Particle Effect Improvement Pack

General Development Black Mesa
#1

E: I have released a preliminary collection containing many updates to most weapons, along with other across-the-mod effects! See this post for video, details, and a download link

Black Mesa is fantastic. It’s more detailed, intricate, well-paced, coherent, and full-featured than most full games, let alone mods.

I don’t think that some of its particle effects are quite at the same standard as the rest of the project, though; so, I’m doing what I can to correct that.

Because this is my first time using Source’s particle editor, I’m starting small, focusing on the most frequently seen effects (like the generic dust impact effect, which was in dire need of a facelift). I’ve already made a first pass on the MP5, Shotgun, Tau Cannon, and the aforementioned impact effect, and right now I’m poking at the gib-system effects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIeVIKh7eI4

I’m currently using only existing SDK Base/BMS sprites, and .pcf files (as far as I can tell) don’t contain any actual image data, so the total filesize increase is negligible; the above improvements combined don’t constitute even 100KB of new data.

I’ll update this thread with more WIP videos each time there are enough new things to justify the bandwidth.

#2

I actually like these. They’re definitely nice, but they’re in the same vein of the defaults.

Edit: WAIT. IT’S YOU. Welcome, man! I had no idea you were into this! This is going to be interesting. Ironically (or maybe the exact opposite) I was just recording some zombie replacement sounds.

Dude, I can’t wait to see how you expand upon this. You gonna go after the tau/ gluon beams too?

#3

MrIfafudafi how is it going! I am a huge ass Halo fan, and followed your team’s development with SPV3 since the beginning. It is awesome to see you here. Half Life and Halo are my favorite games of all time.

#4

Particles look good man, looking forward to seeing what you do with them.

#5

As usual AWESOME WORK, especially for someone inexperienced with the Source Particle Editor! These are some really nice effects that are coming along, and they are bound to improve, like your work for CMT.

#6

Looks great. I can’t wait to make Half-Life 1 look even better! :jizz:

#7

I dig it. I particularly like (see what I did there?) the extended dust cloud in the “Generic Impact” particles.

Nice job. I’m looking forward to seeing more!

#8

have you considered, dare I say, MORE sparks on dat tau impact?

…like the ludicrous Halo: Reach Splazer amount of sparks?

#9

Little bit too much dust cloud for the generic impacts for my taste, but otherwise good work.

#10

I have, but the tau cannon’s primary fire-mode has too high a rate-of-fire to justify that many particles, both for optimization purposes and visual clarity. The charged beam seems to use the same impact effect as the un-charged one, and what projectiles cause what impacts appears to be hardcoded – I don’t think I’d be able to scale particle size/count with level of charge anyway.

The biggest improvement (and the one I was trying to highlight) is changing it from a really slow linear-expand to a quick burst which then fades into the slow expand, providing a better sense of force and impact, but yeah it is a little thick in brigher environments; I’m still figuring out how all these fancy .vmt shader options work, so expect that to look nicer.

#11

Just my taste. Don’t take it for more than that. Others seem to like it better.

Just wanted to make sure you didn’t think I was being critical of it in any. The last two words of my first post are probably the only ones worth reading. :wink:

#12

Looks good!

I thought the fire and smoke from the burning tanks and apcs could use some work when I played through it.
Also the smoke from the disabled turrets.

Not sure if you’re going to go into this area but the torso gib could use some more physics bones too.

#13

More things

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=739OQYSM2MI

-The stuff for the Glock is essentially just an extension of the vanilla effect – the hopelessly dull muzzle flare is brightened and the smoke is now more than an afterthought. It still needs to be small and measured enough to communicate the gun’s low power, though, so I don’t want the huge fuck-off flares like those in the Magnum and Shotgun.

-Magnum was just a mess of misaligned random flares, so I’ve basically rebuilt it. It’s now comprised of a single large, bright initial flare (which could probably be a little more visible looking at it now), a fiery flash sprite, several sparks (half dissipate, half last for a bit longer and are gravity-affected), and then a short lingering smoke trail to accompany the initial large burst. I can get away with the longer trail here thanks to the low rate of fire.

-Hivehand firing is mostly just adding some speckier goop-ier sprites and thicker, denser (i.e. more humid) smoke and coloring everything to match the projectile trails, but the projectile impact is a big change, as the vanilla effect was pretty shoddily thrown together.

-Highlight of the gib effects is the bleeding effect, which is now comprised of several more sprite types and tapers off over time despite mantaining a particle count very close to vanilla. The actual big gib-explosion also got some additions – mainly some grainy smoke-mist – but it’s still overall a bit haphazard.

Next on the list is to see what I can do about the Gluon gun, then I’ll try digging at some level-specific effects. Once I’ve poked at a few of those I’ll probably take a second pass at the stuff I’ve already done.

#14

Coming out nice so far.

#15

Community for the community, I like it so far :slight_smile:

#16

Could you also work on improving performance of some particle FX like right after the resonance cascade if you look into the AMS center the cloud of smoke drops my FPS by half, same with the teleporter at the very end.

#17

Awesome work man, loved your stuff for SPv3. Though I have to say I think the hivehand shooting effect looks a little odd, I actually kinda like the default one for that better. Everything else is really cool though.

Will you be doing the base grenade/satchel/rocket explosions? I feel those are the weakest effects, and I would love to see some of that slightly lingering fireball-type explosions that HL1 had (except obviously here they wouldn’t look like shit)

#18

I just really loved the gib effects.

#19

Those blood spurts hah

#20

I’ve already managed to cut thee particle count for the destroyed test chamber by ~75-80% with very little perceptible visual difference. I’ll definitely be trying to do likewise for other major problem areas (like cryo chambers).

Those were definitely a top priority, but I can’t find any source .pcf for the standard explosion, and judging by what I’ve been able to glean from the developer wiki, I think that it’s either hardcoded or interpreted through a pre-2007 particle system. If anybody knows otherwise feel free to tell me, of course

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.