I remember when setting up Riven on my computer, the game would prompt you to change your monitor settings until certain shades matched up in a test image. It would be nice if there was such an image on the mod page so that players could tune their gamma settings. I tend to have problems getting something that I can see in but that isn't too cheap, and my graphics tend to look uniformly crappy either way. I know that there is in-game gamma correction, but strangely a secondary layer of gamma shift is applied whenever I actually join a map. I know there is a Reset Gamma utility, but this makes my particular screen uncomfortably dark for just about anything, and I end up bumping into walls in otherwise well-lit marine bases.

Um.... There is.

Look in your start menu (Natural-Selection/Tune monitor for optimal gamma).

i've never had trouble seeing any part of any map in the HL engine, it's just to bright. Bring back the darkness of Q1! (thats one thing i hated about TFC vs QWTF, you used to be able to hide in Q1...)

Boy is my face red.

Not RTFMing certainly skulked me in the **obscenity** that time.

... well, I did it but it AFAIK the gamestart still adds that extra layer of gamma change... I'll test it later. Right now my screen is really grey-cloud-of-light looking after that calibration.

Well, I tried it out as said... Ran Gamma reset, brightness/contrast/gamma to hardware defaults... monitor already on max brightness, contrast.

Increased brightness so that squares 4 and 8 were barely visible, but then no contrast changes would reveal the off-white colors. :/ Maybe it's just my setup here...