Valve: no new engine anytime soon

Plague_Injected

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According to this, Valve plans on peddling the 2004 engine for some time yet still.

Speaking in a series of interviews with industry magazine Develop, the head of Valve explained that they believed it was better to continually overhaul, polish and fix the existing Source engine than it was to try and rewrite it from the ground up. Valve has "more people than ever" working on the Source engine, claimed Newell, saying that the "incremental update model worked really well" for the company.

Newell also added that he thought it would be foolish for Valve to try and go head-to-head with companies like Epic, saying that they didn't want to go out there and try to "muscle in" on Unreal's territory. "Y’know, we’re happy if people want to use our tools. We’re also super happy if people want to use Unreal Engine," said Newell. "We’ve worked hard with the guys at Epic Games to integrate Steamworks into Unreal Engine, which we think will be a great solution."
 
This saddens me. I am tired of their crusty engine. They can polish it all they want, it still looks pretty similar to what it did years and years ago.
 
I agree with their model and enjoy it. Each derivative of the engine gets better and better. This was the whole idea behind source. I'm sure at some point there will be a DX11 capable path once they see enough adopters of DX11 hardware/Win7 through steam, which should be soon. It works for them, they know it like the back of their hand and their modders and community knows it like the back of their hand.

Source is a great platform and calling it a "2004" engine is not really fair. Being modular was why source was developed.
 
As long as they're still creating fun and entertaining games with their "old" engine I don't give a shit.
 
The issue its its still too CPU hungry and updates to an engine that covers all games on that engine is not a viable option in my eyes.
 
That quote is very misleading and obviously written to troll.

If you actually read the interview the quote about not going head to head with Epic was in regard to licencing the source engine to 3rd party developers.Epic pushes it heavily and Valve would rather put resources elsewhere.
 
That quote is very misleading and obviously written to troll.

If you actually read the interview the quote about not going head to head with Epic was in regard to licencing the source engine to 3rd party developers.Epic pushes it heavily and Valve would rather put resources elsewhere.

Obviously written to troll? How about your post trying to spin it in a way that clearly doesn't mean Valve is planning on making a new engine anytime soon?
 
<Obligatory Silus post in Valve thread mode on>

No surprise here. Other developers get flak by PC Gamers because their engines are old and don't look as good. Valve gets away with the 2004 engine that looks quite outdated, despite all the "improvements" they say they did.

Same old, same old...
 
Portal 2 looks phenominal in many ways to me, notably animation. Playing the game and seeing all the wacky ways the robots move is fantastic.

In other words Im personally fine with this. Besides, till the new consoles come out Valve has little reason to change things anyway, the current consoles are making them a bundle.
 
If HL3(ep3?) doesn't blow me away like HL2 did at E3'03, then they honestly should just not bother. They could have pulled off a slight upgrade up until probably '09, but after this long, no way.
 
Portal 2 looks phenominal in many ways to me, notably animation. Playing the game and seeing all the wacky ways the robots move is fantastic.

In other words Im personally fine with this. Besides, till the new consoles come out Valve has little reason to change things anyway, the current consoles are making them a bundle.

But Valve fans keep saying that Valve is a PC-focused company...the tech limitations of consoles shouldn't be a concern if that was the case. It certainly didn't stop 4A Games pushing PCs to the brink with Metro 2033, and it's certainly not stopping DICE's Frostbite 2.0 engine...both, may I add, being multiplatform games.


<Obligatory Silus post in Valve thread mode on>

No surprise here. Other developers get flak by PC Gamers because their engines are old and don't look as good. Valve gets away with the 2004 engine that looks quite outdated, despite all the "improvements" they say they did.

Same old, same old...

Yes, the double-standards piss me off to no end.
 
Portal 2 looks pretty good. It's by no means on the level of any of the heavy hitters of the last couple of years (mirror's edge, metro, crysis, even bfbc2). The engine has seriously been showing its age, and if they intend to stretch it for another couple of years I think we're all going to be extremely unimpressed with their future offerings.
 
The issue its its still too CPU hungry and updates to an engine that covers all games on that engine is not a viable option in my eyes.
a 3.0 Pentium 4 can deliver playable framerates in any Source game.

Source engine is okay but it sure would be nice to start giving us some better eye candy.
 
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Performance>looks to me. I'll take a game that runs @ 100 FPS that looks good, over a game that's drop-dead-gorgeous @ 20fps.
 
So people are bitching about stagnation in gaming graphics thanks to consoles, yet Valve announce they are stagnating graphics and now its all good? :p
 
i love source, it runs great on ANY modern machine. they did put lot of time and effort into it.
 
So people are bitching about stagnation in gaming graphics thanks to consoles, yet Valve announce they are stagnating graphics and now its all good? :p

Ahhh...you're now understanding the "beauty" of double standards around here!

And just a correction in your statement. It's not all good. They will continue to bitch when other developers do it :)
 
What sort of eye candy would you want to see?

Play Just Cause 2 maxed out on the PC. That kind of eye candy.

It's time to move past 2004. It's amazing how long Valve has milked this thing and yes, they make a lot of fun games and all, but c'mon. Move forward. Evolve. God forbid: Innovate!



So people are bitching about stagnation in gaming graphics thanks to consoles, yet Valve announce they are stagnating graphics and now its all good? :p

Exactly.

The double standard, excuses, and apologisms from some of the super die hard Valve fanboys is as bad as any of the skewed "logic" I've ever seen from any Church of Jobs Apple disciple. Oh yeah, I went there.
 
If HL3(ep3?) doesn't blow me away like HL2 did at E3'03, then they honestly should just not bother. They could have pulled off a slight upgrade up until probably '09, but after this long, no way.
I doubt it will. That 30 minute demonstration was one of the best game hype videos I've ever seen. My excitement for HL2 went from around 0 to 100% instantly when I saw them. The only other trailer that wowed me like that one was the ten minute PC/Mac Halo that Bungie put out before the MS acquisition changed everything.
 
Worst part of Valve's engine is how it tends to stutter audio-wise when loading in audio files, really weak. Don't think I've experienced this in any other modern engine.
 
I like the source engine, its not the best but it feels sufficiently good and everybody's mom's rig can run it. Portal 2 looks amazing, partly because the dev team put amazing effort into it.

On the good side,Valve will continue updating the engine as they go along - Portal 2 has full dynamic lighting and liquid blobs and stuff, and we get to create stuff with that SDK too.
On the bad side, Source is weirdly outdated in some points (like no texture streaming at all - loading screens every 3 minutes), is a bitch to work with and Valve has so much money and talent that they would have no trouble creating something to match fx the Frostbite 2 engine
 
Play Just Cause 2 maxed out on the PC. That kind of eye candy.
I meant what features. Specifically.

Worst part of Valve's engine is how it tends to stutter audio-wise when loading in audio files, really weak. Don't think I've experienced this in any other modern engine.
Yeah, that definitely needs to be addressed. It's gotten better in later releases, though.
 
It's a mature engine and has been tweaked quite a bit over the years. It is disappointing that it's not getting a much needed overhaul.

Gabe is right about trying to compete with Epic. Even id can't do that successfully anymore.
 
Source is a great engine, but lets be honest here ... shits old and we need something newer.
 
Source is a great engine, but lets be honest here ... shits old and we need something newer.

To be fair, it isn't like it hasn't been updated. They backported full HDR lighting to HL2 a little while back, although I forget just when. That's something that you had to go to Cinematic Mod to get up until then, and it was not top notch at that. I think that features are being added along the way (like when L4D2 was released) but they keep calling it "source engine". Unless you really know the versioning under the hood with a changelog, the average armchair debater in gaming forums shouldn't simply summarize as "this shit's old".

People bitch about new engines like CryEngine2 being too demanding, they bitch about old engines like Source not being updated just because "it's old". I guess there's always going to be one constant - bitching.
 
Valve has made more of a name for itself over fewer released games(especially new intellectual properties) than any other company.

Their magic wore off on me after the 'it will be faster as episodic content than a full sequel' for HL 2 turned into years between releases, and now the final one being vaporware. That was 5 or so years ago.
 
The engine is very old now and while it was impressive for its day but now it badly needs replacing, a complete overhaul is necessary to bring in line with current gen graphics such as DX11 and dump the old technology which is bogging them down.

Silus is right, if it was any other developer gamers would be chewing them out about the graphics and probably the CPU performance of the engine.

What is worse is the authoring tools, incredibly bad compared to something like UnrealEd, I have no doubt in my mind that they cause significant increase creation time and reduction in quality compared to better level designers/tools.
 
People have already pointed out the technical issues Source has so no need for me to repeat that, so I'll just say for the most part I'm fine with this. Portal 2 looked really good. What Valve has managed to do with Source over the years is pretty incredible. I'm one of those people that really don't care if games are "ZOMG pretty". Crysis looked great, but the game itself sucked hard after the 1st half. I'll take a good, fun game over a "ooh pretty shiny" one any day. So as long as Valve keeps making good games I have no problem with them sticking to the same engine and continuing to work on it.
 
So people are bitching about stagnation in gaming graphics thanks to consoles, yet Valve announce they are stagnating graphics and now its all good? :p

How does constantly updating and more people working on the engine than ever = stagnation? L4D2 looks incredible, IMO. The environments are starting to look a bit dated but again...they're updating the engine.

I would love to see a new engine built from the ground floor up, but I have to say I love the way the Source engine "feels" in FPS games, it has it down perfectly for me. I would hate to see that break with a total rewrite.
 
I hope they don't get a new engine soon, I just started working on my mod recently... and it is pretty old. I honestly wouldn't mind a complete overhaul...
God Rays
DOF
texture streaming
Better physics
less boxy
those are the types of things I want...
 
Works for me.
Like several others have said - Source runs on damn near anything.

If I want eye candy, there's plenty of games out there that fit that requirement.
 
Worst part of Valve's engine is how it tends to stutter audio-wise when loading in audio files, really weak. Don't think I've experienced this in any other modern engine.

I've noticed that, actually. There are some ways to improve that, but it's still something I can't make go away COMPLETELY. Which is a tad annoying.

That and level loading are two things they could really work on addressing. And both should be pretty easy to do within the same engine - multi-processor support (which Source has) should allow that pretty easily.

I think the only other huge gripe I have with Source is the audio API they are using. SUCKS DONKEY BALLS. *No* elevation effects at all, minimal (to be generous!) environmental morphing of the audio, and pretty poor sample rates throughout. This is really annoying, as even when Source was *NEW*, it was considerably behind the curve on audio support.

So...not even really an 'eye candy' thing. I thought Portal 2 looked just fine. Love TF2 still. etc. 'Source' can still hold its own, there. Just wish they'd add OpenAL (with EAX-HD support, preferably) audio rendering, fix level loading issues, and fix audio clip loading issues. Use those extra processor cores for something!!
 
God Rays
DOF
texture streaming
Better physics
less boxy
those are the types of things I want...

I don't see why they can't add these to the existing engine. I mean, you don't have to completely start over every generation.

Something like the loading issue might be worth starting from scratch, but it could still be a modification to what's existing. It depends on how modular they programmed it in the first place.

I guess I just don't mind either way; what's most important, ultimately, is art direction, story and gameplay, which IMO valve is easily one of the best in the industry.
 
OpenAL (with EAX-HD support, preferably)

EAX-HD would mean that we'd be tied to Creative for optimal sound effects. I don't think thats a good idea. Besides, sound is usually processed via the CPU these days.
 
my issue with the source engine is that it feels floaty. like when i move it feels like my characters are standing on moving platforms with ball bearings underneath. it's not usually a game killer, but it doesn't quite feel as visceral as many other engines.
 
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