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?

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?

Nice Tool.

Anyway, this sounds really good. Gonna try it out now.

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?

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?

Personally, I felt I didnt need so many levels of slow-speed as you have; just 1 level and 'freeze' is all I cared about. I thought 3rd person might be handy to get too. . .and I liked the sound in the other version. So I did this:
- bound 'v' key for slo-mo; 1st v gives me 25%, 2nd v gives me freeze; 3rd v toggles back to normal. All with sound.
- bound 'n' key to give 3rdperson toggle.

It'll do.

The funny thing is, I was noticing the other day how so many of the harder maps I cant do WITHOUT some form of slo-mo; the reaction-time is just too small, and I think people are starting to design WITH this kind of feature. Either it has simply become a must-have, or I am getting very slow in my old age. . .

That's when I tried the current setup, which I like a lot more. First it has a big jump from normal speed to 60%, very noticeable, so you know when you're using the slo-mo and when you're not. Then I basically stepped down in bigger increments. The difference between 20% and 10% is useful, at least to me, so I put that smaller step in at the low end.

I'm still working on this. I definitely want to get sounds in, and I'm going to include a CFG file that "uninstalls" the cheat and a text doc that explains how to change the key bindings if you don't like them on the mousewheel. That will be the "official" release.

I don't know if people are making maps with slo-mo in mind or if they're just making really hard maps. I've been using the time throttle to test out different solutions while taking my poor atrophied FPS skills out of the equation. Then, if I find something that works, I turn it off and try to do the map legit, with the benefit of having a solution that at least I know is possible, if I can just pull it off.

I posted some videos of the timethrottle in action to help stir up interest. (Sorry the video is so crappy... it lost a lot in youtube's transcoding.)
Multi-part fling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr4VohBI-eo
Messin' with turrets: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUPI7lkzlU0

Still to do before I will call it version 1.0:
1. Gotta add sounds. Can anyone help me out with this? I'm hopeless when it comes to audio, but I can explain exactly what I think it needs. Post here or PM me if you're interested.
2. I want to add a bit to the readme that explains how to change the key bindings to your liking, just in case not everyone is as thrilled as I am to be able to use the mousewheel for this.

How far can you move when you are outside of yuor body?

youme wrote:
How far can you move when you are outside of yuor body?

I'm not sure what you're asking, but I have two guesses.

Q1. How far away can the camera go from Chell?
A. It just snaps out to a set distance, unless there is a wall in the way. Once the camera is in thirdperson view, you can move the mouse to pitch/yaw the view (tilt it on two axes), but not to zoom or pan. Hope that's clear(-ish).

Q2. For how much time can you stay in thirdperson view?
A. Indefinitely. Clicking mouse3 toggles it back and forth whenever you want. It's independent of the slow-mo controls. You can totally run around in thirdperson and shoot portals, but it's difficult to see where you're aiming because the camera always points directly through Chell's head. (BTW I have it turn off the crosshair when it goes to 3P, and turn it back on when you switch back to 1P, but even with the crosshair on it's really hard to aim "through" Chell's head in 3P.)

Posted a video that should make this clear: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve-5uz6xVgU

There's another camera command "camortho" that "Switches to orthographic camera." When I tried to play around with that, there were some unexpected results. It seems to change the way the world is rendered, not just the camera position. It's like being trapped in a non-Euclidean kaleidascope. But maybe with the proper settings it could be useful. ?

Crooked Paul wrote:
There's another camera command "camortho" that "Switches to orthographic camera." When I tried to play around with that, there were some unexpected results. It seems to change the way the world is rendered, not just the camera position.

Orthographic projection is a kind of non-perspective-correct projection, where the depth coordinate (Z) is usually discarded entirely. Look at how the side views work in Hammer; those are orthographic projections. Note how things that are further away don't appear to shrink. It's very useful for when you need to line things up along an axis, such as in a CAD application or, indeed, Hammer.