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Gabe Newell Confirms Source 2 Engine
dotarray writes "Valve's Gabe Newell has confirmed that they are building the Source 2 engine, but haven't yet had the game to roll it out with. From the article: 'If you're not smiling yet, you'll definitely be doing so after you hear how the announcement was made. It was Gabe Newell's birthday on November 3rd, and 4Chan's /v/ (videogames) board decided to pay him a surprise visit. In addition to an enormous birthday card signed by many of /v/'s regulars, they also gave him an an actual Mann-Co crate, which he had to pay $2.50 to unlock in order to receive the gift of a combat helmet similar to the one worn by the Team Fortress 2 soldier. Irony at its best.'"
Don't read this if you don't want to know before announcement, but the next Valve game will have a 3 in its name!
Bringing you the news from last week, today!
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Wake me when Valve starts getting talkative about specs.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Of course it won't be Linux only.
It'll also be out for the PS3 and Xbox 360.
Summation 2
So that means his birthday party was overrun with 12-year-olds?
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I have a feeling:
1. The are going to focus on OpenGL with this engine. They've already ported much of their Source engine to Mac and now Linux. I just have a feeling that they are going to go ALL-IN on OpenGL this time so it is completely platform independent. I think it'll even have a Source 2 - Mobile Edition Engine for iPhones and Android devices. They want to be able to have their games/interface on all aspects of desktop and mobile computing environments. One engine to rule them all.
2. I think that they work with a partner manufacturer to release a Steam Box. They've not only created Steam Linux, but they've created a "Big Picture" button for easy viewing/navigation from the living room. They want to compete against the PS3 and the XBox. If they can create a distro and/or sell a little linux box themselves for the living room, they'll do it. There's huge potential for the living room.
3. With this push of these two huge ventures listed above, what better way to draw excitement than to release Half-Life 3, Portal 3, Counter-Strike 3, Left 4 Dead 3, and Team Fortress 3 all at the same time.
There's a reason Source has been lagging behind some of the other engines lately as well as games that should have been released a long time ago. They have huge plans in the pipeline that have me very excited, but it's taking a lot of retooling and coordinating. It's definitely not as trivial as updating the engine for DirectX 11 features.
idTech 4 is from 2004, the same year Source was released. Not only that, but idTech 4 was saddled with one of the shittiest FPS games in recent memory: Doom 3.
As for the other engines you mention, all of them are newer than Source, so it's not surprising that they would look better. As a reminder, UE3 was introduced with Unreal Tournament 3 in 2007. Crytek was introduced with Crysis in 2008.
Then again, if you're saying Source is bad, you may want to look at newer games made in it, such as Portal 2, rather than relying on Half-Life 2 from 2004. Source is an iteratively designed engine and newer Source games use newer iterations and thus newer technologies.
As for Team Fortress 2 (mentioned by the GGP), it's non-realistic even compared to Valve's other games. This is intentional... it makes heavy use of Phong shading to make the art style appear as if it were an early 20th century magazine ad, ala Norman Rockwell. Which also offers a clean, uncluttered look... just the opposite of the other Source games. Which works quite well for a multiplayer FPS game that relies heavily on silhouettes like TF2 does.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011