Control gamespeed with mousewheel. Now with videos!
Hey guys, I spent way too long last night tinkering around with console commands getting this figured out, but I'm really happy with the results.
Behold, the Timethrottle! Basically it's a greatly enhanced (IMO) version of the slo-mo mod. Rather than a simple toggle between normal speed and extreme slow-motion, I set up the throttle so that you can step through various levels of slo-mo and even halt gametime entirely, using just the scroll wheel on your mouse. The wheel steps up/down through these states:
- normal time
- 60% speed
- 40%
- 20%
- 10%
- time stopped
When time is stopped you can mouselook around, but you cannot shoot portal beams until time is running again at some speed.
Additionally I've made a macro that binds your third mouse button (on my mouse I click the wheel itself) to toggle between first-person and third-person views, which really helps when you're coming out of a portal at an odd angle and you need to get your bearings. This toggle works anytime (not affected by slo-mo or freeze).
I uploaded it in the Tools section, because it's actually really useful for debugging your puzzles or taking screenshots of your maps. I hope you guys will agree. Link here:
http://forums.thinking.withportals.com/dload.php?action=file&file_id=64
To really make it user-friendly, though, I think it needs a bit more feedback. I don't want to display anything on screen though because it would ruin it as a screenshot-taking helper tool, so I'm thinking it needs sounds.
I was thinking something subtle, like soft beeps that got deeper the slower time ran. Sound as part of the user interface rather than sound effects per se (which might get annoying after extended use).
Any sound gurus out there want to take a whack and making sounds to go with this?
Sounds really cool, in fact a whole mod based around this idea could be excellent. Can't wait to try it out when i get home from work. 
If you complete an official challenge with it does it say you cheated? It does with the other slow mo mod. you may want to check out how that one did the sound because it has it in there.
I was actually able to do Test Chamber 18 Advanced with it and it gave me credit for solving it. I am confused by this, because for the script to work "sv_cheats 1" has to be in it. It really should get flagged for cheating. I guess I should test it more...
I know how to put the sounds into the script, but I don't have any actual sound files to use. I have no experience manipulating audio. But if someone could give me a series of five or six beeps of different frequencies, it would be a snap to add them to the mod. Any takers?
I could try later tonight but someone probably has done it by then.
Anyway, this sounds really good. Gonna try it out now.
I tried to use it on the challenges, but it flags it for cheating. It does make for excellent practice in hitting those hard fling+portal. Anyhow...
Is there anyway that this could be put into a map and enabled so that the cheater flag doesn't get triggered for any challenges you might put on the map?
Would this work for HL2?
I just tested it in Episode 2, and it works. Except the third-person toggle looks like crap. Rather than the Gordon model you'd see in deathmatch, if you go third-person in the SP game you see a gray-shaded dummy. 
Of course, the mousewheel already serves a useful function in HL2, so you might want to change the key bindings to something else...
Maybe since the 1st/3rd person toggle looks like poop in HL2, I'll take that part out for the HL2 version of the script and make it so clicking mouse3 toggles the wheel function from weapon-select to time-throttle and back.
Still no one interested in providing some sound effects?
Yeah, there is no Gordon model since there is no reason to ever see it. The gray one is only used for collision detection.
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