Source 2 engine possibly in development

[VulgarDisplay]

The entire industry is moving in this direction because of the skyrocketing costs of developing AAA games and it has nothing to do with the underlying issue that Valve has to first develop the physics for the new engine. If they merely took the existing source engine and modified it to pump out crappy games as fast as they could they'd be shooting themselves in the foot.

To this day I still feel that Half Life 2 has some of the best physics in game. It may not exhibit physics as much as Cryengine or Frostbite, but what it does do is done right, and there are rarely any crazy glitches that you see in so many other games.

 

[Stringjam]

I don't see anything powerful, flexible or impressive about Source.

Doesn't "compete" with Metro 2033? No game ever developed on Source qualifies as a dot on a line graphically compared to that game.

Physics? I'm looking forward to physics like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KppTmsNFneg


I don't really care if Source stays as it is, and Valve builds games on it.....a great game is a great game (I love Portal and HL). What I don't understand is why this engine gets so much admiration considering how deprecated it is compared to other modern engines.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

Source had a good run and Portal 2 still looks decent but compared to current gen engines it needs serious work. The thing that I like about Source is that you can run games built with it on pretty much anything and it will still look good, lots of source games look good on poor hardware while other games cannot even boot up using the same hardware.

 

[Blitzvogel]

I don't see anything powerful, flexible or impressive about Source.

Doesn't "compete" with Metro 2033? No game ever developed on Source qualifies as a dot on a line graphically compared to that game.

Physics? I'm looking forward to physics like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KppTmsNFneg


I don't really care if Source stays as it is, and Valve builds games on it.....a great game is a great game (I love Portal and HL). What I don't understand is why this engine gets so much admiration considering how deprecated it is compared to other modern engines.

1) Extremely scalable to a wide range of systems (HL2 will run on a P3 733 MHz, DX7 Graphics!)

2) Introduced meaningful gameplay physics to games, regardless of games with physics before it as well as a great leap in facial animation systems.

3) Modular nature could take on new rendering and processing technologies as advances were made to a fair degree like HDR, proper directional point shadowing, multi-core processing, and poop-loads of angry, screaming, rushing zombies on the screen at one time.

4) It looked pretty good at the start of it's life with HL2, and some games like TF2 do a damn good job of using the engine to efficiently create very nice, stylized, clean graphics that run very well on relatively weak hardware that much of the rest of the world still runs on.

5) Great set of tools and assets for building mods.

I bet Valve could push it harder and add more things to it like large scale/distance rendering, but considering their games design rarely goes in that direction, I don't think they would want to waste their time or maybe cut off a good deal of their user base with it. L4D2 I think does show that the engine can work in that context to a decent degree, but obviously a more robust sprite and vegetation system would need to be worked out to keep it efficient, while looking nice if lets say, they wanted to create a game like Far Cry or Crysis.

 

[Zenoth]

I don't see anything powerful, flexible or impressive about Source.

Doesn't "compete" with Metro 2033? No game ever developed on Source qualifies as a dot on a line graphically compared to that game.

Physics? I'm looking forward to physics like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KppTmsNFneg


I don't really care if Source stays as it is, and Valve builds games on it.....a great game is a great game (I love Portal and HL). What I don't understand is why this engine gets so much admiration considering how deprecated it is compared to other modern engines.

The "admiration" stems from how back in 2004 Source was a nice jump in the industry, when at the time the only "competition" really was just CryEngine (the original, running the first Far Cry also back in 2004). Now in 2012 it's of course easy to say there's "better" engines, sure it's been eight years now, but back in 2004 CryEngine 2 did not exist and Unreal Engine 3 was still under development. To this very day one could argue that Source is still the most scalable and stable engine there is, and I myself would argue that it has the best facial animation system when of course used properly such as in Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2, with only L.A. Noire's technique and technology for that purpose being better, but also being the only exception, but that's my opinion. I know facial animations can also be good in CryEngine 2 and UE3 (although I do prefer body animations in CryEngine 2 and Frostbite 2, and also UE3).

And, keep in mind that back in 2004 the physics in Half-Life 2 were very impressive and probably became the unintentional Source's (or at least HL2's) mascot, it was on everyone's lips and articles. Does anyone remember I think was the E3 2003's G-Man speech demonstration that showed facial expressions and animations, along with the first in-game level demo of H-L 2's physics? I was personally quite blown away by that G-Man speech demo when I first saw it, I quite couldn't believe that it would make it in the actual game, but it did. I also recall that scene when in the demo of the level the player enters a building after being chased by fast Zombies outdoor (during night time), and once inside Combine soldiers try to force their way in, and the player pushes a washing machine against the door to demonstrate that physically the soldier wouldn't be able to enter the room due to the new physics system (but of course a lot in that scene was scripted).

Anyway, you really need to put yourself back in 2004's gaming context to understand where the admiration for Source comes and why it still has a clear legacy today.

 

[wuliheron]

Physics? I'm looking forward to physics like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KppTmsNFneg

I don't really care if Source stays as it is, and Valve builds games on it.....a great game is a great game (I love Portal and HL). What I don't understand is why this engine gets so much admiration considering how deprecated it is compared to other modern engines.

GPU physics are great, but are not a substitute for cpu physics. Games would look awful if you could watch buildings blow up into a million pieces, but the characters moved like tin soldiers. You need both and the question will always be how to make the cpu physics as complex as possible without lugging the game.

Crysis did some nice work in that department too, but the steam engine specializes in cpu physics as games like Portal 2 demonstrate so clearly. Valve didn't just experiment with what physics they could do on the cpu for the game, but with what kinds of physics made the game fun without causing people to throw up. That's just the kind of basic research that somebody has to do at some point, but it would never be done for a game like Crysis. Prey is another good example where they combined portals, changing gravity fields, etc. into something really different that ran on almost any computer. That's the kind of thing I want to see in games, things that I will never see in real life because the technology doesn't exist and might even be theoretically impossible. If I want to see a car crash I'll watch NASCAR.

 

[Gordon Freemen]

"but are not a substitute for cpu physics." Precisely

 

[Childs]

It's funny though, I don't consider Source outdated at all. Portal 2 was a fantastic looking game.

Loading every time you entered a new room was outdated. Otherwise, Portal 2 did look fine. It could be that the presentation was so good that you didnt notice.

 

[Stringjam]

If I want to see a car crash I'll watch NASCAR.

That physics video was about so much more than just a "car crash." I'm surprised someone like you who seems to be interested in technical innovation doesn't appreciate the potential of their work.

I understand 2004's gaming context. Source was impressive as hell, and I remember that quite well. It was an amazing engine. But that seems to be all that anyone talks about....how impressive it was almost a decade ago.

I remember getting the CryEngine2 SDK and being amazed at how easy it was to put together a level, generate navigation for AI, and watch lighting all happen in real-time, as well as build a level on a huge, seamless open world. You could just drop yourself in the game from the SDK at any point. The lighting was amazing, the physics were even more amazing, (and not third-party, but developed by Crytek and integrated into the engine).

I'm not dissing Source as much as the incredibly arrogant comment that asserts that it's better than everybody else in some way. IMO, it simply is not.