FakeFactory: Cinematic Mod 8 - Part 5 / 5 (Final)

--------------------------------------------------------
FAKEFACTORY CINEMATIC MOD V8 ORANGEBOX
Build 8.0 final

for Half-Life 2 / Half-Life 2: Episode One / Half-Life 2: Episode Two
--------------------------------------------------------

THIS VERSION BRINGS THE ORANGEBOX ENGINE TO OLD HL2 AND EP1.
IT INSTALLS INDEPENDENT FROM CM7 OR OLDER VERSIONS

TO PLAY THIS MOD, YOU MUST OWN HALF-LIFE 2 / EPISODE ONE / EPISODE TWO  FULLY
INSTALLED AND UNLOCKED! (= started at least once) YOU CANNOT PLAY THIS MOD WITHOUT EPISODE TWO CONTENT!

LET ME WARN YOU ABOUT THE RADICAL GRAPHICAL CHANGES:

This mod is my very personal interpretation of the HL2 protagonists. 
It may give some replay-value to people, who are open-minded to a refreshing new look.
But it is not suitable for stubborn people.
You have been warned.

--------------------------------------------------------
Remember to activate "High Quality" model and graphic settings in the options dialog
or the facial animations aren't playing.
--------------------------------------------------------


PURPOSE OF THIS MOD:
-------------------------------------------------

- Raise the quite outdated graphical appearance to a state-of-the-art level
- Give the HL2 trilogy a more stressed, darker and minatory look
- Enhance the soundtrack with a semi-dynamic new hollywood-style music
- Replace the low-resolution textures with high resolution counterparts and more detailed environments (hires melones!)
- Complement the storyline with the unused content from the original games
- Refresh the look and feel with optional new HD models
- Add more replay-value
- Give stubborn people and the facepunch monkeys something to complain about


History:

CM8 final

- Public release

CM8 beta 4

- Added Subsurface scattering for realistic skin reflections
- Added more civilians
- Reworked the models for orangebox facial system
- Fixed Gman's missing face in HL2 end-sequence
- Updated the server/client dll's with the latest SDK code for compatibility with Valves updated pyro-effects
- Increased the number of resistance fighters / combine in HL2's final streetwar
- tons of bugfixes

CM8 beta 3

- Finalized the second bunch of HD civilian/resistance models
- Minor fixes in some maps for better orangebox compatibility
- New optional Alyx style (less sexy)
- Slightly reworked EP2-Final
- Increased the face-pool for human models (Original HL2: 36 different faces / CM8: 115 different faces)
- Recompiled the HL2 binaries for increased face-pool
- Fixed Configurator.exe (lost subtitle settings)

CM 8 beta 2

- Fixed particlesystem crash in HL2 (gunship-shotdowns, barnacle mass kills etc...)
- Worked around a plotstopper in EP1 Level Citadel 04

CM 8 beta 1

- Orangebox engine for HL2 and EP1 (new particle and dynamic shadow effects for HL2 + EP1)
- Enhanced Alyx HD-model (VALVE style face)
- Enhanced Alyx HD-model (Adriana Lima face)
- Enhanced Civilian HD-models (now its the time to give them a try)
- hacked all HL2 levels for Orangebox compatibility
- fixed all known texture errors
- fixed the "hopping mossman" bug in novaprospect
- tweaked the HDR/BLOOM effects on HL2 maps (less blooming)




HDR for HL2 
-------------------------------------------------

Not all HL2 maps are true HDR, because not all sources are available. For all 
other maps i used a technique, that i call "Entity injection". Technically i've 
used clientcommand entities and tonemapcontrollers to achieve a hdr-like type of 
blooming on those maps. This type of bloom is much more realistic than the old 
bloom mini-mod, because the effect is controllable inside the map for different 
settings at certain locations. You can call it HDR V0.5 or Bloom V2. Its some 
kind of super-ehanced bloom that gives a near-HDR look on the old HL2 maps. 
Some of the map-settings aren't final (i'm still at the fine-tuning phase)



CHARACTER PIMPER:
--------------------------------------------------

You  can  use the "Character Pimper" to switch between HD models and original VALVE models. 

The  Alyx HD-model  was  built  from scratch,  all  other  models are  based  on
massive modified  POSER7 models  and compiled  with a  rewritten studiocompiler,
that is  allowing a  much higher  polycount than  VALVE's original compiler. The
facial animations   were build   with 3DS  MAX  and  exported with Cannonfodders
VTA -exporter.



USING OLD CM6.x Alyx Hires models in this version
--------------------------------------------------

The V8+ Alyx models are completely reworked with enhanced skeletton and facial 
animations. The older CM6 models are not longer used. If you want the older 
models from your CM6 installation, make a copy of the CM6-Characterpimper 
"repository" folder and the CM6 "hl2materialsmodelsAdriana" folder before you 
uninstall it.

After installation of CM8 is completed, you can copy the old content to the V8 
directory, BUT DON'T OVERWRITE V8 FILES! I strongly recommend to use the new CM8 
models. They are optimized for the Orangebox engine. I will release recompiled 
V6 models as a update-patch in the near future. 



SOUND DROPS OR CRACKLING:
-------------------------------------------------

If sound crackles occures, you can fix this by setting the snd_mixahead value in 
the autoexec's of CM's subdirectories. You will find the autoexec.cfg in the 

FAKEFACTORY_CM8hl2cfg
FAKEFACTORY_CM8episodiccfg
FAKEFACTORY_CM8ep2cfg

directories. Try different value like snd_mixahead "0.2" or snd_mixahead "0.4" 
for increasing the buffered time of soundsamples. This will fix crackling or 
dropouts, but can lead to slightly asynchronous or delayed sounds.



MICROSTUTTER AND HEAPSIZE
--------------------------------------------------

If you encounter microstuttering ingame (animations), try the heapsize command. 
Add -heapsize {bytes} to the shortcuts, i.e.:

Shortcut: Cinematic Mod EP2
Target: ....launcher.exe" -heapsize 512000.

But NEVER set the heapsize above [YOUR INSTALLE RAM / 3] or 512MB



SETUP.EXE AND VIRUS-WARNING
--------------------------------------------------

Setup uses a tool called SetACL for setting write permissions to the mods 
screenshots / cfg / SAVE directories. Some antivirus software could warn about 
possible malware. This is a false positive.



TECHNICAL INFO:
--------------------------------------------------

This  mod's  binaries are   modified  for memory  allocation   beyond 2  GB.  To
prevent STEAM from overwriting this  binaries with its own copies on each start,
the mod ist  using a little  launcher,  that reroutes  STEAM's original binaries
to >NIL. 

Start  this  mod  only  with  the  shortcuts  in  your  start menu   (that  were
created  during installation)!


HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS:

- DX9 capable graphics hardware with minimum 256 MB VRAM. (512 MB recommended)
- 3 GB RAM (4 GB recommended)


SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS:

-	Fully installed STEAM Client;	You can't start the mod without STEAM running.
-	Fully installed and unlocked HL2 / EP1 / EP2;	Make shure, you have started those games in the past.



32 BIT WARNING: 
--------------------------------------------------

This mod was developed and tested on   64 Bit Windows. It is  NOT supported   on 
32 Bit  Windows, because  of the   limited Userspace  with 32  Bit systems.  You 
can try it on 32 Bit, but prepare for crashes.

On some 32 Bit  systems it  is possible  to overcome  this limitation  with some 
boot.ini  switches  for  raising  the  userspace  limit.  I'm  not  going  into 
detail   here, because those tweaks are   dangerous and should only  be done  by 
people,  who are knowing exactly, what they do.

ADDENTUM FOR VERSION 7 and 8:

V7 and above of this mod uses much more Hires textures than the previous versions. This 
means: The engine has to cache a peak-value of >2GB texturedata at runtime. It's 
almost impossible to play this mod crash-free on 32 Bit systems without lowering 
the graphics settings.



USED SOFTWARE FOR THIS MOD:

Adobe Photoshop CS2
3DS MAX 8
E-Frontier Poser 7
Microsoft C++ Visual Studio 2005
Powerbasic 8
VALVE Source SDK
Sony Soundforge 7
Sony Vegas 7
Crazy Bump 5
Cannonfodders SDK tools
entspy
vmex
Autoplay Mediastudio Pro
Setup Factory


USED TEXTURE RESOURCES:

Majang.com
3d.sk
Dosch
environmenttextures.com
Own photos


USED MODEL RESOURCES:

contentparadise.com
efrontier.com
daz3d.com
Anton Kisiels Apollo Max