The FULL Capabilty of the source engine..

[Sufferin-rebel]

We have seen the FULL Capabilty of the Quake 2 engine

We even seen the FULL capabiltys of the Modified Quake 1 engine for Half-life 1

My question is.. What will be the FUTURE FULL Capabiltys of the Source engine

 

[Ames]

I believe Nightwatch is a better measure of quality for the level of detail capable in HL as HL:E does not change the geometry of the original HL levels much.

http://hl-nightwatch.net/

 

[SimonomiS]

Much too early to tell at the moment. Don't have a clue how flexible and expandable Source is myself.

 

[jondy]

In order for it to compete with next-gen engines it needs a rehaul of its shadowing. Shader-wise, Source is pretty much there already.

 

[diluted]

Wow, how do you get those kind of graphics in Quake2? What is the engine modification called? I'm gonna have to find my Quake2 CD.

 

[Ames]

Quake 2 Evolved.

http://www.quake2evolved.com/news.htm

 

[FictiousWill]

Har, source is quake 2 still. Want to see the best it has to offer? Lost coast at a pinch. Then next gen engines take over.

 

[OCybrManO]

Want to see the best it has to offer? Lost coast at a pinch. Then next gen engines take over.

That's not necessarily true... if we're still talking about the maximum potential of the Source engine in the future (the topic of this thread).

If Valve ever releases the full Half-Life 2 source code (not just the SDK) people could modify it as extensively as they did with the Tenebrae project for the original Quake engine to add fancy new features. After all of the updates and the switch to the Q3 map format in the second version (still not officially released... and it looks like development, or at least news on their site, has slowed to a halt), the Tenebrae team was able to crank out stuff that looks almost as technologically advanced as Doom 3. The only problem with this is where you draw the line on the engine's name. After how many modifications does the engine cease to be considered a modified Quake engine and start to be a whole new engine in and of itself?

Also, there's the possibility that Valve will update the Source engine like that as new features show up on their own rather than leaving it with a static feature-set. They said something about it before the game was released. That was one of the reasons they wanted to use Steam, IIRC. Whether or not they will go through with that remains to be seen.

 

[Sufferin-rebel]

heh.. and would u believe that in HL:Enhanced (a overhaul of Half life) will have ragdolls? and it aint even on the source engine

 

[Cole]

The Q1 and Q2 engine have the source code released..... So technically you can pimp it out to however far you want.... Now if this was the Quake 2 SDK, vs Source SDK...then... umm...yeah..

 

[Epsi]

Yeh, Source is very much an un-static thing. It's my personal bet that all Valve games from now on are going to run on the same version of Source. So when HL3 rolls around, for example, those updates will be applied to HL2, CS:S, etc.

 

[diluted]

I tried Q2 Evolved but it crashes a few seconds after I join a multiplayer server. Which makes it pretty much useless, because I don't want to play through the single player.

 

[Beerdude26]

OMG @ Q2 : E , how much fps do you get on that thing?

 

[StardogChampion]

It's hardly fair to use the first screenshot, since it's source code has been changed.

One reason we're not seeing any truly amazing maps for HL2 yet are just because the default hl2 textures are a bit... meh. Even the CS:S ones are pretty mehhhh too. Even nicely mapped maps look lame because of the run-down texture sets.

Hopefully some guy will come out of the blue with some sexy custom textured map he's been working on...