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This Twitter bot tours Half-Life skyboxes to brighten up your timeline

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This Twitter bot tours Half-Life skyboxes to brighten up your timeline

The second-best strategy to make Twitter palatable (after merely unfollowing sources of unhealthy tweets) is to observe a load of curated and bot accounts which trickle niceness into your timeline. In the present day I might wish to recommend including Skybox Satellite, a Twitter account which reveals glimpses of the skies wrapped round maps in GoldSrc video games like Half-Life and Counter-Strike. It is generally fairly, generally nostalgic, and generally spectacular.

The bot is made by Suzanne Will, a stage designer and setting artist who’s presently engaged on Blendo’s immersive sim Pores and skin Deep. The account is masquerading as a “misplaced probe, drifting via forgotten dimensions”, slowly spinning and looking out round because it seems within the skies above many maps from Half-Life and its engine kin.

In Half-Life engine video games, the sky past the 3D geometry of a stage is a sequence of six low-resolution 2D photographs. These are primarily handled as the within surfaces of a dice, with the extent hanging within the center to create the phantasm of a world past. In Half-Life, these skyboxes are principally crimson deserts and mesas in opposition to blue skies (plus some vibrant alien spacezones), however different GoldSrc video games and customized ranges have explored all kinds of locations. I am glad to idly go to them in my Twitter feed.

I at all times appreciated that skyboxes have been typically constructed with expertise far fancier than the sport might do in actual time, however this fanciness was rendered in photographs smaller than a texture which could cowl a single wall. This low-resolution prerendering created a captivating mixture of “This seems superb!” and “This seems unhealthy!” I like how seeing them in low-resolution movies on Twitter, slightly than hanging large and pixellated over ranges, focuses consideration on appreciation.

I additionally at all times loved that the dimensions of skyboxes was so typically wildly off when wrapped across the stage. Woodlands towering above the extent like historical redwood forests, homes towering like workplace blocks, workplace blocks like skyscrapers, skyscrapers like Neo-Tokyo.

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Talking of Neo-Tokyo, I am fairly certain this skybox’s metropolis is constructed of a body snapped from basic cyberpunk anime movie Akira?

I like what number of rolling landscapes have the telltale look of Terragen. It was a well-liked shareware software for producing landscapes, and let folks simply create a skybox tailor-made to their map and utilized by no others (till somebody yoinked it, if it was a great one). I downloaded and performed with it again within the day too as a result of it appeared thrilling, however I’m stunned to nonetheless recognise the algorithm’s fashion.

I had remembered many city and metropolis maps having Terragen skyboxes as a result of it was a lot simpler than constructing a cityscape sky. Watching Skybox Satellite tv for pc, I’m stunned by fairly what number of good cities have been on the market.

And naturally I am delighted by this metropolis with the blocky, shiny fashion of 90s CG animation, like one thing out of ReBoot .

Or on the reverse finish of fanciness, I believe skyboxes constructed from images can look nice if they are not straight daylight snaps, particularly with a little bit of filtering to push them from low-res photorealism to uncanny unrealism. One thing hellish about this view over Paris.

I believe the faux buildings on this Day Of Defeat skybox (from dod_avalanche?) are utilizing the identical textures as actual buildings within the map—a intelligent trick trying to scale back the distinction between map and sky. Although in case you’re conditioned to anticipate a placing constancy distinction, would this solely make it stand out extra?

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I believe one key to a great skybox is a kick of fog.

Fog each builds a temper and obscures limitations of the low-resolution photographs, yeah?

This jogs my memory of the otherworld within the Illusion motion pictures or, truthfully, any variety of strolling simulators I’ve adored.

This murk jogs my memory of these monochromatic holograms from the 90s? Just like the hologram of the Lindow Man within the British Museum.

Clouds are sometimes the strongest a part of a skybox, some lovely vibes.

And mixing clouds with murk for night time skies? Beautiful.

And mixing night time skies with water? A dream!

Or gazing up at celestial phenomena within the night time sky.

Hell, go into that night time sky, simply blast off to some alien planet.

Or cower beneath an alien solar.

As a fan of studying mod readme information separate from their mods, I like seeing these skyboxes in isolation. We by no means see the map which used the sky, solely the skybox itself. Skybox Satellite tv for pc would not even identify maps, solely the skybox filename. I do generally get pleasure from guessing at what their house maps might need been. From the identify and consider, I assume this was the view out the home windows of an underwater base.

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I might be pretty assured guessing that is from one of many many maps recreating the Simpson household house:

This was certainly from a Rats map, a fad for maps set round properties which have been scaled to make gamers the scale of, y’know, rats.

I might guess this one was most likely used for a Minecraft-themed map, however I might be delighted if it truly turned out somebody solely used Minecraft as a result of it was a handy 3D modelling software to create the skybox they wished.

However did these futurefactory innards loom large over a map? I need to know, however I do not need to know.

Some, I… I? I. Effectively:

And that is simply fascinating, a CGI fashion which jogs my memory of journal adverts for… was it a pc model? Or was this fashion utilized by Nickelodeon idents? I can not fairly place the fashion however do bear in mind seeing plenty of it.

Generally I want the bot would present me extra of a skybox, not whip round or aimlessly stare however give me a great look. Then I catch the probe laying on its again gazing up on the sundown over a fortress, and all is effectively.

Journey secure, little probe. Do keep an eye on it.



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