{"id":11778,"date":"2011-05-16T15:22:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-16T13:22:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-03-07T18:38:42","modified_gmt":"2012-03-07T16:38:42","slug":"valve-s-source-engine-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/11778-valve-s-source-engine-plans","title":{"rendered":"Valve\u2019s Source Engine plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

First introduced in 2004, Valve\u2019s 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<\/a> has shed some light on the inner workings of the PC gaming and digital distribution powerhouse.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople don\u2019t realise how many times we\u2019ve updated the Steam engine over the last seven years. With every one we\u2019ve released we\u2019ve had some kind of new rendering technology, or new modules to the engine,\u201d said Valve artist Ted Backman.<\/p>\n

\"Left<\/p>\n

Valve president Gabe Newell added that \u201cThere 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\u2019ll 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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. \u201cShipping the Orange Box, Left 4 Dead 1, Left 4 Dead 2 and then Portal 2 \u2013 basically in a four year time frame \u2013 has meant we have to look back at the Source engine again to improve its workflow,\u201d said Johnson.<\/p>\n

When asked if there were ambitions beyond updating Source Engine, Johnson replied: \u201cProbably not. Not that we\u2019re talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walker revealed that there are more people than ever working on the Source Engine at the moment; \u201cAbout twenty to thirty core people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Valve is working on what walker described as \u2018straightforward\u2019 engine updates: \u201cHardware\u2019s moved forward, that\u2019s one thing, and the other is the rise of user created content. That\u2019s becoming a big deal for us. We had to address some things for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Portal<\/p>\n

Engine licensing<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u2019t going to be competing for engine license contracts \u2013 unless they want it of course.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re really happy if another studio wants to use our engine, but we\u2019re not going to go out there and try and muscle in on what Epic Games does,\u201d said Newell. \u201cA few people have used our engine, and I think a few more will find it useful now that we have a PS3 edition.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur philosophy is always about creating the best value for our customers, but also our partners, and right now I think there\u2019s more value for us to pursue things like the microtransaction part of Steamworks,\u201d said Newell.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think if we\u2019d take the microtransaction model away, and instead push harder on getting studios to sign up to Source, I think we wouldn\u2019t be using our time nearly as efficiently,\u201d Newell concluded.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> with the company\u2019s developers.<\/p>\n

Valve\u2019s Source Engine plans<\/strong><\/a> << Comments and views<\/p>\n

Source: Develop-Online<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No sign of Source Engine 2 \u2013 improving on a good thing is the order of the day<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":157,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/157"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11778\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}