Valve’s next-gen Source 2 engine in the works?

In news that should get everybody speculating about Half-Life 3 all over again, it looks like Valve is already at work on a next-gen Source 2 engine. Will Half-Life 3 be built on Source 2? Why is Valve working on a new Source engine instead of Half-Life 3? Questions without answers, but don’t let that stop anybody from making some up.

The people over at Valve fansite Valvetime have found multiple references to a new Source engine in the Source Filmmaker code, for example:

Return an str with the current engine version.

If key doesn’t doesn’t exist, assume ‘Source’, otherwise invalid — assume next-gen ‘Source 2’.

I don’t know what any of that means, but I’m sure it has something to do with Half-Life 3.

Elsewhere, folder-clickers at Facepuncher have turned up a bunch of Source Filmmaker tool icons for the tools that don’t even exist yet, suggesting Valve has big plans for the application.

First seen in 2004’s Counter-Strike: Source, and shortly after in Half-Life 2, the Source engine is already eight years old. Although the original engine has seen several iterations and updates since then, eight years is basically forever in game development terms, so it’s not exactly a shocker to find that Valve is at work on a new one. Even Valve is kind of hinting at it – over on the official site, the blurb for the Source engine claims that it’s “considered the most flexible, comprehensive, and powerful game development environment out there. And it’s about to get even better.”