This article will explore the origin of the popular flickering light effect, seen across many of their titles including “Quake”, “Ha

The Secret Behind Valve’s Flickering Lights

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2024-11-16 21:00:04

This article will explore the origin of the popular flickering light effect, seen across many of their titles including “Quake”, “Half-Life”, “Half-Life: Alyx” and “Portal”. A Unity package to use this very effect can be download at the end of the article.

Not long ago the Internet has gone crazy upon discovering that Valve has been using exactly the same flickering effect for over 25 years. The discussion quickly trended on Reddit, bringing an old piece of code back from 1996.

1/2 A Reddit user found out Valve reused the code for flickering lights in Alyx 22 years after the release of the original Half-Life:https://t.co/2rrYt2guEO#valve #halflife #HalfLifeAlyx #gamedev #gamedevelopment #lighting pic.twitter.com/2fJPPRjpb8

While the code was indeed used in many Valve games, it actually predates the company. The flickering light effect was likely written by none other than John Carmack for “Quake” in 1996. That was part of a library of flickering presets compiled by John Romero in 1993 while working on “DoomED”:

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