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Speaking of Valve's source engine, in the recent chat log leaks, the Valve employee says the Source 2 engine is essentially just the Source 1 engine with new ph

by dx87 6y ago

Speaking of Valve's source engine, in the recent chat log leaks, the Valve employee says the Source 2 engine is essentially just the Source 1 engine with new physics tacked on.

boarnoah 6y ago
I guess in comparison to how far other storied engines such as UE4 have come, Source 2 does feel like its much less of a step forward. One thing I really like is the level editor tools, with Hammer for source 2 they've re-implemented BSP geometry tools with geometry tools that use static meshes. A good/modern geometry level editor workflow is sorely lacking on the other available engines.
- pugworthy 6y ago
  I really agree here. I've used Hammer since... well since it was Worldcraft and I used it for Quake levels. Maybe it's a VI vs EMACS type thing, but I latched onto it pretty quickly, and have always found it the easiest editor to use. I'm really curious how they will expand it for VR level editing with the Alyx release. One thing I think you'd need is a way to quickly view the environment in VR while editing. This seems really important if you want to carefully craft some specific visuals for VR, or certain interactions. Can for example the player stand next to a hole in a wall and reach through it to access something.
klodolph 6y ago
I don’t know why this would be surprising. They’re not gonna exactly throw everything away and start over, are they? Just like the Source engine is derived from the “GoldSrc” engine, which is the terrible name for the engine that Half Life used, and that engine is derived from the Quake engine. You only make the changes necessary to update it for new hardware. For example, you throw away the old BSP rendering code, as elegant as it is, because it’s designed to get good performance on a Pentium 90 and modern computers just aren’t like that. It’s the ship of Theseus.
Jasper_ 6y ago
The renderer and tooling were heavily overhauled, though it's hard to say if that's a "Source 2" thing. Engines are worked on constantly, systems are constantly being modified and features are added. Deciding to add a 2 at the end is mostly a marketing decision, since gamers fall for that hard. I worked on an engine that, despite multiple huge overhauls and tech improvements motivated by our games, people suggested it was "the same buggy engine" as the first game we released since we didn't change the name for our in house toolset.
account42 6y ago
At the very least they added a Vulkan renderer too. But at the end of the day Source 1 is also just a modified GoldSrc engien which is just a modified Quake engine. Doesn't really mean much when there have been extensive modifications over time.

by dx87 6y ago

Speaking of Valve's source engine, in the recent chat log leaks, the Valve employee says the Source 2 engine is essentially just the Source 1 engine with new physics tacked on.

boarnoah 6y ago

I guess in comparison to how far other storied engines such as UE4 have come, Source 2 does feel like its much less of a step forward. One thing I really like is the level editor tools, with Hammer for source 2 they've re-implemented BSP geometry tools with geometry tools that use static meshes. A good/modern geometry level editor workflow is sorely lacking on the other available engines.

pugworthy 6y ago
I really agree here. I've used Hammer since... well since it was Worldcraft and I used it for Quake levels. Maybe it's a VI vs EMACS type thing, but I latched onto it pretty quickly, and have always found it the easiest editor to use. I'm really curious how they will expand it for VR level editing with the Alyx release. One thing I think you'd need is a way to quickly view the environment in VR while editing. This seems really important if you want to carefully craft some specific visuals for VR, or certain interactions. Can for example the player stand next to a hole in a wall and reach through it to access something.

klodolph 6y ago

I don’t know why this would be surprising. They’re not gonna exactly throw everything away and start over, are they? Just like the Source engine is derived from the “GoldSrc” engine, which is the terrible name for the engine that Half Life used, and that engine is derived from the Quake engine. You only make the changes necessary to update it for new hardware. For example, you throw away the old BSP rendering code, as elegant as it is, because it’s designed to get good performance on a Pentium 90 and modern computers just aren’t like that. It’s the ship of Theseus.

Jasper_ 6y ago

The renderer and tooling were heavily overhauled, though it's hard to say if that's a "Source 2" thing. Engines are worked on constantly, systems are constantly being modified and features are added. Deciding to add a 2 at the end is mostly a marketing decision, since gamers fall for that hard. I worked on an engine that, despite multiple huge overhauls and tech improvements motivated by our games, people suggested it was "the same buggy engine" as the first game we released since we didn't change the name for our in house toolset.

account42 6y ago

At the very least they added a Vulkan renderer too. But at the end of the day Source 1 is also just a modified GoldSrc engien which is just a modified Quake engine. Doesn't really mean much when there have been extensive modifications over time.