit more in Half-Life because of it.

As to the flashlight bug - I don’t think that’s what I’m facing. My flashlight actually works rather better than in Half-Life, as it displays a much broader bright spot. The trouble is that it does this only over a relatively short distance. I can’t, for instance, shine my flashlight down a long hallway, because it just doesn’t cast any light. I don’t recall either the Half-Life 2 flashlight or the L4D2 flashlight doing this.

It’s possible it’s something in my graphical settings, but because of the general lack of any real darkness, most of the time I ended up just switching it off and not worrying about range.

And not only that, but the flashlight actually tends to make fences and other transparent textures impossible to see through. I completely forgot about that. I’ll try to get a screenshot when I get home, but it’s weird. When I shine a flashlight on a fence, it forms a “bright spot” that’s solid white and so obscures what I’d otherwise see through the fence. It seems like the lighting system is treating transparent textures like a solid surface and casting glare/shine from light sources accordingly.

Shining your flashlight at fences was a problem in L4D2, but for a different reason. Flashlights there also had falloff, so you’d end up making the face very bright, which causes your HDR to darken the rest of the screen so the dark zombies against a dark background on the other side are harder to tell apart. Plus, a bright fence can be blinding to my very human eyes, let alone game systems.

#7

People complained about “on a rail” leak being too dark, now it’s too bright … thought it’s supposed to be at night, but now it looks like almost daytime with stars above

#8

Actually, I feel a bit different about the darkness: I always think about the massive amounts of modelling and art work that went into this project, but lots of the time when I’m in front of my screen, all I see is a black screen with a small illuminated circle in the middle.

I’m not really that keen on ultra-realism. I’d rather see what’s going on and experience Black Mesa by… well, by seeing it, not by just stumbling around in the dark. To me, the scariness and horror comes from the entire atmosphere, the desolation, the damage, and the aliens. It doesn’t need darkness-“boo” startle scares everywhere to be effective.

This mod is easily one of the most impressive and amazing community projects ever – and I’d be very happy to see as much of it as possible :slight_smile:

#9

I’ve gotten a generally good vibe from the flashlight myself. I use it a fair amount, and I find it to be effective when needed. Brightness levels of the game for me make it so that I do need to use it occasionally (haven’t adjusted gamma at all), not from being completely unable to see but simply to help bring some things into focus. I also don’t personally have any issues with the air ducts, though I can see how lighting them might be unrealistic. Lastly, I like that the flashlight doesn’t run out - I’ve got enough to worry about already. :wink:

None of this is a contention that your (Malidictus) issues are illegitimate, just a different field report.

I have experienced the same issue with fences though.

#10

Because a title like “Darkness” is too ambiguous and one would not know what the thread is about just by looking at the title.

#11

then read the first post and make your conclusions from that? it’s so simple!

#12

For me, the game is pretty dark most of the way through (at least much darker than HL2). I pretty much have to keep the flashlight on constantly so I can see clearly.

#13

I don’t see well in darkness so the flashlight is integral in this game for me, I had it switched on more often than not to the point I’m at currently (just after the cliffside section). This is after adjusting the gamma, too.

I can definitely appreciate a flashlight’s presence in a game. If anyone here has played Serious Sam 3, it is actually the level designer that decides for me when I can and can’t see in dark areas in that game.

#14

I dunno. I play with default gamma and I usually have my flashlight nearly permanently switched on, and forget to turn it off when I don’t actually need it.

It’s helpful sometimes when you need a clearer picture of things, but not so much because there’s anything literally pitch-black.

They did a good job with the lightmaps and shadowing though.

#15

I think BM nailed the lighting, honestly. I wouldn’t change it one bit. If you need a reason for lighting air ducts, maybe Black Mesa was kind to the people it hires to clean them? I think pitch black air ducts are not fun, especially if you’re using a Geforce 7xxx series and the flashlight doesn’t do fuck all.

Also I think there was a more technical reason why the flashlight never runs out, it was because the aux power of the suit had to be set to infinite otherwise using sprint would also drain flashlight power like in HL2.

#16

Wasn’t this fixed in Episode 2? I’d imagine it couldn’t be all that hard to separate them, I mean they did it for the oxygen.

On topic I like how dark the game is. I don’t know if it was just me but I turned the flashlight on almost once per map at least. I’m kind of disappointed in was infinite, though, but I guess limiting it wouldn’t have really changed much, other than not forgetting it’s on for half the game.

#17

I turned it off with my skill.cfg… you never loose the ability to sprint even after the Flashlight is drained to nothing.

#18

I thought it was purely a gameplay decision, since waiting for sprint or the flashlight to recharge is pointless in terms of gameplay. Unlimited Sprint as the balance between HL1 and HL2 movement, and Unlimited Flashlight because having the flashlight drain and sitting around for several seconds doing nothing would be pointless and a waste of time since there never are any areas like Lowlife in Ep1.

It’s not like sprint couldn’t be added independently by modifying the existing cvars. :expressionless:

#19

Yeah I forgot about the new flashlight in EP2, I also remember a dev saying that the flashlight took very long to run out anyway so it made sense to make it unlimited. I just leave the flashlight on and it doesn’t bother me, unless I’m trying to read something on a white background. And I have infinite sprint on.

#20

Also, in terms of story, it could be explained by the fact that the HL2 HEV suit is basically a defunct suit that has been repaired. I guess they wouldn’t have access to technology for unlimited energy supply twenty years after the resonance cascade.

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.