Valve: no new engine anytime soon

teletran8 said:
Just look at Crysis, that game came out in 07 and because it failed, sales wise we have sat through many years. Almost half a decade running less graphical games simply because of it's sales numbers. Facts. If you can spend 300+ on a CPU. 40+ on memory. 100-200 +on a mobo. For gods sake people spend 50 dollars on at least one of those high end DX11 titles when they are released.

Doom 3 has still sold more copies than Crysis, 3.5 to 3.0 million copies. Those games were the most cutting edge when they were realesed IMO at their times. Look at their sales, horrible. Now look at HL2 sales. 12 million. I bought HL2 and DOom 3 on launch day, I didn't get Crysis though.
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Since when is 3 million sales a failure? That's more than most AAA titles sell on the consoles.
 
TwistedAegis said:
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.
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I would rather see them work on getting HL3/Ep3 out the door on the L4D2-state Source engine than divert resources to another "zomg pretty" engine. As someone already said, the current L4D2 edition Source engine looks pretty good, IMO, and runs well on a lot of low-mid grade GPU hardware at the same time. I don't feel that dedicated DX11 support for god rays, rain soaked surfaces and all that other stuff would add much to the HL3 gaming experience. Volumetric smoke might...
 
Bankie said:
Source it so old that it feels like it was designed for consoles. Levels are broken down into tiny fragments that require loading every couple of minutes. It looks ok but I think it has a "too clean" quality to it. The only thing it has going for it is that any video card made in the past 5 years can run it at 200 fps.
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How much of that is fundamental engine design, and how much is Valve choosing to use the engine in a way that more people meet the "minimum" or "recommended" system specs so they can actually play the game without a huge hardware investment?
 
Bankie said:
Any of the source games will run over 60fps with max everything on weak cards like the Radeon 5750 and Geforce 250 already.
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I've been able to max any Source engine game on my GTX260 for years - as in 16xQ MSAA and forced transparency AA.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
The amount of moaning and complaining for something like MW2 only being 6 hours and I blow through Portal 2 singleplayer in 4 hours and it's somehow no big deal, at this rate singleplayer games will be 20 minutes long.
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Don't worry, when that times comes, nothing will change! Any game not made by Valve will not be worth the money, because 20 minutes is ridiculous. But a 10 minute SP experience by Valve for $50, will be "the greatest SP experience known to man"!

Oh and $50 IF you're a "good guy". If you're a "bad guy" the "bad guy" tax is applied and the 10 minute SP experience will cost $99. :p
 
Plague_Injected said:
Since Crybabytek said so.
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Well yeah, but my response was more directed at the quoted poster since he seems to believe their spiel that Crysis didn't sell as well as it should have.

Has anyone heard how many copies of Crysis 2 have been sold? I'm curious if it will surpass the sales of the original by a large amount with the help of the consoles.
 
Bankie said:
Well yeah, but my response was more directed at the quoted poster since he seems to believe their spiel that Crysis didn't sell as well as it should have.

Has anyone heard how many copies of Crysis 2 have been sold? I'm curious if it will surpass the sales of the original by a large amount with the help of the consoles.
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http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1037238282&postcount=1759

2 million as of EA's fourth quarter of their fiscal year earnings are concerned.
 
Bankie said:
Well yeah, but my response was more directed at the quoted poster since he seems to believe their spiel that Crysis didn't sell as well as it should have.

Has anyone heard how many copies of Crysis 2 have been sold? I'm curious if it will surpass the sales of the original by a large amount with the help of the consoles.
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I knew what you meant. My post was solely a stab at Crytek.
 
I thought Portal 2 looked like refried ass personally... Source is dead for any sort of immersion imo. Its fine for tf2 type stuff but it is way to blocky for any realistic settings anymore.
 
The Valve Defense Force is always ready it seems. Don't mind that Valve ruined TF2, or that they completely shit all over custom mapping in L4D and L4D2, or that Portal 2 was as short as a CoD game or the $15 Section 8 Prejudice. The only great thing Valve has done in the past 4 years was the continued upgrading of Steam.
 
Really? Seriously, they do need to make a new engine, sucks that PC games are still stuck with DX9 and some "legacy" game engine.
 
Sweet less money need for new hardware which means more money to spend on hookers. You guys need to look at the plus side to this....MOAH HOOKERS!

CS 1.6 is still one of the most played PC game to date and you know why? It is because it will run on anything and it's fun.
 
teletran8 said:
Everyone here better just buy BF3 (I DONT CARE IF YOU DONT LIKE IT JUST BUY IT CUZ ITS DX11!!)...Pirate DX9 games till they die off, like the old smelliness they are
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Your obsession with API versions borders on derangement.
 
I'm not sure how they broke TF2... They added crap you don't need, big deal. You can play and have fun without it. I haven't bought a single thing and I still enjoy TF2 as much as ever.

Eyecandy will get someone to play a game for a while, but look at most-played multiplayer games and see that it's the gameplay, not the graphics, that make a game great. For example, nobody plays Crysis warhead, but CSS and CS1.6 are still the two largest online FPS around. CSS has been around for 7 years.

Also, someone else mentioned this, but it's nice to be able to WALK AROUND in the source engine. Trying to jump on something is extremely frustrating in BF:BC2 because it doesn't feel like the WSAD buttons are actually attached to anything. Movement in source is brilliant (they made two successful puzzle games based on movement - how could it not be?)
 
Uncle Humjaba said:
I'm not sure how they broke TF2... They added crap you don't need, big deal. You can play and have fun without it. I haven't bought a single thing and I still enjoy TF2 as much as ever.

Eyecandy will get someone to play a game for a while, but look at most-played multiplayer games and see that it's the gameplay, not the graphics, that make a game great. For example, nobody plays Crysis warhead, but CSS and CS1.6 are still the two largest online FPS around. CSS has been around for 7 years.

Also, someone else mentioned this, but it's nice to be able to WALK AROUND in the source engine. Trying to jump on something is extremely frustrating in BF:BC2 because it doesn't feel like the WSAD buttons are actually attached to anything. Movement in source is brilliant (they made two successful puzzle games based on movement - how could it not be?)
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Its not even worth trying. The people who hate it will continue to spew crap and you will be labeled as a fanboy. lol
 
dwk said:
CS 1.6 is still one of the most played PC game to date and you know why? It is because it will run on anything and it's fun.
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Valve isn't that interested in pushing the envelope with PC graphics tech. In fact, they're going in the opposite direction. Their focus is on expending the the number of prospective customers who have hardware capable of playing their games. It makes sense for them.

As much as I'd love to get my hands on Half-Life 3 tomorrow, even if my SLI'd GTX 460's could barely run it(actually, I'd be amped about that), I'm OK with the course Valve has chosen. I love the idea of my games being available on multiple platforms. This is exactly why I paid $10 more for the PS3 version of Portal 2. The main thing for me is, at least IMO, they're still consistently cranking out games that I enjoy.


Valve is no Crytek. For that, I'm very, very thankful for.
 
Yawn.

I'm honestly done with Valve until EP3/HL3. TF2 is an absolute jokefest (The WoW of FPS), and L4D was just another game...

New engine would definately be nice. HL to HL2 was 98-04 right? Even between that there was Opposing force, blue shift, and one other I think. 04-11 and we have no solid announcement for HL3 but we have the expansion packs as seen from the first HL...

I remember how much flak valve got from the community about the length of time for a sequel, now people seem content to just sit around and CJ eachother while playing TF2. Oh well.
 
BlitzPuppet said:
New engine would definately be nice. HL to HL2 was 98-04 right? Even between that there was Opposing force, blue shift, and one other I think. 04-11 and we have no solid announcement for HL3 but we have the expansion packs as seen from the first HL...
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Those were both from Gearbox. Valve essentially released nothing new as far as retail games between HL and HL2.
 
drako said:
Those were both from Gearbox. Valve essentially released nothing new as far as retail games between HL and HL2.
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Was still content in the HL universe as far as I'm concerned. What do we have now? 2 Expansions just like before but with no announcement of a third installment currently in the works.
 
I really like Valve but I was disappointed that Portal 2 didn't have any significant updates to the engine. The only thing I noticed was more reflections on fluids and that's it.

If I didn't care about how games look then I'd never upgrade my PC and I'd play the same stuff over again or everything at the lowest possible settings to keep it running on old hardware.
 
djoye said:
I really like Valve but I was disappointed that Portal 2 didn't have any significant updates to the engine. The only thing I noticed was more reflections on fluids and that's it.

If I didn't care about how games look then I'd never upgrade my PC and I'd play the same stuff over again or everything at the lowest possible settings to keep it running on old hardware.
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I think they might have done some changes to the physics engine.
 
djoye said:
I really like Valve but I was disappointed that Portal 2 didn't have any significant updates to the engine. The only thing I noticed was more reflections on fluids and that's it.
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Fully dynamic lighting was a pretty big change.
 
The whole game engine shenanigans stems from Valve not leaking much information at all on future projects. We might see a new game engine but we won't know about it until it's allowed to be known. It's all up in the air...

Semi Off-Topic: I'm wondering if the Black Mesa Source dev team are ever going to release that mod...
 
IMO Valve needs to stay the way they are, concentrating on fun and catering to as many people as they can. No reason for them to become like most other studios trying to push bigger more complex engines, rather than enjoyment, until it adds to that enjoyment. In fact for me the level destruction simulations (in Portal 2) were the most immersive thing I've seen in a very long time, a lot more than what prettier games put out (e.g. Crysis 2).
 
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BlitzPuppet said:
Was still content in the HL universe as far as I'm concerned. What do we have now? 2 Expansions just like before but with no announcement of a third installment currently in the works.
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Here's some sad food for thought... unless something crazy happens, the entire Mass Effect trilogy will have been released in the time between Episode 2 and 3 (or HL3 or whatever they are planning).
 
Prefer Valve keeping this than Bethesda keeping their engine.
 
If they continue to upgrade it, that is fine. The overall engine is pretty decent and IIRC they upgraded it to multi-core/thread support a while ago.

That being said, the source engine is in desperate need of a graphics overhaul. There is obviously something wrong when the modders have been putting out better graphics and textures on the ancient DX9 render path for years now. If they keep the old DX9 render path that will be ok as long as they put in DX11 very soon.
 
Rajveer said:
n fact for me the level destruction simulations (in Portal 2) were the most immersive thing I've seen in a very long time, a lot more than what prettier games put out (e.g. Crysis 2).
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This is confusing me and google's not helping. What were the "level destruction simulations" in Portal 2?
 
Andrew_Carr said:
This is confusing me and google's not helping. What were the "level destruction simulations" in Portal 2?
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I'm guessing the beginning where the room you are in smashes into the one wall? Same thing they implemented into Episode 2 with the barn and bridge destruction.
 
Ah. Yeah, I wasn't too impressed by that I guess. I'm a lot more impressed by the destructible environments in Crysis. I wish they'd implement that and reduce the "boxiness" of the environment. Third on the list would probably be the ridiculous amounts of loading points.
 
Andrew_Carr said:
Ah. Yeah, I wasn't too impressed by that I guess. I'm a lot more impressed by the destructible environments in Crysis. I wish they'd implement that and reduce the "boxiness" of the environment. Third on the list would probably be the ridiculous amounts of loading points.
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The moment I saw a building fall down in Crysis I was immensely unimpressed. It was hilariously bad and incredibly poorly done. The original Red Faction had better environmental destruction.
 
Andrew_Carr said:
Ah. Yeah, I wasn't too impressed by that I guess. I'm a lot more impressed by the destructible environments in Crysis. I wish they'd implement that and reduce the "boxiness" of the environment. Third on the list would probably be the ridiculous amounts of loading points.
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I actually kind of like Source's method of simple geometry and high-res textures. It's gotten better, but I remember when UE2 games were first coming out like UT2k3 all of the static meshes they threw in to increase the complexity of the geometry made the levels feel claustrophobic. They didn't interact well with player movement and were easy to get stuck on. Like I said, UE3 improved on this but I'm still partial to simple geometry that behaves well with user interaction.
 
Derangel said:
The moment I saw a building fall down in Crysis I was immensely unimpressed. It was hilariously bad and incredibly poorly done.
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No kidding. In the real-world, objects don't shake like they have Parkinson's disease and fly around when they're lightly tapped. The Frostbite approach is much more convincing — it's all pre-determined destruction, but it's much more workable.

Most of the heavy physics Valve does these days is a mix of pre-computed stuff with some real-time computation for detail and interactivity. It isn't flexible, but it's fast and detailed enough to appear realistic (and practically guaranteed not to fuck up).
 
phide said:
No kidding. In the real-world, objects don't shake like they have Parkinson's disease and fly around when they're lightly tapped. The Frostbite approach is much more convincing — it's all pre-determined destruction, but it's much more workable.

Most of the heavy physics Valve does these days is a mix of pre-computed stuff with some real-time computation for detail and interactivity. It isn't flexible, but it's fast and detailed enough to appear realistic (and practically guaranteed not to fuck up).
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Mhm. The destruction in BC2 was pretty cool. They're doing destruction stuff in BF3 right?
 
why does almost everybody say the destruction was good in BC 2? I thought it looked okay at best and some things were just not right at all. like I shot a car door and it splintered into pieces, lol.
 
cannondale06 said:
why does almost everybody say the destruction was good in BC 2? I thought it looked okay at best and some things were just not right at all. like I shot a car door and it splintered into pieces, lol.
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It was good when it worked. Yeah it was "WTF' worthy at times, but when you were blowing holes in buildings and seeing them explode it was really good. RFG had good destruction as well, but it was very janky at times too. Sure BC2 isn't perfect, but it is still one of the better examples we have in gaming.
 
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