Screen Effects Browser

The Screen Effects Browser lists every named screen effect the game ships: 1,101 timecycle modifiers and 252 animpostfx effects. Each one has a before and after preview you can drag, the exact values it sets, and ready Lua.

The two tabs

Timecycle modifiers are named sets of overrides on the lighting and the screen: light and ambient colour, fog, exposure, the tone curve, colour correction, vignette, grain, blur and so on. You switch one on and it stays on until you clear it. Most interiors, drunk and drugged states and “this area feels different” effects on a server are a timecycle modifier.

animpostfx effects are stacks of those modifiers with timing on top. Each layer has a start delay, a fade in, a hold and a fade out, and the stack can loop. The character switch flash, the death fade and the race boost streaks are animpostfx.

Finding one

• The search box matches the name, and for timecycle modifiers also the file it comes from. For animpostfx it also matches the modifiers the effect plays, so searching nightvision finds the effects that use it.
• The dropdown filters by source file for timecycle modifiers, or by a rough family (character switch, drugs, racing, damage, vision modes) for animpostfx.
• The three buttons on the right switch the viewpoint every card is rendered from: a city street, a shop interior and a view over the city. Interior lighting values show up best on the interior view, fog and far clip on the landscape one.

Reading a card

Each card is the same view drawn twice: the left half with the game’s clear noon lighting, the right half with the effect’s values on top. Drag the divider, or focus it and use the arrow keys. The badge in the corner says how many parameters the modifier sets, or how many layers the effect stacks.

The detail view

Click a name to open it. You get:

• the bigger comparison and the viewpoint switcher
• a strength slider, which blends the effect back towards the plain frame the same way SetTimecycleModifierStrength blends a modifier towards the timecycle that is running
• the full parameter table, searchable and filterable by group, with both floats the game file stores, the clear noon value for comparison, and a mark on every parameter the preview draws
• for an animpostfx effect, the layer table with every duration and the layer blend settings
• cross links: which animpostfx effects play a modifier, and which modifiers an effect plays
• copy buttons for the name and for ready Lua
• Open it live in the 3D map, which loads the Interactive Map in 3D with the effect applied to the world and the same strength slider

Using a timecycle modifier

SetTimecycleModifier("CAMERA_BW")
SetTimecycleModifierStrength(0.6)   -- 0.0 to 1.0

-- later
ClearTimecycleModifier()

• Only one modifier is active at a time. Setting a second one replaces the first.
• SetExtraTimecycleModifier and ClearExtraTimecycleModifier give you a second slot that stacks on top.
• Modifiers are client side and per player.

Playing an animpostfx effect

AnimpostfxPlay("SwitchHUDIn", 0, true)  -- 0 = the effect's own timings, true = loop

AnimpostfxStop("SwitchHUDIn")
AnimpostfxStopAll()

if AnimpostfxIsRunning("SwitchHUDIn") then
    -- ...
end

What the previews can and cannot show

The pictures are ours, rendered from the effect’s own values. They show light and ambient colour and intensity, fog colour, density, start and far clip, exposure, the filmic tone curve, colour correction and colour shift, saturation, the screen gradient, vignette, grain, scan lines, chromatic aberration, lens distortion, bloom, blur, depth of field and the night vision curve.

They do not show shadows, ambient occlusion, reflections, water, streaming distances, heat haze, god rays, light directions, lens flares or the weather and particle switches. Those parameters are still in the table, just not in the picture.

Treat a preview as a hint about the direction an effect pulls the image in. The parameter tables, the layer timings and the names are exact.

Names shown as a hash

A few animpostfx effects are listed with a hash_xxxxxxxx name. The game only stores the hash for those and the readable string is not in the files we can read, so there is nothing to type. They are shown so the list is complete.