They say that all great endeavors are built on the backs of giants, and in no industry is this more true than the games industry. Code written decades ago for games that would now be considered antiques can still find its way into modern titles.
For proof, we turn to Reddit user CrazyGiaky, who recently posted a gif that shows the same exact flickering light used in both the original Half-Life and Half-Life: Alyx. For context, Half-Life was originally released in 1998 for Windows 95, while Half-Life: Alyx was just released last year for SteamVR.
Infact, Valve has been using the same lighting presets since the stone age. Reddit user lazermaniac responded with the actual code itself and explained how the flickering light works.
“From what I can see, the effect is handled by assigning a string of letters that indicates the sequence of brightness changes, with a being fully dark and z being fully bright,” they said. “The fluorescent flicker effect is defined by the string ‘mmamammmmammamamaaamammma’, m being the default brightness setting without any changes. It kinda blows my mind to think that single string of letters defined lighting effects in my favorite games for almost 25 years now.
That flickering light even goes back further than Half-Life. Because Half-Life was built on a heavily modified version of the Quake engine, that flickering light code was the same one written by John Cormack for the original Quake. You can see this in another gif that syncs up the flickering lights for Quake, Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and Portal.
Five games separated by a quarter-century, but all sharing at least a tiny part of the same DNA.
The Quake engine was licensed to a lot of different developers, so keep an eye out during today’s E3 presentations to see if you can spot another game that features the same flickering light combination.
