This mini-modification of Half-life 2 allows you to play Half-Life 2 singleplayer with an HDR Bloom effect. Simply, it makes the game more pretty.
Studio Radi-8 HL2 HDR-Bloom
Version 1.0
http://www.radi-8.com
http://www.neotokyohq.com
Author:
Justin Harvey aka 'Grey' of Studio Radi-8 - grey@neotokyohq.com
License:
All original content in this modification of Half-life 2 Copyright (C) 2005 Studio Radi-8.
This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.
Permission is granted to anyone to use this software, and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:
1. This notice may not be removed or altered from any distribution.
2. The software must not be distributed outside this original installer.
FAQ:
1) What is this?
This mini-modification of Half-life 2 allows you to play Half-Life 2 singleplayer with an HDR Bloom effect. Simply, it makes the game more pretty.
2) What are the requirements?
This mini-modification requires a video card that can use Vertex & Pixel Shader 2.0.
3) How do I install?
After you've unzipped and read this readme, simply run the installer. It should choose your Steam SourceMods directory as the default installation directory. That is exactly where it should be installed. After installation is completed, restart Steam and it should be listed in the 3rd Party games section. Not too hard eh?
4) Is this really HDR?
That's a good question. With out getting too technical, the effect itself is processed in a High Dynamic Range before it is Tone-Mapped to the low dynamic range Half-Life 2 and your video card are using. So yes and no ;D.
5) Can I tweak the effect?
Yes! Below are the console commands you can use to tweak the effect:
mat_R8Bloom (Default: 1) : 0=Turns the effect off, 1=The default setting, 2=Blurs the Bloom effect a bit more.
mat_R8BloomLvl (Default: 0.55) : This controls the brightness of the bloom.
mat_R8BloomGamma (Default: 0.75) : This controls the overall gamma of the scene while the effect is enabled, lower is brighter, higher is darker.
6) Any thing else I should know about?
Well there is one more bonus effect included. mat_R8Illustration which defaults to 0=off. 1 turns on a shader that mimics a cool Photoshop plug-in.
7) Would you like to thank any one?
Of course! Valve for providing an awesome game and sdk. Masaki Kawase for his initial work on these effects and others, the guy rocks.
8) Who is Studio Radi-8?
Studio Radi-8 is the team behind Neotokyo --> http://www.neotokyohq.com. Watch this modification - it's going to blow you away.
