The immersiveness of Half-Life: Alyx owes a lot to the extreme levels of detail Valve’s artists crafted into all of its assets. Each object has its own material which, upon close examination, reveals a wonderful depth of realism. Each object has multiple textures along with a shader to render surfaces that realistically imitate textured metal, flaked paint, grimy and scratched surfaces, plastic parts, printed text, and so on. At one point in the game, you can sit down, pick up a newspaper, and read the whole front-page article (in VR). Even the audio is beautifully multilayered. I could go on, but today what has my attention is a little in-joke that I found on one of the weapons in the game.
The Combine SMG, like all weapons in the game, has a series of upgrades. Each upgrade either adds or replaces parts, making it physically visible and distinctive. One of the upgrades for the Combine SMG adds what appears to be a glowing battery box attached the back of the rifle, from which a glowing cable runs to a laser-like attachment under the barrel. The battery box has some tiny text on it which, due to the texture resolution, is blurry and difficult to read:
Pretty tiny, right? Here’s what I think it says:
n. Abbr. det.
part or item; a particular. See Synonyms at item.
considered individually and in relation to a whole: careful attention to detail.
A minor or inconsequential item or aspect; a minutia: skipped the details to get
A minute or thorough treatment or account: went into detail about his travels.
portion of a work, such as a painting, building, or decorative object,
when considered in isolation.
A representation of such a part or portion: a detail of a Rembrandt portrait illustrating
Though not obvious right away because some sentences are truncated, it’s the definition of the word “detail”. One of Valve’s artists clearly has a sense of humor!
The text appears to be based on the definition in the American Heritage Dictionary, however the “n. Abbr. det.” part indicates that it was likely sourced from one of a few Chinese-English dictionary websites. I enjoy how that gives us just a tiny extra piece of information about the particular artist who playfully chose this text.