Significant improvements coming to the tech, but Valve won’t join engine licensing fray
Core games giant Valve believes the best way forward for its Source Engine is to continually update and fix the tech, as opposed to a wholesale redesign.
The company has more staff than ever making important enhancements to the engine’s technology, but several staff cooled speculation that a Source Engine 2 project exists.
“There are lot of advantages on iterating on a mature and stable and shipped codebase, as opposed to starting over again,” company president Gabe Newell told Develop.
“I think, when you see a game like DOTA 2, you’ll see how developers can get a lot more out of Source than most companies can get from a scratch-built engine.”
In a newly published interview, Newell said there are no indications that the Washington based company should change its engine update policy.
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“I think that incremental updates model has worked really well for us,” he said.
“Does that mean we’ll reach some architectural tipping-point where we’ll need to change? No. I mean, if Larrabee [Intel’s promising GPU that was cancelled as a consumer device] had shipped that would have probably necessitated some fairly dramatic changes in order to take advantage of it. But, so far we’ve been able to keep the engine moving ahead, robustly. I mean, I think it looks great.”
It means that for the foreseeable future, all Valve games projects will be built on the Source Engine. The tech was first introduced in 2004 – and at the time was a high-end technology – and has transformed considerably in the following years.
Longstanding Valve artist Ted Backman said “people don’t realise how many times we’ve updated the Steam engine over the last seven years. With every one we’ve released we’ve had some kind of new rendering technology, or new modules to the engine.”
But the firm admits that significant updates need to be made to the tech. This is primarily because the numerous game projects have stretched the studio’s internal resources in recent years.
Project director Erik Johnson said “shipping The Orange Box, Left 4 Dead 1, Left 4 Dead 2 and then Portal 2 – basically in a four year time frame – has meant we have to look back at the Source engine again to improve its workflow”.
He added: “We probably have under-invested in those tools in the past, to trade-off against shipping products.”
Team Fortress 2 lead developer Robin Walker told Develop “there’s probably more people than ever” working on updating the Source engine.
“About twenty to thirty core people,” he said.
Working on a string of game projects has left Valve with “straightforward” engine updates to work through, Walker added.
“Hardware’s moved forward, that’s one thing, and the other is the rise of user created content. That’s becoming a big deal for us. We had to address some things for that.”
Develop asked Johnson if there were any ambitions beyond updating the technology, to which he replied: “Probably not. Not that we’re talking about.”
Newell also made it clear that Valve will not be competing for studio contacts with other game engine firms.
Studios have in the past opted against using Source primarily because it initially only supported PC, and then eventually Xbox 360. Only very recently has the tech supported PS3 development. Now with Mac support too, Valve has a powerful engine solution for developers that fits well with its Steam digital games business.
But Valve is not pushing the message. Use Source if you want, the company is saying to external studios, but no pressure.
“We’re really happy if another studio wants to use our engine, but we’re not going to go out there and try and muscle in on what Epic Games does,” Newell said.
“A few people have used our engine, and I think a few more will find it useful now that we have a PS3 edition.
“Y’know, we’re happy if people want to use our tools. We’re also super happy if people want to use Unreal Engine. We’ve worked hard with the guys at Epic Games to integrate Steamworks into Unreal Engine, which we think will be a great solution.
“Our philosophy is always about creating the best value for our customers, but also our partners, and right now I think there’s more value for us to pursue things like the microtransaction part of Steamworks.
"I think if we’d take the microtransaction model away, and instead push harder on getting studios to sign up to Source, I think we wouldn’t be using our time nearly as efficiently.”
Valve’s comments are drawn from a new six-page feature in Develop magazine issue 116.
The feature draws from interviews with ten key staff at the company. It is available online now, and throughout the rest of the week Develop will publish five separate Q&As with key studio staff.
Good, that they're not going to try doing what Epic does, because they would lose. Source is just a terribly outdated engine.
I just hope they'll start using Unreal themselves, or do something about the damn loading screens.
Valve you better come up with a new engine for the next gen. You also better be working on another iteration of Half-Life... Otherwise, really. I have no interest in your company. To continue to milk Source Engine 1 does not show your commitment to making good games, rather it shows your commitment at keeping developing costs down and revenue high. Makes sense, you are a business after all and this is what you should be doing. Just don't screw your fans, you did not become what you are by updating old tech, you did not become what you are without Half-Life. So, give us another Half-Life, and give us a new engine.
Actually, didn't they start with a solid Quake2 engine from the get-go? I think this has always been the strategy... and honestly if they built a new engine from scratch they would be redoing TONS of stuff that has already been debugged in the current source engine... but I digress.
Valve make a new engine, the source engine 2 and stop being cheap asses. you've made millions of your agming franchises now its time to move on for a new era. if u make a new engine make it with half life 3
I don't blame them! It takes some serious man hours to plan a game engine from foundation to roof, and then develop it. I remember in the late 80s when "3D" maze games used to be just geometry, textures and movement. Think about what goes into a modern engine, with all the audio and visual effects, API level support, AI, customization and scaling of all of those features. It's a crushing amout of labor!
The competition is so stiff in the 3D shooter arena that the big developers can't even plan around PC titles because there's no guarantee that they'll make their money back. Even id is aiming for multi-platform. It just doesn't make any sense to build a new engine from scratch when so many can be licensed.
Source Engine wasn't even that great to begin with. For those of us on the lower end of the CPU performance spectrum, it was plauged with performance problems and limitations from the get-go. Even now, it's so inefficient that it brings my GTX 460 card to its knees and tachs my CPU. Crytek, for example, kept up with changes in the DX API and shader model with CE1, and it has withstood the test of time, scaling nicely on newer, faster hardware. So did the id Tech engine behind Doom 3 and Quake 4. Even buggy-as-heck, abandonware Ptero-Engine II improved. Source still chokes with diving frame rates, (sometimes diving to zero for a fraction of a second.)
I'm really shocked that so many people think the Source Engine is a relevant game development framework. Even the crash-plauged BF2 engine--which admittedly has awful looking textures--includes modern level design. I was taken aback when I jumped into the Source mod tools only to discover it was still the same blocky, severely-limited Quake 2 type level design. Good grief! Plus, Source suffers from chalky, flat textures--that is, when they aren't missing. Source's claims to fame were the first high-quality facial animations on NPC models and the first practical demonstration of HDR effects. Other than that, it hit the ground limping as outdated tech, and never caught up with the competitors. There's a reason why it takes four or five years to produce a mod on Source! I also assume that internally Source is such a patchwork of hacks, so it's probably impossible to modernize.
The Source Engine and HL2 were a train wreck from the get-go. I paid a premium price for the 10 hours of gameplay that HL2 offered. However, Valve are dedicated to squashing bugs and so they've repaid that premium many times over with support for a primative game engine, far outside the industry norms. Anyway, they will forever be my favorite because of how Steam changed the market.
@Cervantesmx I couldn't care less about the engine, in fact I'd prefer it to be the same engine as Episode One and Two. They were both my favoutite single player games of all time, they got it perfect for me. If they updated texture packs for players, I'm not sure it would feel the same. Either way, there is nothing wrong with the last three Half life releases, and if the fourth is the same, I will not complain, and I will get ready to pay out £40 for an outdated engine. This is because it's the story and game-play I enjoy half life for, not it's graphics.
Beware all, tis a troll!
I assume it must be, otherwise he's a retard.Firstly, if you're stuggling with FPS on an nvidia 460, it's not the game lol. 170 FPS stable maxed out HD 6950 2GB . Then you say Bf2 had bad graphics? at the time it looked amazing...
These two bits alone the author is either retarded, or a troll.
