Unlocking Half-Life 2

[MrHoatzin]

Something that annoys me about the game is its complete disregard of my master gamma settings... my monitor is slowly dying and going to black so I have to crank up the gamma to see darker things which are prevelent in this game as well as others. Other games respect my gamma value, but Half-Life decided that it knows what is best for me... consequently, I have to have the flashlight on even in certain daylight scenes... and I tend to tap the shift button not to use up the battery, which at times opens up the "are you retarded" dialog (also known as "the option for people with only one finger"; try tapping the shift key five or so times yourselves)....

Bumclouds!

I remember that in the original Half-Life I cranked the gamma so high that I didn't need to use the flashlight at all. Alas, the game's revenge is painful.

[Wormsie]

Windows XP is really freaky. It tells me that "there's no need to defragment your drive" but when I start defragmenting anyway, it manages to defragment 1% in two hours.

[Erkki]

Kingz, do you have a NVIDIA card? Because I have an ATI Radeon and EVERY FUCKING GAME (except one or two) ignores my gamma setting. Including HL2.

Also most games set my desktop gamma to 1 after quitting. FlatOut is one of the few of late that almost don't mess with my gamma at all. The first time after turning the puter on it needs adjusting, but after that it seems to remember...

Luckily with ATI I can make keyboard shortcuts for in-game brightness/contrast/gamma manipulation.

[Chris]

and I tend to tap the shift button not to use up the battery, which at times opens up the "are you retarded" dialog (also known as "the option for people with only one finger"; try tapping the shift key five or so times yourselves)....

Next time it comes up, turn it off. Go to the options and de-select "use shortcut" or whatever.

[MrHoatzin]

Kingz, do you have a NVIDIA card? Because I have an ATI Radeon and EVERY FUCKING GAME (except one or two) ignores my gamma setting. Including HL2.

Also most games set my desktop gamma to 1 after quitting. FlatOut is one of the few of late that almost don't mess with my gamma at all. The first time after turning the puter on it needs adjusting, but after that it seems to remember...

Luckily with ATI I can make keyboard shortcuts for in-game brightness/contrast/gamma manipulation.

I have a Radeon 9600 Pro. How do you hook up gamma +/- exactly? Most of the games I've played lately didn't mess with gamma, though.

[Erkki]

Color -> (select Full Screen 3D) -> Hotkeys

[MrHoatzin]

Color -> (select Full Screen 3D) -> Hotkeys

Whoa! Never noticed that button!

[Erkki]

Still strange that I have the same video card and almost every game sets the gamma to 1 when it starts...

Except maybe I need higher gamma values than yours. I have it set to 2.0 in the ATI CPanel and most games let you set it to 1.5 or something when they have internal gamma adjustment.

And many of the modern adventure games with prerendered backgrounds and 3D characters RESET it IN EVERY SCREEN. So enter new screen -> adjust gamma. That's only in the demos though, haven't played any full AGs lately.

[Erkki]

Heh... I thought Half-Life 2 was a bit too bright with my settings. Now I ran the deathmatch and the intended brightness seems to be even way higher (if I looked at the internal gamma adjusters sample text).

Especially the prison level. That was a lot darker in singleplayer with my default settings.