cs:source too dark

[fishhedz]

Yup. Way too dark. I have a custom setting in my video card options for when I play regular CS or DoD which has the gamma turned up a bit. I like it a little brighter, but nothing crazy. I want the game to look good. So anyway, my "custom, gaming" setting doesn't change anything from default in CS:source. When I go to the "adjust brightness" option in the cs:s menu, it says to adjust the slider until "all three lines of text are visible". Well, even at max, I can't see any of the lines of text!

I tried cranking the gamma way up in the vid card options. It performs exactly the same as it does in my normal gaming settings, and the same as in my default settings -- all very dark. Basically, all the maps play as if it were very late afternoon (cobble, aztec) or nighttime (havana is pitch-black). The only way I can even see the enemy most of the time is when their caption flashes on my screen. I can take screenshots, and when I view them with my custom gaming settings they look great. They are too dark to make out in the default mode that I browse with, though. Office is bright enough to play well. The game looks and plays great. I just want to be able to adjust my gamma so I can see!

2.8 Athlon with 512 megs of mid/high performance RAM. GeForce 4 4600ti 128 card. No other games give me any trouble, and the brightness issue is the only problem with cs:s. I have been poring over the Steam forums, and I googled "source too dark", which led me here. Been reading here all day. I can't find any descriptions which match. HL2 looks fine, by the way. I mean, it's supposed to be a bit dark. cs:s is darker, though.

Any help you guys can give me would be appreciated. I'm going to try to reinstall tomorrow night if I can't find a fix. Thanks.

[xe9rox]

same for me, ****ing dark, so when i play css i just cahnge the brightness in color correction bar (nvidia display) to 130% :D

[Got3n]

i use the brightness lvl in cs source and put it on 1.7 i think and it works great for all lvls

[fishhedz]

Nope I've already tried both of those things. Neither makes any difference in-game. Anyone?

[vincent]

uh weird suggestion here but have u tried adjusting the brightness on your monitor? :huh:

[ANova]

Yup, sounds like your monitor's brightness and/or gamma is low.

[hunginator]

maybe your monitor sucks or maybe your eyes suck?

[fishhedz]

Yup. I web-browse at 50% monitor brightness, and game at 100%, typically.

I'm gonna try a re-install. It's just way too strange that nobody else seems to have this problem, and that it's only cs:source and not any of the other Steam/Valve games (even the other source-engine ones). Thanks for the input, folks.

[fishhedz]

Yeah it was my 6-yr-old $700.00 monitor. My black is just too true on that thing for cs:s. I got a new monitor for a hundred bucks at Costco and it works great. Thanks all.

[kalizar]

type "brightness 99999" in the console

edit: oh sorry, didn't see that you had solved the problem...