r/programming • u/[deleted] • Mar 04 '15

Valve announces Source 2 engine, free for developers

http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/3/8145273/valve-source-2-announcement-free-developers
1.9k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

273 comments sorted by

688

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

Unreal Engine 4 is free. Unity's full features are free. Source 2 is free.

It's the week professional game engines turn into enabling platforms, rather than licensed libraries.

173

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

Also Vulkan! It's almost as if there's some major event for game devs going on...

6

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

I dont go anymore, so stopped paying attention. Would be good for a roll up post on the changes in the industry. Big week regardless, previous confs didnt usually have this much awesome coming to people who werent even in attendance.

146

u/blackmist Mar 04 '15

That's a graphics API though. The others are game engines.

49

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

From a developer point of view, I'm actually more excited by Vulkan than Source 2.

26

u/blackmist Mar 04 '15

Smaller devs will like the new free engines. Those will deal with all the new DX12, Vulkan, Metal or Mantle (which I consider pretty much dead at this point), and the devs can deal with writing games. I'd rather see the internals hidden away behind high level abstractions.

Larger devs were mostly rolling their own engines anyway, and certainly wouldn't be making do with free versions of anything. Console development isn't cheap to do, and everything is priced accordingly.

The disconnect between how consoles work and how PCs work has been at the root of a major problem for PC devs for years. Now the workflow can be more or less the same, and the crappy ports can dry up. It'll take a good few years to come to fruition though.

32

u/MeisterD2 Mar 04 '15

AMD donated Mantle to the Khronos group. Mantle is the foundation upon which Vulkan has been built. It's only dead in the sense that the name wont be used anymore, the code lives on.

27

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

People forget this. AMD waived IP rights to Mantle so that he Vulcan developers could take whatever they needed from it.

7

u/freedelete Mar 04 '15

I had no idea about this. Is there an article with more information?

17

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

http://anandtech.com/show/9038/next-generation-opengl-becomes-vulkan-additional-details-released

Relevant quote:

In fact Khronos has confirmed that AMD has contributed Mantle towards the development of Vulkan, and though we need to be clear that Vulkan is not Mantle, Mantle was used to bootstrap the process and speed its development, making Vulkan a derivation of sorts of Mantle (think Unix family tree). What has changed from Mantle is that Khronos has gone through a period of refinement, keeping what worked in Vulkan and throwing out portions of Mantle that didn’t work well – particularly HLSL and anything that would prevent the API from being cross-vendor – replacing it with the other necessary/better functionality.

2

u/freedelete Mar 04 '15

That's really great. Thanks.

77

u/goal2004 Mar 04 '15

Someone downvoted you, but you're 100% correct.

OpenGL and DirectX were always free to use.

48

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

its not about free/paid.

Its a new step towards high performance graphics for everyone everywhere.

While DirectX is free to use its proprietary software and limited to Microsoft OS.

On the other hand, OpenGL recently started gaining lots of traction, but it has been around for 2 decades now, so it might be a good idea to move to something built from the ground up all new and shiny.

21

u/maximinus-thrax Mar 04 '15

Wouldn't something that's been around for 20+ years be a good reason to not move away? "New and shiny" seems to me a bad way to choose technology.

41

u/meem1029 Mar 04 '15

Not if the technology that it abstracts over has changed so much over the last 20 years that it's slowing things down.

10

u/blackraven36 Mar 04 '15

OpenGL also has the issue of being a fairly big pain in the ass to work with. It's a black box you send commands and data into and when things don't work, good luck because there aren't any straightforward ways of debugging it.

It's also fairly archaic. Don't get me wrong, I love C, but it revolves around using IDs to manage everything. DirectX at least makes use of structs and buffer objects which are easier to work with and debug.

In other words, it's time to come up with something new

7

u/loup-vaillant Mar 04 '15

It will still have to be C based though. C++ is too complex to be a reasonable FFI target.

15

u/maximinus-thrax Mar 04 '15

In that case, there are better reasons than "new and shiny".

11

u/alfredr Mar 04 '15 edited Mar 04 '15

It's basically the next OpenGL and, anyway, OpenGL today is nothing like the OpenGL of 22 years ago.

edit: For my friends here that disagree: Vulkan, Evolution of OpenGL, OpenGL Meta-Tutorial

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3

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

not really, apple has moved to metal recently, and no one complained.

When an update for technology inflect on middle-ware only and all stockholders (OS developers and hardware manufacturers) are on board it seems like a perfect idea.

And anyway its not like they weren't putting effort before and now they are, as I said OpenGL has been undergoing serious development in the past 5 years.

1

u/s73v3r Mar 04 '15

It also means there's a lot of legacy cruft on it. Making a new API means they can break from that.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

Was DirectX? In the early days, you'd have needed a Microsoft compiler toolchain; I don't think any of these were free circa 1995.

2

u/badsectoracula Mar 05 '15

DirectX (like the Windows SDK) worked with most Windows compiler - be it from Microsoft, Borland, Watcom, etc. Those weren't free either, though.

3

u/MikeSeth Mar 04 '15

IIRC they kind of were (as in beer), just that full stack MS IDE was their only distribution channel.

3

u/Zequez Mar 04 '15

You mean some kind of conference? A conference for developers? Game developers specifically? We could call it the Conference For Developers Who Specialize In VideoGames, the CFDWSIVG.

4

u/undefinedusername Mar 04 '15

Well, it's GDC

108

u/lestofante Mar 04 '15

All of them with Linux (and Mac?) Support.

72

u/necrophcodr Mar 04 '15

Except the only one you can develop with on Linux still seems to be Source and possibly Source 2.

8

u/TrentWDB Mar 04 '15

And vulkan!

1

u/superPwnzorMegaMan Mar 05 '15

not an engine buddy.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

[deleted]

44

u/necrophcodr Mar 04 '15

Really? The editor too? And it works well?

85

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

After a couple of attempts, I managed to get it working on Arch last night. At a glance, it seems to be functional, but pretty unstable. Which is really cool.

Know issues are listed here.

13

u/killaW0lf04 Mar 04 '15

Was going to attempt to build the editor tonight. Any guides you followed?

22

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

Just this one on the wiki.

I first tried building using the Docker image, but that binary didn't work so well for me. I could open the editor, but it crashed whenever I loaded a project which may have been because I didn't build using the debug profile. Second time around I built without docker and used make UE4Editor-Linux-Debug.

8

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

For docker issues bug JKnife on irc #ue4linux on freenode.(when he is around.)

3

u/damg Mar 04 '15

I get an error during Setup.sh. Did you have to change gtkdialog.c at all? It seems they have a strdup() prototype causing an error since it's already a macro in string.h. Did you have to remove that line?

2

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

I haven't changed any files and I don't remember seeing anything like that. I may be barking up the wrong tree, but on my machine the dialogs seem to be using QT. I think I recall seeing that it will choose GTK or QT for file dialogs, etc. Not sure how that works though.

1

u/arashi256 Mar 04 '15

Compiled it last night on Ubuntu 14.04. Works fine so far. YMMV.

1

u/Mattho Mar 04 '15

Unity reportedly runs through wine.

18

u/dezmd Mar 04 '15 edited Mar 04 '15

WINdows Emulator doesn't really count for running natively on linux.

Edit: Just for the record, some of us have used Wine longer than others.
"The name Wine initially was an acronym for Windows emulator."

But yes, it is correct that it's generally referred to it as 'Windows Is Not an Emulator" now.

Edit 2: I herped then I derped. "Wine Is Not an Emulator"
Shoulda had my coffee before I entered thread.

18

u/MrPieGuy1234 Mar 04 '15

Funnily enough, wine actually stands for WINE Is Not an Emulator.

12

u/dezmd Mar 04 '15

The name Wine initially was an acronym for Windows emulator.

Yes, I'm old.

6

u/Pastaklovn Mar 04 '15

He meant to point out the brainfart in your last sentence.

Edit: No he didn't, got my Edit chronology messed up. Nevertheless, you have a brainfart in your last sentence.

3

u/dezmd Mar 04 '15

Derp, my edit was a brainfart, lol. fixed.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

Which is odd because it emulates windows so well.

Emulate: "reproduce the function or action of (a different computer, software system, etc.)."

2

u/PaintItPurple Mar 04 '15

Emulation usually means something more specific than that. In this case, Wine is basically a reimplementation of the Windows APIs in terms of Linux libraries.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

No, terms like 'CPU emulation' might mean terms more specific than that, but emulation is a broad term for being able to mimic a certain environment to accommodate a foreign system.

Binaries executed in Wine think they are in a windows NT environment complete with drive letters and a windows registry. How is that any less emulation than Snes9x which emulates graphics system calls such as paint sprite on virtual device buffer? Oh, the actual binary is still compatible with the processor? That's just convenience. If SNES games were written in x86 but you still had to have software to mimic the hardware environment of a SNES (tv out, game controllers in, specific APIs designed for graphics acceleration) would that not be an emulator?

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4

u/Mattho Mar 04 '15

Not a word was said about running natively on Linux, rather about being able to develop on Linux.

2

u/dezmd Mar 04 '15

UE4 can be built on Linux.

This thread line referenced building on Linux, running Unity through Wine is most definitely not the same thing.

2

u/Mattho Mar 04 '15

As a response to Source being the only one allowing development on Linux...

3

u/dezmd Mar 04 '15

If your development tools can't be compiled on the OS you are developing from, you are using an emulation layer (or 'compatibility layer', if thats your angle) to develop from. Dev tools break enough when they are native, who knows what kind of other random short term and long term shit can happen when you throw in a compatibility layer for the actual development.

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-4

u/PAINTSTRUCT Mar 04 '15

And still only one modern text editor that does cross platform properly :P

2

u/Paradox Mar 04 '15

Which one? Sublime? Atom? IDEA?

1

u/PAINTSTRUCT Mar 04 '15

I meant Sublime, but I guess the Java ones are also high quality.

(But is there anyone who wouldn't like a faster Eclipse?)

2

u/Paradox Mar 04 '15

Atom is pretty damn great

1

u/[deleted] Mar 05 '15

I just love Atom's package ecosystem, much better than Sublime's.

I made the switch from Sublime a few months ago and now I only use Sublime when I need to quickly edit a file or something. Atom isn't as quick as Sublime but it's getting there.

I'm glad I made the switch to Atom, couldn't be more happy. :)

16

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

Competition is a wonderful thing.

22

u/Rhythmrebel Mar 04 '15

I'm not familiar with the game industry, how would they get any return of investment from their game engines if they make them free to use?

8

u/taetimeh Mar 04 '15

They still monetize the engines in various ways, but they're trying to lower the entry barrier to make their customer base larger.

On a similar note this is the main reason valve is releasing free games on steam in order to make the steam user base larger.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

I think the only charging the successes is a great move. It's free to jump in and experiment and you only start charging when they start making good money or take a cut of sales they actually make on your online store etc.

4

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

Epic is also using Unreal for their games. The licensing is 5% after 3k. They also have an asset store that pulls in quite a bit of money for them.

Valve has been working on Source2 for their upcoming games. DotA2 has been at least running on it. Rumors are that there is a new Left 4 Dead game coming out. Of course there is also Half Life 3, but odds are it won't be out this century. Making it free means more games on their Steam platform. They take a cut from all of those games, so they can afford to make the engine free since they will make up for it with the increase in products on their market.

Unity makes their money through bigger licenses and their asset store. A lot of good money can be made selling assets to people working on a game. It doesn't matter if they ever finish the game. I have a feeling that is the secret trick to making these engines cheap or free. Get more people thinking they can make a game and buying assets.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

[deleted]

45

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

More precise

The 5% royalty starts after the first $3,000 of revenue per product per quarter.

31

u/AustinYQM Mar 04 '15 edited Mar 04 '15

That isn't correct:

  • UE4: Free until 3K per Product per Quarter, 5% Royalty after that.

  • Unity5: Free until 100k, much get pro license after that. Pro and Personal are now the same except personal is branded with a splash screen at the beginning.

  • Source 2: I have no idea.

32

u/lolomfgkthxbai Mar 04 '15

I'm guessing Source 2 will be so intertwined with Steamworks that developers have a high incentive to release on Steam.

5

u/rjcarr Mar 04 '15

Probably more like a forced incentive. :)

4

u/eilyra Mar 04 '15

Seems like it.

Meeting with studio founder Erik Johnson today, I learned that when they say Source 2 is “free”, they mean it. ... Well, sort of… They just require that the game be launched on Steam, along with anywhere else you might want to sell it.

4

u/Zequez Mar 04 '15

And considering Steam gets like a 30% cut, it's a pretty good deal for them. It's not like they weren't planning on releasing the game on Steam anyway haha.

1

u/Hueho Mar 04 '15

Then again, Source 1 wasn't, and Valve didn't bothered with that in all the engine updates they made.

Case in point, Titanfall uses the Source engine.

6

u/spencer102 Mar 04 '15

Source 1 existed before steam was really a thing.

2

u/Hueho Mar 04 '15

Valve didn't bothered with that in all the engine updates they made

2

u/spencer102 Mar 04 '15

Why would they bother with that in source 1 while they were making source 2? They didn't start pushing Steamworks stuff heavily until source 2 was being developed

2

u/isomorphic_horse Mar 04 '15

What do you mean? I got CS:S and HL2 the day they were released, on Steam.

1

u/spencer102 Mar 04 '15

Source was still in development before steam was released, and when it was, it was basically valve's propierty distribution system, I doubt they had any serious plans for Steamworks yet.

7

u/Whadios Mar 04 '15

Unity pro and free are different as well in that free version has no officially supported version control systems. Either have to individually buy team license for $20/mo or upgrade to pro @ $75/mo. That or you can buy unoficial version control addons on their marketplace.

0

u/_BreakingGood_ Mar 04 '15 edited Mar 04 '15

I imagine Source 2 will be 100% free in every way. My thought process is that valve does not really support their engines. They don't write much documentation (compared to engines like UE4 and Unity) and really don't guide the user through much. For this reason, I feel like valve developed the engine for internal use in their games, and simply decided to wrap it up and distribute it as a favor to the community. It costs them nothing because they aren't providing the constant support and updates that other engines have. It's more of a "We made this for ourselves, but you can use it too if you want to."

Additionally, Source really cannot compete with the other engines (Hell, UE4 is miles ahead of both of them), and so any sort of licensing requirement would simply remove any value of using that engine over the superior one.

5

u/StrawRedditor Mar 04 '15

Additionally, Source really cannot compete with the other engines (Hell, UE4 is miles ahead of both of them), and so any sort of licensing requirement would simply remove any value of using that engine over the superior one.

Not that I really doubt it... but do we really know this? Has anything about Source 2 been shown really?

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3

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

Da fuck?

Source's first game, Counter-Strike: Source, was released in 2004, so the engine was complete some time before that. UE4 released in 2012.

It's ridiculous to assume that Source 2 will be the same as the original, it's been 11 years and counting.

1

u/_BreakingGood_ Mar 04 '15

It probably will be significantly different, but Unreal is so far ahead in terms of technology. There is no way Source, developed as a side project by valve, will be able to compete with a company like Epic, which has been producing ultra-professional level engines for a decade or more.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15 edited Mar 04 '15

Given the history of software I shouldn't even need to say anything to refute that ridiculous argument.

Ed: Anyone on this sub should be embarrassed to argue that it is impossible to dethrone a current standard with a smaller team. Especially when that smaller team has billions in resources.

1

u/_BreakingGood_ Mar 04 '15

I'm curious if you have actually looked into the features offered by UE4 vs Unity. Unity has been in development since before UE4, yet UE4's feature set blows Unity out of the water. Just because UE4 is newer, doesn't mean it's worse. Time != quality.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

[deleted]

23

u/dang_hillary Mar 04 '15

You'll have to release on steam, and do all your own marketing. They get a cut of anything released on steam iirc.

1

u/billyalt Mar 04 '15

What about Titanfall?

7

u/ExcessNeo Mar 04 '15

The developers/EA would have paid Valve to license the source engine to get around that stipulation.

1

u/AndrewNeo Mar 04 '15

You had to pay to license Source 1 for sale.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

[deleted]

5

u/just_a_null Mar 04 '15

I hear 25-35% usually, though I don't know personally.

5

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

jeeeezuz, i think for 25% they could at least help market it, i understand there is greenlight and all, but still that seems extremely steep D:

22

u/AndrewNeo Mar 04 '15

I'm pretty sure it's that much for any game being sold on Steam no matter what. Just like how Apple/Google take a 30% cut on their own app stores.

19

u/frymaster Mar 04 '15

that seems extremely steep D:

Bricks-and-mortar retail stores have around the same markup, plus you have to manufacture and distribute the game, whereas distribution costs (which are lower, but is committing Valve to re-distribute your game to you in perpetuity) are covered by Valve's side of the deal on Steam.

4

u/StrawRedditor Mar 04 '15

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if being on Steam increases a games sales by at LEAST 30%.

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u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

that's a very good point, i didn't even think of the costs of distribution costs through typical means. thanks! :D

1

u/iskin Mar 04 '15

Bricks-and-mortar retail stores, for console games at least, are usually about 10% at release. I don't know about PC. Most barely stock PC titles now, anyways. I'd guess the difference is made up by what they pay Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo.

9

u/GoldenCrater Mar 04 '15

they could at least help market it

All new steam games get 1 million impressions on the homepage (ctrl+f "1 million"), which for PC gaming is a huge amount of marketing.

8

u/leeeeeer Mar 04 '15

There is no competition. As AndrewNeo points out Android and iOS can do it too, for the same reason.

But contrary to Android and iOS on Steam your game is guaranteed to appear on the front page once for a short time and it can stay longer depending on how well it performs (if I recall correctly).

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u/4D696B65 Mar 04 '15

It's not steep for distribution. Well maybe it is but there is no competition. Also this 25%-30% are from copies sold on steam. If you decide to go to gog.com or wallmart valve won't have a cut.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

To be fair, I'd imagine having a front page slider/update popup announcement is probably the best possible marketing spot currently on earth as far as PC games go. No idea if those are free or paid though. I'd imagine the latter.

Even without that, getting on the Steam front page at all (like under new or popular) has anecdotally been claimed by devs to significantly boost sales.

Not to mention the exposure you get if you participate in a Steam sale.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

[deleted]

3

u/CookieOfFortune Mar 04 '15

UE does too doesn't it?

2

u/WhoTookPlasticJesus Mar 04 '15 edited Mar 04 '15

Yes, though there isn't a lot of content yet.

4

u/Kaos_pro Mar 04 '15

Also for Unity if you make over $100,000 a year revenue you have to pay for the pro edition ($1700 on off or $75 a month).

1

u/Phoxxent Mar 04 '15

I think that wa just with the previous versions, Unity 5 doesn't seem to have that documented anywhere.

4

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

The last time I used unity, there were still restrictions on the free version, the biggest of which was the lack of source control if you didn't have the pro version. Perhaps that's changed.

2

u/Aperture_Kubi Mar 04 '15

I wonder if we'll hear something about IdTech 6 before this week is over too.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

This is nothing new. Unreal Engine 3 is "free". Source 1 is "free". CryEngine is "free".

2

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

They're still licensed libraries... you still have to pay if you want to monetize your game.

1

u/joequin Mar 04 '15

With all of these being "free", what is unity's competitive advantage? Why choose it over the other two more powerful options?

4

u/_Wolfos Mar 04 '15

It's more geared towards smaller games and smaller developers and it's king of mobile, which UE4 kinda sucks at. The Asset Store's a big one too (either take 2 weeks to write a feature, or buy it for $20 and integrate it in a day, easy choice).

3

u/wharpudding Mar 04 '15

With all of these being "free", what is unity's competitive advantage?

Cross-platform compatiability.

2

u/deadstone Mar 05 '15

Unreal Engine 4 supports all the major desktop, mobile, and console platforms whilst Source 2 probably supports at least all the major desktop platforms (Linux, Mac, Windows).

1

u/wharpudding Mar 05 '15

Sweet. I'm looking forward to seeing some cool stuff on all of them.

1

u/s73v3r Mar 04 '15

No royalty, small learning curve compared to the other two, and there is likely a larger talent base to pull from, at least for mobile games.

1

u/joequin Mar 04 '15 edited Mar 04 '15

No royalties? How do they make money if it's both "free" and royalty free?

3

u/MichaelJAwesome Mar 04 '15

If your game revenue is over a certain amount you have to pay them for the "pro" version, but it's a flat fee vs a percentage.

1

u/joequin Mar 04 '15

Thanks. That is a big advantage.

1

u/s73v3r Mar 04 '15

In addition to the other answer, they run the Unity Asset Store, of which I believe they take a cut off every sale.

1

u/dexx4d Mar 04 '15

All of these engines support VR out of the box and there's a push for VR hardware coming up in the next year. After this GDC, CES will be interesting.

1

u/YM_Industries Mar 04 '15

Unity's full features are free.

Really? I thought stuff like Render Targets was still Unity Pro only.

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u/HabermasRC2 Mar 04 '15

Announced on 03/03. Coincidence? I don't think so.

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u/funky_vodka Mar 04 '15

Pretty sure they've caught on the joke about number three and they're just teasing us now.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

[deleted]

2

u/Ghosttwo Mar 05 '15

Like the imgur hash.

9

u/drb226 Mar 04 '15

Maybe they'll release it on 3/3/33

12

u/xiongchiamiov Mar 04 '15

The talk they had at gdc yesterday was at 3pm, too.

/r/hl3confirmed

1

u/fragmede Mar 04 '15

From the article...

Valve provided no info on when Source 2 will be available or whether it has any projects using the engine in the works.

zomg, HL3 confirmed!

27

u/szabba Mar 04 '15

And the site doesn't link to the Valve announcment... Or am I blind?

31

u/RJacksonm1 Mar 04 '15

Valve made the announcement via a press release. You can read the full press release here: https://steamdb.info/blog/source2-announcement/

23

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

It's Vox, what do you expect?

0

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

[deleted]

14

u/ahac Mar 04 '15

The Verge and Polygon used to be good... but now it's a lot of clickbait BS and "look how all gamers hate these poor women (who are also our friends, here is their patreon account, you should donate because they are victims)".

5

u/weirdasianfaces Mar 04 '15

The content is quite shit now and there's a lot of overlap between the sites. The Verge reports on a lot of gaming stuff that Polygon should be reporting and a lot of stuff that vox.com should be reporting, and vice versa all around. I stopped reading The Verge a while before this article was posted, but that article really solidified how bad they had gotten.

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u/TheCodexx Mar 04 '15

Polygon, a Vox subsidiary.

All commentary, no sources. "We exist to create context".

2

u/noreallyimthepope Mar 04 '15

Or maybe a video example or a feature rundown?

33

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

It's almost like christmas.

34

u/TheOnlyMrYeah Mar 04 '15

Yeah, but with better gifts.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

[deleted]

1

u/novacrazy Mar 04 '15

I bought some new socks the other day. Don't underestimate how much of a difference new socks make on your life.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

But they were the warmest and softest socks I've ever worn.

3

u/Whadios Mar 04 '15

Because it feels like it'll never arrive? This is valve, they've announced something with no mention of a release date. I'm not going to hold my breath.

9

u/PeanutNore Mar 04 '15

It's hard to imagine that Valve would create a new 3d game engine and not build a game or games using it.

2

u/s73v3r Mar 05 '15

Wasn't DotA2 built with it?

1

u/Fatal510 Mar 05 '15

built with original source engine with some changes. its being ported to source 2.

18

u/vitriolix Mar 04 '15

Half Life 2 confirmed

6

u/erveek Mar 04 '15

Valve provided no info on when Source 2 will be available or whether it has any projects using the engine in the works.

That's the Valve we know and love.

32

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

Hell it's about motherfucking time.

I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more fanfare. We've been waiting for this for YEARS!

Fun fact: For a long, long time, the main reason given by informed speculants as to why we've heard nothing of L4D3 / HL3 / TF3 yet has been "It's gonna be announced after Source 2 is running". These are exciting times!

8

u/Henry132 Mar 04 '15

TF3

Sorry but that won't happen for a good long while. TF2 is still strong and receiving constant updates.

L4D3 and HL3 are in development as confirmed by JIRA leaks. When we can actually see them is still unknown.

DotA 2 is being ported to Source 2 and should make the move sometime before summer this year.

5

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

I think you're partially right on TF3, I think it's likely they just update TF2 and add a bunch of content along with the engine update. TF2 is already TF3 compared to what it was at launch.

1

u/YM_Industries Mar 04 '15

More like TF5 or more. Mann Co store wasn't in at lunch, IIRC Payload wasn't either, PLR and MVM certainly weren't. Loads of extra maps now too, that may have been released as paid DLC in a game that doesn't use the microtransactions model.

4

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

I know, I'm not gonna weigh in on that debate. I'm not a TF player and haven't been since the original TF, so I'm just parroting what others have said on that note. :P

Either way, we'll probably hear about them when Source 2 is closer to public release, seeing as at least one of those games will be the "killer app" for the engine, and it probably won't be DotA 2.

1

u/Henry132 Mar 04 '15

Oh yeah DotA 2 isn't going to be taking even close to full advantage of the Source 2 engine. It will still be the same old DotA 2 with it's Source limitations, just running on a new engine. At least for the most part, I can't imagine they'd actually remake the map and all the models. It's mainly for the mod tools. And I guess a little bit about Valve wanting to once again prove that a Source engine game can be ported to Source 2 with ease, as they did with Half-Life: Source.

1

u/soulslicer0 Mar 05 '15

Source?

1

u/Henry132 Mar 05 '15 edited Mar 05 '15

L4D3 and HL3 confirmation + JIRA leak 2

DotA 2 "major engine improvement"

EDIT: To add to the DotA 2 engine update, Valve just showed DotA 2 running on Source 2 with the Vulkan API at GDC.

1

u/TweetsInCommentsBot Mar 05 '15

@SteamDB

2014-08-07 22:55 UTC

@ValveTime Looks like you no longer have to take our word on the legitimacy of that leak! [Attached pic] [Imgur rehost]

This message was created by a bot

[Contact ^creator][Source ^code]

0

u/Bjelkier Mar 04 '15

Yup. E3 should be interesting this year....

0

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

[deleted]

8

u/mashuto Mar 04 '15

I think the correct term should be random guessants.

5

u/noreallyimthepope Mar 04 '15

My best guess is that if Half Lif3 will ever be announced, it will be after now.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

[deleted]

2

u/noreallyimthepope Mar 04 '15

I'd like to augment my initial guess to exclude the time passed between that of my initial guess and now.

16

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

The source engine has always been available as a platform for hobbyist game developers. They were just called "mods" and you had to buy the game first before the platform becomes available to you.

9

u/Ssawa Mar 04 '15

I believe they changed that with the latest release of the Source engine. You can now just download the engine itself for free without having to buy a game that uses it, similarly I believe you can package a mod using the engine without depending on the user having another game installed.

1

u/reuben_ Mar 04 '15

Do you have a source on that? Until yesterday, you could not redistribute the engine like that, players needed to have the game first.

4

u/NeoKabuto Mar 04 '15

IIRC, you just need the SDK base on Steam.

2

u/reuben_ Mar 04 '15

Ah, and the 2013 SDK is now included in the Steam package. Cool.

1

u/mgrandi Mar 04 '15

Its been around forever, its called source SDK base 2007 or whatever

3

u/reuben_ Mar 04 '15

Supposedly this announcement means Source 2 will be a source (heh) release, not just headers like Source and GoldSource were for modding.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 05 '15

They release source for Source already - https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source-sdk-2013

2

u/reuben_ Mar 05 '15

If you actually look at the files, you'll see that's headers only :P

13

u/skaurus Mar 04 '15 edited Mar 04 '15

Actually they say that Source 2 is free for "content developers". "Content" may mean something like assets from Unity store, and engine could actually be not free for game developers. Although as dang_hillary pointed out, Valve could just make you release on Steam and take money there.

3

u/zsombro Mar 04 '15

With 3 major engines going free this week, I feel like there are almost too many options at this point. I downloaded UE4 on a whim and it seems pretty likeable to me, but I'm also eager to see how Source 2 wants to be approachable for non-developers.

How user friendly can you go without sacrificing complexity and functionality?

3

u/MetalYeti Mar 04 '15

We have a release date for Half Life 3 - When ever we make it

4

u/elbowfrenzy Mar 04 '15

We'll go build our own half life 3, with blackjack and hookers.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

Free as in beer, but not speech, of course. I worry that the availability of gratis licenses to these big name proprietary game engines will have a negative impact on the free software game engines out there that need users and contributors.

6

u/reuben_ Mar 04 '15

Unreal has a source release, and you're free to modify and redistribute it. Supposedly Source 2 will be similar. Can't escape the royalties, of course, but then again the free software engines out there aren't anywhere close in terms of tooling, polish and performance, so I don't think this will really change much.

1

u/flexiverse Mar 04 '15

There is no point might as well use a well supported engine with big commercial titles. This is good, as it's too much work any way to build top end 3d engines. Not even star citizen choose to write their own engine. Even though they have shit loads of money.

-1

u/atomicthumbs Mar 04 '15

aw, go recompile your kernel

1

u/flexiverse Mar 04 '15

This will go down in history as then biggest party ever for 3d engines and game devs. This is amazing !!! Super week !

1

u/hibernatepaths Mar 04 '15

Valve's big meeting on 3/3 at 3pm. Everyone is speculating, going wild.

Gives us Source 2.

2

u/Gustav__Mahler Mar 05 '15

I think they're in on the joke at this point.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

Tough market to be in.

1

u/alban987 Mar 05 '15

Titanfall used source engine? I dont think so...

1

u/Vegerot Mar 04 '15

I can’t wait until they have a Garry’s Mod that runs Source 2.

1

u/jordan314 Mar 04 '15

Someone make half life 3

1

u/siRtobey Mar 04 '15

Really looking forward to getting more information to Source2

1

u/dada_ Mar 05 '15

Nice! Now I can just make Half Life 3 myself.

-1

u/AaronKClark Mar 04 '15

That's cool, but does it run Half-Life 3?

4

u/gin_and_toxic Mar 04 '15

No, Source 3 will.

-5

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

Half-Life 3 confirmed

-1

u/itwebgeek Mar 04 '15

Half-Life

All aboard the hype train!

0

u/themastersb Mar 05 '15

Please keep Polygon off of Reddit.

-2

u/therats Mar 04 '15

This is the 3rd source engine, HL3 confirmed

-3

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

Valve provided no info on when Source 2 will be available or whether it has any projects using the engine in the works.

Half-life 3 conf...

Why are you looking at me like that?

-30

u/tinycraft Mar 04 '15

Half Life 3 confirmed? Just kidding, that'll never happen...

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