First introduced in 2004, Valve’s Source engine has come a long way and undergone numerous improvements over the years. As part of a series of Q&A sessions with Valve, Develop-Online has shed some light on the inner workings of the PC gaming and digital distribution powerhouse.
One topic they broached was the constant tweaking and improvement being made to the Source engine, a possible push into licensing their existing engine, and whether Valve has any plans to begin developing Source Engine 2.
“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,” said Valve artist Ted Backman.
Valve president Gabe Newell added that “There are lot of advantages on iterating on a mature and stable and shipped codebase, as opposed to starting over again. 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. I think that incremental updates model has worked really well for us.”
Robin Walker (Team Fortress progenitor) and Erik Johnson (Valve project manager) discussed how since the last major overhaul of the Source Engine was introduced with the Orange Box, Valve has been driven by gaming projects to improve the Source engine and its toolset. “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,” said Johnson.
When asked if there were ambitions beyond updating Source Engine, Johnson replied: “Probably not. Not that we’re talking about.”
Walker revealed that there are more people than ever working on the Source Engine at the moment; “About twenty to thirty core people.”
Valve is working on what walker described as ‘straightforward’ engine updates: “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.”
Engine licensing
The Source Engine is now well positioned as a general development platform, as it supports PC, Xbox 360 and most recently, PS3. However, Newell was clear on the point that Valve isn’t going to be competing for engine license contracts – unless they want it of course.
“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,” said Newell. “A few people have used our engine, and I think a few more will find it useful now that we have a PS3 edition.”
“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,” said Newell.
“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,” Newell concluded.
For an extensive look into the inner working of Valve, be sure to head on over to Develop-Online and check out their extensive Q&A sessions with the company’s developers.
Valve’s Source Engine plans << Comments and views
Source: Develop-Online
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