Episode 3 theory - new engine? - Games

I remember I shat my pants when they showed HL2 in E3 2003 or something. I hope the same thing will happen next E3.

[QUOTE=dutchah;20494121]Not being a mapper of any sorts, who can tell me what the problems are with these things?[/QUOTE] It makes dynamic things a pain Look at Crysis, for example; it can switch between day and night because light is rendered on the fly efficiently by your computer.

What will they call this updated engine though? I though maybe 'Supersource' following on from goldsource, but who knows.

Judging by the many years epi.3 has been in development I expect a ~10 hour long game, as Valve probably wants to end the HL2 story-arc in a bang, and not in 3 hours. And I wouldn't be surprised if they created a new engine to sport it as well, or at least a major upgrade of Source.

[QUOTE=Tentacle;20493492]No, they're still using Source. They recently said that they were thinking about integrating Left4Dead's AI director into the engine for use in mods and whatnot. I get the feeling that they might continue with Portal (and thus, Source) after EP3; seeing as Portal 2 is a prelude, they might carry on to bring Portal up to the same period of time as EP3. It'll be interesting to see whether they ever end up crossing over or not.[/QUOTE] They can't stick with Source for much longer. The older Source games really show their age now, the newer ones are beginning to as well, and other engines have been released in the past few years which can outperform Source in many aspects. Updating the Source engine can only take you so far before it's not Source anymore.

I just want the whole game to be one map. No "loading" thingies every two feet. I dont care if it takes 3 hours of loading.

Or content-streaming (like in the Unreal Engine) would be good too - that way, you can have one big map, no in-between loading times, but still have a sensible load time when you start the game.

you have to wait for HL3 if you want a new engine

They will probably upgrade/use the engine versions of L4D/2

Also, they should do the same they did for L4D 1/2, the zombies animations are more dynamic when reacting to shots, explosions etc, also dying. Why not do the same to Combines, Citizens, etc (obsviously they won't use the same animations from L4D zombies, but new ones) ? [QUOTE=latin_geek;20495860]I just want the whole game to be one map. No "loading" thingies every two feet. I dont care if it takes 3 hours of loading.[/QUOTE] Yeah. I think this is one of the reasons why people don't like BSPs, looks like that it's too heavy and also needs pre rendered shadows :/

[QUOTE=dutchah;20494121]Not being a mapper of any sorts, who can tell me what the problems are with these things?[/QUOTE] Imagine if everything was super bright and nothing casted shadows Now imagine you painted things over with black paint to give the appearance of actual lighting and shadows Now imagine how now you can't get rid of that paint, ever. BSP is a clunky, pre-render everything piece of crap, and unoptimized to hell. It needs pre-rendered lighting (HDR too), skyboxs, shadows, and can't support the slightest bit of dynamic lighting that's not a flashlight-effect.

Yeah, please stop posting that they hopefully will update the shit out of the source engine for ep3 and then dump it for HL3. That makes no sense. Why would they spend years to improve the engine and then decide to use something else? They will continue to use source for all their games. Thats a fact. Its their engine, makes no sense at all why would they would use another company's engine or make one from scratch.

[QUOTE=ZestyLemons;20497340]Imagine if everything was super bright and nothing casted shadows Now imagine you painted things over with black paint to give the appearance of actual lighting and shadows Now imagine how now you can't get rid of that paint, ever. BSP is a clunky, pre-render everything piece of crap, and unoptimized to hell. It needs pre-rendered lighting (HDR too), skyboxs, shadows, and can't support the slightest bit of dynamic lighting that's not a flashlight-effect.[/QUOTE] Also cubemaps for envmaps (reflecting textures) ?

[QUOTE=SteveUK;20490496]All Valve need is to drop BSP and baked light maps in order to have a reasonably good engine.[/QUOTE] Also drop hammer, and create new editor with much better flexibility.

[QUOTE=ferdam;20497687]Also cubemaps for envmaps (reflecting textures) ?[/QUOTE] Not to mention moving water brushes look awful. [editline]01:09PM[/editline] [QUOTE=Fearlezz;20497430]Yeah, please stop posting that they hopefully will update the shit out of the source engine for ep3 and then dump it for HL3. That makes no sense. Why would they spend years to improve the engine and then decide to use something else? They will continue to use source for all their games. Thats a fact. Its their engine, makes no sense at all why would they would use another company's engine or make one from scratch.[/QUOTE] Because the engine is so old and outdated No matter how much you change the engine, it's still the engine that it was years and years ago.

[QUOTE=ZestyLemons;20497702]Not to mention moving water brushes look awful. [editline]01:09PM[/editline] Because the engine is so old and outdated No matter how much you change the engine, it's still the engine that it was years and years ago.[/QUOTE] Yeah, agreed about the water brushes. HL2 water was fucking awesome until before 2006 or so. Now it sucks compared to the newest water effects we have today..

[QUOTE=ferdam;20497907]Yeah, agreed about the water brushes. HL2 water was fucking awesome until before 2006 or so. Now it sucks compared to the newest water effects we have today..[/QUOTE] We need some more bump maps, if not parallax mapping too. If not that, that fancy tessellation stuff that's coming out.

Drop: Prerendered shadows on maps (I saw a shadow going right on one building and a shadow going left on another. What the fuck?) As others have said, BSP. That shit's in UT 1999. Add: ALL lights are dynamic, not just flashlights. I mean sunlight, muzzle flashes (this is in l4d IIRC), the lot. Tesselation (If it supports DX11) Different motion blur (The one in the game now is too subtle. Something like Gears of War or GTAIV would be perfect.) Numerous minor fixes (Everyone seems to have their own signature bug/crash on their copy of HL2. For example, mine doesn't load doors and my friend's ALWAYS has the checkertextures. I have a 4670 and he has a 5770. This shouldn't happen. And everything else.)

If they do develope a Source Engine MKII or update the current engine. Here is what I want: Better Vehicle Support(So we can have better pilotable helicopters, tanks, and other vehicles outside of jeeps, jalopies, and air boats) Larger Maps Support for fully destructible Enviroments In Game Map Maker Better and lagless Dynamic Water Better Enviroment(Night&Day Cycles and changing seasons) Better AI that does not require nodes and scripts to work properly.

I think they should change the engine. No amount of updates to the Source engine is going to be capable of handling large open areas, compared to game engines such as the STALKER/FO3 ones, which is where I reckon they'll be attempting in Episode/Half Life 3.

[QUOTE=Fearlezz;20497430]They will continue to use source for all their games. Thats a fact. Its their engine, makes no sense at all why would they would use another company's engine or make one from scratch.[/QUOTE] What the hell are you talking about? Do you rally think Valve would let their games fall farther and farther behind because Source is "their engine"? By that logic they would still be using gldsrc to make their games. They can update it to hell and back but eventually they're gonna reach a point where they'll have updated it so much that they have nothing left from the original Source engine, meaning it's not Source anymore. Keeping up to date is something developers need to keep in mind. Nobody wants to see a game with PS1 graphics released today.

If they made a new engine (which I doubt they will) they'd better make it GMod compatible. I'mma wanna use those models!

I hope they do a big hammer overhaul.

Whatever they do, i hope i can still map for the engine because i live for mapping! :D

[QUOTE=Prism;20490249]I hope so.Source Engine is a bit old now.[/QUOTE] The people who disagree to this are either 12, or have little knowledge of what the source engine is.

Supposedly Ep3 is still in the "Writing" stages.

Aww, come on guys! Don't be so harsh! Source is only >6 years old now!

If baked lighting is dropped, I would hope the real time system is of the same quality, currently the real time lighting stuff in the majority of games is of a lower quality (no light bounces, proper occlusion, etc. SSAO is terrible) I wouldn't mind seeing BSP killed off with a move towards a more efficient/faster system.

[QUOTE=Magman77;20507848]Supposedly Ep3 is still in the "Writing" stages.[/QUOTE] Supposedly no.

I'm hoping this wait is all down to Valve getting ready for a HL2:Ep3/Portal 2 release with a huge engine update for a joint release. From what we've heard, the two titles sound like they'd work quite nicely together.