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Valve confirms work on 'Source 2' engine

51 points by gaoprea 14y ago

AmVess 14y ago
"We've been working on new engine stuff for a while, we've just been waiting for a game to roll it out with." Something something Half Life 3 something something something.
unemployed 14y ago
Say what you want about 4chan, this is adorable.
Monkeyget 14y ago
Valve was working on the Half-Life 2 engine as soon as the original was released. "The Counter-Strike developer has previously bragged its engine is "considered the most flexible, comprehensive". I hope it was a reference to the new engine and not the existing one which is fairly painful to work with. Hello map compilation which takes hours.
- OriginalSyn 14y ago
  The current source engine is what they were talking about. It was designed to be module to allow for upgrades to the system, for example, since HL2 was release it's gained some major upgrades such as HDR, Soft particles, hardware accelerated facial animations, multi-core support, xbox360, ps3 and osx support (and currently in the process of adding linux support.) All that with very few and minor backward compatibility breaking instances.
- rocky1138 14y ago
  Switch your lightmaps to lower quality (or off) while you're working and building the map, flip them to higher quality right before you release. It's the lightmaps that take the longest to compile.
mathnode 14y ago
A company which actively develops software has the ability to snapshot a stable development tree and call it a "New Engine"? Shock horror. Fans of these games blatantly don't know what an engine is; the difference between a graphics library and a suite of tools and code to create a game. Perhaps they are excited because the Valve developer wiki and Source Filmmaker have been teasing newer versions of the tools like Hammer, built with Qt. Valve have never been one for pushing the limits of GPU's, like Blizzard, so they don't limit their audience. id tech, unreal, and crydev are the ones showing off what they can do with OpenGL/DirectX, not Valve.
- pja 14y ago
  A company which actively develops software has the ability to snapshot a stable development tree and call it a "New Engine"? Shock horror. There does come a point where the architectural decisions made in the past no longer make any sense & core rewrite is in order. Valve are a quality company & know to avoid the second system effect. At some point you may as well label what you've written as a 'new system' even if you can trace its development path in an evolutionary fashion from the old to the new.
- jordanthoms 14y ago
  I'd argue that Valve was pushing the limits when Source first came out in 2004 - Half Life 2 still looks good today.
  - rocky1138 14y ago
    At the time, Valve was pushing the limits of older hardware, that's for sure. The engine used to run perfectly on DirectX 7 cards, which were old even then. It was neat to be able to play a great-looking set of games even on older hardware and get good FPS doing so.
- bonzoesc 14y ago
  Anyone who read their new hire guide could come to the conclusion that there's a "new engine" in development at Valve. If you're working on projects in decentralized cabals and employ engine programmers, one of those cabals is probably working on engine tech.
Uchikoma 14y ago
I nearly cried of joy when I heard they would do an open world Skyrim like Half Life 3. I would have paid $500 on Kickstarter for that. Better engine? Nice, but the HL2 engine would be good enough for me. HL is about atmosphere and story, not GFX - for me.
- batgaijin 14y ago
  Other games have physics and life like face animations because of the standard source set.
- shasta 14y ago
  I don't know if they will be able to replicate the sense of danger that was present in Skyrim with another game engine. In Skyrim, when you would open a door to a new place, there was a real fear: is this going to crash my game? My whole computer?
  - engtech 14y ago
    FYI, Fallout 3, New Vegas and Skyrim have mods that will save every 5 minutes, and this helps with the crash on autosave problem. At the very least you'll never lose hours of playing. The mods use a rotating save system so you end up with 5 minute intervals of the last 3 hours of gameplay. Checking the size of your save games get let you know if you're going to hit the problem. At some point your saves jump to 5MB then to 10MB and soon you'll start hitting the crashing on autosave bug.
ksec 14y ago
So Source 2 Vs Unreal 4 Vs CryEngine 4 And hopefully some MEGA Super Texture All artwork ID Engine 6.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  Or more realistically, Unreal 4 vs. CryEngine 4. Source was not widely licensed, and interest in idTech seems to be low - there are currently no high-profile licensees that we know about. Though now that Bethesda owns id, maybe there will be more "licensing" of the engine. It certainly is a very impressive piece of tech.
  - MattDL 14y ago
    Bethesda killed their licensing, it's in-house only now.
colmvp 14y ago
Episode 3?

51 points by gaoprea 14y ago

"We've been working on new engine stuff for a while, we've just been waiting for a game to roll it out with." Something something Half Life 3 something something something.

unemployed 14y ago

Say what you want about 4chan, this is adorable.

Monkeyget 14y ago

Valve was working on the Half-Life 2 engine as soon as the original was released. "The Counter-Strike developer has previously bragged its engine is "considered the most flexible, comprehensive". I hope it was a reference to the new engine and not the existing one which is fairly painful to work with. Hello map compilation which takes hours.

OriginalSyn 14y ago
The current source engine is what they were talking about. It was designed to be module to allow for upgrades to the system, for example, since HL2 was release it's gained some major upgrades such as HDR, Soft particles, hardware accelerated facial animations, multi-core support, xbox360, ps3 and osx support (and currently in the process of adding linux support.) All that with very few and minor backward compatibility breaking instances.
rocky1138 14y ago
Switch your lightmaps to lower quality (or off) while you're working and building the map, flip them to higher quality right before you release. It's the lightmaps that take the longest to compile.

mathnode 14y ago

A company which actively develops software has the ability to snapshot a stable development tree and call it a "New Engine"? Shock horror. Fans of these games blatantly don't know what an engine is; the difference between a graphics library and a suite of tools and code to create a game. Perhaps they are excited because the Valve developer wiki and Source Filmmaker have been teasing newer versions of the tools like Hammer, built with Qt. Valve have never been one for pushing the limits of GPU's, like Blizzard, so they don't limit their audience. id tech, unreal, and crydev are the ones showing off what they can do with OpenGL/DirectX, not Valve.

pja 14y ago
A company which actively develops software has the ability to snapshot a stable development tree and call it a "New Engine"? Shock horror. There does come a point where the architectural decisions made in the past no longer make any sense & core rewrite is in order. Valve are a quality company & know to avoid the second system effect. At some point you may as well label what you've written as a 'new system' even if you can trace its development path in an evolutionary fashion from the old to the new.
jordanthoms 14y ago
I'd argue that Valve was pushing the limits when Source first came out in 2004 - Half Life 2 still looks good today.
- rocky1138 14y ago
  At the time, Valve was pushing the limits of older hardware, that's for sure. The engine used to run perfectly on DirectX 7 cards, which were old even then. It was neat to be able to play a great-looking set of games even on older hardware and get good FPS doing so.
bonzoesc 14y ago
Anyone who read their new hire guide could come to the conclusion that there's a "new engine" in development at Valve. If you're working on projects in decentralized cabals and employ engine programmers, one of those cabals is probably working on engine tech.

Uchikoma 14y ago

I nearly cried of joy when I heard they would do an open world Skyrim like Half Life 3. I would have paid $500 on Kickstarter for that. Better engine? Nice, but the HL2 engine would be good enough for me. HL is about atmosphere and story, not GFX - for me.

batgaijin 14y ago
Other games have physics and life like face animations because of the standard source set.
shasta 14y ago
I don't know if they will be able to replicate the sense of danger that was present in Skyrim with another game engine. In Skyrim, when you would open a door to a new place, there was a real fear: is this going to crash my game? My whole computer?
- engtech 14y ago
  FYI, Fallout 3, New Vegas and Skyrim have mods that will save every 5 minutes, and this helps with the crash on autosave problem. At the very least you'll never lose hours of playing. The mods use a rotating save system so you end up with 5 minute intervals of the last 3 hours of gameplay. Checking the size of your save games get let you know if you're going to hit the problem. At some point your saves jump to 5MB then to 10MB and soon you'll start hitting the crashing on autosave bug.

ksec 14y ago

So Source 2 Vs Unreal 4 Vs CryEngine 4 And hopefully some MEGA Super Texture All artwork ID Engine 6.

potatolicious 14y ago
Or more realistically, Unreal 4 vs. CryEngine 4. Source was not widely licensed, and interest in idTech seems to be low - there are currently no high-profile licensees that we know about. Though now that Bethesda owns id, maybe there will be more "licensing" of the engine. It certainly is a very impressive piece of tech.
- MattDL 14y ago
  Bethesda killed their licensing, it's in-house only now.

colmvp 14y ago

Episode 3?