Next-Gen Source 2 Engine Is In Development

[MuToiD_MaN]

Exciting times, fellas.

 

[The RaDaMaNt]

Gabe leads us to new era of gaming:bounce:

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

I think that is a lot of promising projects that may not necessarily constitute a completely changed engine, but on their own may be more meaningful than graphical improvements.

As for their current achievements, I think Source still has several very important advantages over other state of the art engines: facial animations, highly-perfected AI companions, good physics with game-play relevance, hybrid of lighting technologies that produce excellent visual results, measurement of players' state and adjusting game mechanics accordingly.
All those served far better to refine game-play and provide them with narrative techniques leaps and bounds ahead of other games, than the pursuit of higher general rendering capabilities, like in the case of CryEngine.

I think L4D has some great AI and Portal 2 has some great NPC animation, but the current Source engine branch is far from being an elite engine. CSGO still doesn't have full blown global illuminization, physics are a bit clunky and alot of textures still look like from Quake 1 (being low res). I know gameplay is more important, but I think visual fidelity is pretty important when it comes to art assets. A benchmark franchise like Half-Life needs that jump in tech that makes you say 'wow, that was ****ing amazing'

Its important to note that Valve said they haven't had a chance to make serious upgrades to the engine because they've been busy making games, making Steam better, etc. So I'm excited to hear what Gabe has to say about all of this.

 

[WildBeλ³st]

FapTime!

 

[LilJoe]

class ENGINE( object ):
'''
Known engine names
'''
SOURCE = 'Source'
SOURCE2 = 'Source 2'
SFM = 'SFM'
HYBRID = 'Hybrid'
ALL = 'All'
SOURCE_FAMILY = ( SOURCE, SFM )
SOURCE2_FAMILY = ( SOURCE2, HYBRID )
ALL_ENGINES = ( SOURCE,
SOURCE2,
SFM,
HYBRID
)


Interesting.....

 

[Trooper]

Nice find and thanks for posting!

 

[ACelibateClergy]

class ENGINE( object ):
'''
Known engine names
'''
SOURCE = 'Source'
SOURCE2 = 'Source 2'
SFM = 'SFM'
HYBRID = 'Hybrid'
ALL = 'All'
SOURCE_FAMILY = ( SOURCE, SFM )
SOURCE2_FAMILY = ( SOURCE2, HYBRID )
ALL_ENGINES = ( SOURCE,
SOURCE2,
SFM,
HYBRID
)


Interesting.....

Hybrid could just be a term for a hybrid between Source 1 and Source 2 for something, maybe a cinematic. I wouldn't read that far into it. It would seem so with the "SOURCE_FAMILY" term.

 

[scherzo]

Nah, better wait for Source 8

Nah, I`m gonna wait for Source 2 Episode 1 =P

 

[LilJoe]

That whole thing is code I found in a file called "constants.py".

Here's another interesting one I think:

if engine == 'Source':
# Example: C:\Dev\tools\python\generic
pyPath = Path( r'{0}\python\generic'.format( toolsDir, version, arch ) ).unresolved()
else:
# Example: C:\Dev\source2\main\game\sdktools\python\2.6\win32
pyPath = Path( r'{0}\python\{1}\{2}'.format( toolsDir, version, arch ) ).unresolved()
return pyPath

That path in the second example seems to indicate the devs have a directory for Source 2.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

Hybrid could just be a term for a hybrid between Source 1 and Source 2 for something, maybe a cinematic. I wouldn't read that far into it. It would seem so with the "SOURCE_FAMILY" term.

Did a little research and I found out Hybrid is a Source engine game for Xbox live marketplace, a 3rd person sci-fi shooter.

A little peculiar it mentions Hybrid in the same light as SFM, Source and Source 2. Is the game hybrid just coincidence and also a name of an engine at Valve, or its basically just the game? Hmm.

 

[LilJoe]

Uhhh, this isn't about Source 2 or anything, but I did find a VTF file named "borealis.vtf". Now why would that be in SFM........

 

[LilJoe]

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SourceFilmmaker\game\hl2\materials\environment maps\borealis_003.vtf"

 

[LilJoe]

No joke, if you do a search for "borealis" in windows explorer in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SourceFilmmaker\game\hl2", you will get a good amount of stuff. Lots of VTF's.

 

[-smash-]

That is a recycled art asset. IIRC, it's been there since HL2 was released.

 

[Warped Dan]

Totally read this on Engadget which was nice

http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/06/valve-source-2-rumor/

Was not expecting to read that of all things from my favorite tech site besides this one so to speak

 

[-smash-]

A rather large Update... 64 bit? New filesystem?


Update #2

J*Rod from Facepunch has noted a few new things in his recap. First, now there's some evidence that suggests Source 2 will take more advantage of 64-bit systems. You can find the reference at:

".../SourceFilmmaker/game/sdktools/python/global/lib/site-packages/vproj/vprojUI.py"

Line 1540:

# Disable 64-bit for 32-bit projects​

if ( self.engine in ENGINE.SOURCE_FAMILY ) or ( self.engine == ENGINE.HYBRID ):​

self***n32bitCheckBox.setChecked( True )​

self***n32bitCheckBox.setDisabled( True )​

else:​

self***n32bitCheckBox.setDisabled( False )​

From what I can understand, this if/else statement is disabling 64-bit for 32-bit projects that are from either the Source, SFM (the 2nd engine from SOURCE_FAMILY), or Hybrid engines. But, it's not disabling 64-bit for Source 2, so the take away here is that it's suggesting Source 2 supports 64-bit. But it's not for sure as I don't understand the entirety of the code.

You'll remember that Valve had implemented support for 64-bit in Source way back in 2005 with the release of The Lost Coast, but Valve hasn't added the support to any of their other games due to some cases of poor performance and glitches.

Second, currently Valve's game models are of the MDL format. Well, it appears that Valve will be moving to a new format, VMDL. And the "V" prefix is popping up all over the place. VGAME, VPROJ, VMOD, VMDL, etc, which could support the fact that they're going to use a new filesystem and pipeline. From:

".../SourceFilmmaker/game/sdktools/python/global/lib/site-packages/filesystem/valve.py"

Line 138:

'''A "Valve Path" is one that is relative to a mod - in either the game or content tree.​

​

Ie: if you have a project with the content dir: d:/content and the game dir: d:/game​

a "Valve Path" looks like this: models/awesomeProps/coolThing.vmdl​

​

To resolve this path one must look under each mod the current project inherits from.​

So a project "test" which inherits from "another" would result in the following searches:​

d:/content/test/models/awesomeProps/coolThing.vmdl​

d:/content/another/models/awesomeProps/coolThing.vmdl...'''​

And just as well, the key values that current Source games have are stored in a file called gameinfo.txt. It looks like Source 2 games will be storing these values in a gameinfo.gi.

 

[Damic]

LilJoe: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2456534&page=43#642

 

[tenyuhuang]

For the new icons, did anyone remember that Valve said they're working on new Source SDK tools due to frequent complaint from the developer community on outdated editor and tools in the official Source SDK wiki?