Muzzle Flash Lighting

This tutorial will show you how to create a muzzleflash that dynamically appears and lights up the world around you, 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 that you've gotten them to 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.

Implementing Dlight-based Muzzleflashes

The coding begins! Only a few minor changes are needed here to make your muzzleflashes look better than ever.

First off, open up c_baseanimating.cpp and search for the function void C_BaseAnimating::ProcessMuzzleFlashEvent()

// 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;

As you may have noticed, Valve went a little crazy here and the result was a seemingly ugly muzzleflash. This tutorial is all about making things pretty, so we're going to change that. Replace the entries above with this:

			
dlight_t *dl = effects->CL_AllocDlight ( index );
dl->origin = vAttachment + Vector( 0, 0, 4 );
dl->color.r = 255;
dl->color.g = 255;
dl->color.b = 255;
dl->die = gpGlobals->curtime + 0.1f;
dl->radius = random->RandomFloat( 245.0f, 256.0f );

dlight_t *el= effects->CL_AllocElight( index );
el->origin = vAttachment;
el->color.r = 255;
el->color.g = 255;
el->color.b = 255;
el->radius = random->RandomFloat( 260.0f, 290.0f );
el->die = gpGlobals->curtime + 0.1f;

This two-dlight system works far better than most any other single dlight system and fixes Valves mistakes. Edit: Changed the code for the colors, by default it was set to a magenta-ish color. A good muzzle flash color is closer to white, you can try 252, 238, 128 for a realistic washed out yellow.