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Hey there. As a rough timeline, I'd say that I've started getting into modding in 2012 and published my own mods in 2013. Gmod started in 2014. I've branched out into newer engines once I had finished school and knew that this is something I wanted to pursue professionally. I'm now working as a technical/vfx artist at a studio since 2023. However, don't let that long journey scare you. I only started doing this sort of stuff full-time rather recently and I've learned a lot more than "making particles". VFX is a little "in-between", it's very technical for an art position and also very creative for an engineering position. So I've had to deal with modelling, general game design, digital art, programming and generally what makes 3d rendering tick and I'm still learning new stuff pretty much every day. I'm using Unreal Engine pretty much daily now, both professionally and for fun and that's been a tool I've only worked with for the past 3 years. Sure, a lot of previous knowledge carried over (after all, they didn't really re-invent the concept of "math", for example), but many other concepts were new to me at the time. I can't speak for you and I'm not sure if I'd feel comfortable saying stuff like "If you do THIS, you will succeed", however, I'd say that what's been a driving factor for me is a "puzzle solving" mindset. I see a cool thing in a game, a movie or just read about it and imagine what it would look like. Then the puzzle becomes getting that in a game, using the tools and technology at my disposal to get the idea out of my head and onto the screen. In my eyes, age alone is hardly a limiting factor. It's you willingness to learn and to put in the time to work on stuff, to experiment and to practice. There will be moments of "banging your head against the wall" and I could see some people simply not having the patience or the time for that in their day-to-day lives, for example when trying to squeeze this alongside a 9-5 job, social life, hobbies and family obligations all while maintaining a somewhat healthy lifestyle. Both of the two "big ones", Unreal and Unity, have pretty big communities of enthusiasts and professionals alike who are more than willing to share their knowledge and Unreal has tons of free learning resources and content examples. I Hope this answered your questions.

@@iamHedron Hi again, thanks a lot for your detailed answer. I agree on having the right mindset to "Solve the problem" of displaying your ideas on the screen. The thing that mostly drives me its my wish to see something cool that I imagine and make it "real", as i've been always fascinated with this idea. I know this is probably stupid, but when starting out it feels wrong having to use tools like ChatGPT or searching how to do specific stuff because sometimes I have no idea on what to do whenever a task i've never done comes up (Not algorithms but rather things like "how could I make an entity made from various props?") As you've imagined, i'm still relatively new to programming and I don't know if people with experience have this kind of trouble. Anyway, I don't know if you're reading this as you're probably a busy person, but again thanks a lot for your answer and telling me about your experiences.

This effect is not available for purchase at the time of writing.

Short answer: I did modify existing Lyra blueprint classes. Long answer: The effect shown in the video has been built for the sake of the effect, not because I had a bigger vision for a modded version of Lyra. I would build the visuals the same way in a proper project (i.e. shell mesh, etc), the only Lyra-specific part of the actual effect is looking up the Lyra player mesh and associated cosmetics, but that's it. As for functionality, my Lyra specific implementation used for this video specifically is honestly too hacky. As stated in the video description, the shields provide damage reduction. I basically avoided the Gameplay Ability System for the most part, modifying core Lyra blueprints instead to spawn the shield effects and "fake" damage modulation, specifically /ShooterCore Content/Game/B_Hero_ShooterMannequin. For a more realistic/reasonable approach, it's worth noting that Lyra does most of its damage calculation in C++ classes. If I wanted to introduce actual damage scaling based on that in a "proper" way, I'd have to do it there. When starting out on this project, I initially asked a question on the Epic forums regarding this, maybe what I received as an answer will help you too: forums.unrealengine.com/t/lyra-starter-game-damage-scaling-reduction/552850 Building shields that simply tank the damage entirely using the GAS is probably possible, but I haven't dug deep enough into it to give a definitive answer on that one.

@@iamHedron thanks, this is what i have gather from other research, i will probably need to mod the HealthSet and Damage Calc classes. Thanks! you version looks great though.

Unlikely, sorry. Though internally, the effect works very similarly to another one I showcased on my channl, the Ice/Freezing one to be exact. Long story short, it's just a shell mesh created by a blueprint class that inherits the target actor's master pose component. The effect is fundamentally the same, just with a slightly more complex material and more information written into said material to communicate things like shield damage, etc.

I presume you've started to follow me because of my Gmod addons? The short answer is: because I'm not really having fun with Gmod or Source anymore. A bit more elaborate, I can say that I can do what I want to do in newer engines (Unity or Unreal) just as well if not better (usually better). I might still make some stuff for Gmod, if I feel like it, but simple fact is, I really don't. Some brought up S&Box before which runs on Source 2. It'll be a fine game with the attention Facepunch is giving it and once the tools and workshop have matured a bit more, but it's ultimately still not really interesting to me. As to why Unreal specifically and not Unity for example, it's because I really like what Epic is doing with the fantastic tech at their hands. I absolutely love the Niagara VFX tools for example.

The icicles are niagara mesh particles. The are spawned on the frozen mesh's surface. Like the material, I set parameters of the niagara system from the blueprint actor that applies the freeze effect. I can then change their scale and position offset based on the expected lifetime, as well as set their orientation of the icicles based on the projectile's impact normal. I use the impact normal for the vertex offset on the overlay as well. The icicle mesh is just a simple mesh I made in blender with the same material used for the freeze overlay. Hope that answers your question.

@@iamHedron Thanks for your kind reply.

Highly unlikely. This was done in gmod and the fact that I can freely add/change assets and functions without having to touch the source code is what made this possible. I don't know if EZ2 has particle tracers or still uses the same effect as the original HL2. Lastly, I don't particularly enjoy working with Source engine anymore, so I'm not really interested in getting involved in projects for another source game. But I'm glad you like it.

@@iamHedron i am really sorry man. i do think it would have been amazing addition to the workshop, but you do what you see is best. thanks for making such a visually stunning piece.

It's not and this UE5 project is more for me to learn than something I'd intend to publish at some point. I might get this and other effects marketplace ready at some point, but I'd like to optimize them further first and make integration for other UE devs easier.

I'm assuming you're talking about my GMod addon. You may use all of my assets included with that addon, as long as you provide appropriate and clear credit. Is your project a GMod game mode or a standalone source engine title? Note that my Unity/Unreal assets are not available at the time of writing and that I can't provide any ETA on if or when they might be available on the respective marketplaces. If you have any further questions, feel free to ask away, I'd be glad to help.

@@iamHedron I will make an independent game with the source engine (obviously I will give credits)

This (very old) video showcases some of the dissolve effects for my weapon pack, the weapons shown in this video are the Seraphim shotgun and the Vapor cannon, Pandemic rifle and Blizzard SMG. Most if not all of the effects have been updated in some way or another since this video released. If you haven't already, you can download the addon here: steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=420970650

@@iamHedron Oh thank you!

No plans to release this or other remastered HL2 content to the workshop. Ironically, some of it slipped through and did in fact release with last big weapon update. Try spawning an acid antlion (hl2 ep2) and observe the corrosive spit.

I already answered to your comment on the other video, answer is the same: The hud is personal work and not available for download. Similar applies to effects shown in this video.

Personal hud I made a while back. At the time of writing, it's not available for download.

It's my personal one I made a while back and not available for download.

Thank you, I'm glad you like it.

Not exactly. When spawning NPCs via the spawn menu, they usually do not have a "behaviour flag" set, because those are usually key-values assigned by a mapper in the level editor. You can flag them to use "aggressive" behaviour and I can assign that flag via the weapon they hold. But that is at most changing their behaviour, having them rush the player more aggressively. Do note, that there are systems in place that for example gives combine soldiers heavily armored variants and shields, similar to the suit armor the player is using. Soldiers will attempt to take cover when shields are depleted in combat. Finally, keep in mind that the availability of navigation data on the map you spawn them in makes a huge difference.

Damn, that’s a lot of stuff I didn’t know about, thanks!

Ironically, I made this before I started playing D2. But I can see where you're coming from, there are no doubt similarities.

Garry's mod

@@EliteAaron oh my god, iv been using gmod so so wrong. thank you Aaron!

@@shardinhand1243 This guy just makes it better. Check out his mod pack "Darken sci fi weaponry"

Old testing map of mine, not available for download.

The weapon itself will be added to the pack with the next update, but other things (like xp, the hud, soldiers, etc...) are just me messing around. The map is ttt_glacier by JimOnions, as listed in the video description.

@@iamHedron sorry did not see it in the desc and do you plan to release the other stuff?

@@kreep8744 Not sure. You can see some of it in action in the other videos, notably the one with the hand cannon, but a lot of it is just really unpolished. Imagine hl2, but with randomized gear and character progression along the lines of Destiny or Borderlands and scaling enemy difficulty through class variation, similar to Halo. However, really needs its own game-mode to work and it's not there yet by any stretch of the imagination. (Unfortunately?) Most of it is born out of "does this work" and "wouldn't it be cool if" and let's be honest, if I'm willing far enough to actually implement it propely, I might as well grab Unreal 4 instead and learn how to make an actual game. I'll keep updating my weapons eventually, if I find the time to work on them, but please don't expect this larger project to release any time soon, if at all.

@@iamHedron you think i can get those combine models though?

@@kreep8744 As for the heavies, the original models are from the first Rage, ported by NinjaNub ( steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=223357888 ). I added combine soldier animations by just recompiling them with proper $IncludeModel in the QC as well as skins for class-specific variants (i.e. woodland / arctic / shotgun camo). The default ones just have more skin variants and overhauled textures and materials. While I could understand if somebody would want to use them or bring them to the workshop, I'm not sure if I'd be comfortable with that. If you just want them for personal use only, you can send me a friend req on steam (Darken217) or dm me here, I'll isolate the files, upload them and shoot you a link. (the whole project has a lot of reskins / reworked assets, so it's like 2gb, the comforcers are just a couple mb)

As implied in the video description, I made the HUD myself. Unfortunately, it's not yet available for download.

Yeah, all self-tought. There's still a lot I don't know or don't know enough about, but I appreciate you liking what you saw so far. I made a very, very basic guide about particles in gmod a while ago, but if you want to get into modding yourself, I'd recommend getting your hands on a more up-to-date game engine like Unreal 4 or Unity, instead of Source Engine based games.

I used the CS:S Famas animations and the model for size-reference, but that's about it. It has nothing to do with the CS:GO version.

Thanks.

Yeah, the reload sound will definetly change.

No, I designed and made them myself.

This is caused by an addon conflict. Unfortunately, I can't tell for sure what addon is conflicting. One way to find it out would be to disable all addons except for mine and re-enable them one by one until things start to get weird. Should you find the source of the issue, please tell me so I can hopefully reduce the conflict potential.

+Darken Cin Anmar (Darken217) ok thanks! Ill respond in less than a week to tell you what it was! 😊

Thanks. :)