Muzzle Flash Lighting
This tutorial will show you how to create a muzzleflash that dynamically appears and lights up the world around the player, like in Counter-Strike: Source. These types of lights are called "dlights".
This code was designed for any Orange Box based mod, singleplayer or multiplayer. It also works with NPCs, assuming they work properly.
Warning: Some dynamic props will not be lit when using dlights.
Warning: Too many dlights may result in severe performance losses on low-end systems. When coding for lighting, dlights should be used sparingly.
Note: The quality of dynamic lights depends on the lightmap scale.
Implementing Dlight-based Muzzleflashes
The coding begins! Only a few minor changes are needed here to make muzzleflashes look better than ever.
First off, open up c_baseanimating.cpp and search for the function void C_BaseAnimating::ProcessMuzzleFlashEvent()
Vector vAttachment;
QAngle dummyAngles;
GetAttachment( attachment, vAttachment, dummyAngles );
// Make an elight
dlight_t *el = effects->CL_AllocElight( LIGHT_INDEX_MUZZLEFLASH + index );
el->origin = vAttachment;
el->radius = random->RandomInt( 32, 64 );
el->decay = el->radius / 0.05f;
el->die = gpGlobals->curtime + 0.05f;
el->color.r = 255;
el->color.g = 192;
el->color.b = 64;
el->color.exponent = 5;
Valve went a little crazy here and the result was a seemingly ugly muzzleflash. This tutorial is all about making things pretty, so lets change that. Replace the entries above with this:
Vector vAttachment, vAng;
QAngle angles;
GetAttachment(1, vAttachment, angles); // set 1 instead of "attachment"
AngleVectors(angles, &vAng);
vAttachment += vAng * 2;
dlight_t *dl = effects->CL_AllocDlight(index);
dl->origin = vAttachment;
// Original color values
int originalR = 231;
int originalG = 219;
int originalB = 14;
// Randomize color components within the range of +/- 20
dl->color.r = originalR + random->RandomInt(-20, 20);
dl->color.g = originalG + random->RandomInt(-20, 20);
dl->color.b = originalB + random->RandomInt(0, 0);
// Randomize the die value by +/- 0.01
dl->die = gpGlobals->curtime + 0.05f + random->RandomFloat(-0.01f, 0.01f);
dl->radius = random->RandomFloat(245.0f, 256.0f);
// Randomize the decay value
dl->decay = random->RandomFloat(400.0f, 600.0f);
Tip: You can try 252, 238, 128 for a realistic washed out yellow color.
Idea: Write a console command to enable or disable dlights to shave off performance losses