Misplaced Pages

#997002

55-411: Source is a 3D game engine developed by Valve . It debuted as the successor to GoldSrc in 2004 with the releases of Half-Life: Source , Counter-Strike: Source , and Half-Life 2 . Other notable third-party games using Source include Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines , Dear Esther , and The Stanley Parable . Valve released incremental updates to the engine during its lifetime. Source

110-460: A component-based architecture that allows specific systems in the engine to be replaced or extended with more specialized (and often more expensive) game-middleware components. Some game engines comprise a series of loosely connected game middleware components that can be selectively combined to create a custom engine, instead of the more common approach of extending or customizing a flexible integrated product. However achieved, extensibility remains

165-460: A scene graph —an object-oriented representation of the 3D game-world which often simplifies game design and can be used for more efficient rendering of vast virtual worlds. Most game engines or graphics engines use a Graphics API , which lets you easily communicate with the GPU . But older games did not have hardware acceleration or GPUs and had to build their own software renderer. As technology ages,

220-462: A wire frame model , where the outlines of the polygons are seen, as opposed to having them be shaded. This is the reason for a polygon stage in computer animation . The polygon count refers to the number of polygons being rendered per frame . Beginning with the fifth generation of video game consoles , the use of polygons became more common, and with each succeeding generation, polygonal models became increasingly complex. This computing article

275-405: A compiled binary library . Some middleware programs can be licensed either way, usually for a higher fee for full source code. Polygon (computer graphics) Polygons are used in computer graphics to compose images that are three-dimensional in appearance. Polygons are built up of vertices , and are typically used as triangles. A model 's polygons can be rendered and seen simply in

330-410: A displacement allowing for more natural shapes such as hills to be created. Scenery objects or complex geometry can be imported as separate 3D models from the game directory. These models can also be used as physics objects or interactive props. The editor also features an in-depth logic I/O system that can be used to create complex interactive elements. Signals to trigger different responses or change

385-491: A framework on top of SRCDS for custom modification of gameplay on existing titles. Source Filmmaker (SFM) is a 3D animation application that was built from within the Source engine. Developed by Valve, the tool was originally used to create movies for Day of Defeat: Source and Team Fortress 2 . It was also used to create some trailers for Source Engine games. SFM was released to the public in 2012. In June 2016, Valve released

440-521: A full upgrade of the Source engine for the release of The Orange Box . An artist-driven, threaded particle system replaced previously hard-coded effects for all of the games within. An in- process tools framework was created to support it, which also supported the initial builds of Source Filmmaker . In addition, the facial animation system was made hardware-accelerated on modern video cards for "feature film and broadcast television" quality. The release of The Orange Box on multiple platforms allowed for

495-412: A game developer may need to build a game. Most game-engine suites provide facilities that ease development, such as graphics, sound, physics and artificial-intelligence (AI) functions. These game engines are sometimes called " middleware " because, as with the business sense of the term, they provide a flexible and reusable software platform which provides all the core functionality needed, right out of

550-468: A game engine may include a rendering engine ("renderer") for 2D or 3D graphics , a physics engine or collision detection (and collision response), sound , scripting , animation , artificial intelligence , networking , streaming, memory management , threading , localization support, scene graph , and video support for cinematics . Game engine implementers often economize on the process of game development by reusing/adapting, in large part,

605-577: A game for the Atari 2600 , for example, had to be designed from the bottom up to make optimal use of the display hardware—this core display routine is today called the kernel by developers of games for older systems. Other platforms had more leeway, but even when the display was not a concern, memory constraints usually sabotaged attempts to create the data-heavy design that an engine needs. Even on more accommodating platforms, very little could be reused between games. The rapid advance of arcade hardware —which

SECTION 10

#1732772709998

660-462: A high priority for game engines due to the wide variety of uses for which they are applied. Despite the specificity of the name "game engine", end-users often re-purpose game engines for other kinds of interactive applications with real-time graphical requirements—such as marketing demos , architectural visualizations , training simulations , and modeling environments. Some game engines only provide real-time 3D rendering capabilities instead of

715-502: A large code refactoring , which let the Source engine take advantage of multiple CPU cores. However, support on the PC was experimental and unstable until the release of Left 4 Dead . Multiprocessor support was later backported to Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source . Valve created the Xbox 360 release of The Orange Box in-house, and support for the console is fully integrated into

770-713: A run, rather than move at a constant speed like in earlier platformers. While third-party game engines were not common up until the rise of 3D computer graphics in the 1990s, there were several 2D game creation systems produced in the 1980s for independent video game development . These include Pinball Construction Set (1983), ASCII 's War Game Construction Kit (1983), Thunder Force Construction (1984), Adventure Construction Set (1984), Garry Kitchen's GameMaker (1985), Wargame Construction Set (1986), Shoot-'Em-Up Construction Kit (1987), Arcade Game Construction Kit (1988), and most popularly ASCII's RPG Maker engines from 1998 onward. Klik & Play (1994)

825-430: A strong separation between rendering, scripting, artwork, and level design . It is now common, for example, for a typical game development team to have several times as many artists as actual programmers. First-person shooter games remain the predominant users of third-party game engines, but they are now also being used in other genres . For example, the role-playing video game The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and

880-430: A variety of different purposes, including development. Developers may use the program to view models and their corresponding animations, attachment points, bones, and so on. Face Poser is the tool used to access facial animations and choreography systems. This tool allows one to edit facial expressions , gestures and movements for characters, lip sync speech, and sequence expressions and other acting cues and preview what

935-503: A week or so), we found there were already some projects that we needed to start working on, but we couldn't risk checking in code to the shipping version of the game. At that point we forked off the code in VSS to be both /$ Goldsrc and /$ Src . Over the next few years, we used these terms internally as "Goldsource" and "Source". At least initially, the Goldsrc branch of code referred to

990-617: Is a low cost robust audio library and toolset. Havok provides a robust physics simulation system, along with a suite of animation and behavior applications. Scaleform provides GFx for high performance Flash UI and high-quality video playback, and an Input Method Editor (IME) add-on for in-game Asian chat support. Other middleware is used for performance optimisation—for example ' Simplygon ' helps to optimise and generate level of detail meshes, and ' Umbra ' adds occlusion culling optimisations to 3d graphics. Some middleware contains full source code , others just provide an API reference for

1045-472: Is a valuable advantage in the competitive video game industry . While there was a strong rivalry between Epic and id around 2000, since then Epic's Unreal Engine has been far more popular than id Tech 4 and its successor id Tech 5 . Modern game engines are some of the most complex applications written, often featuring dozens of finely tuned systems interacting to ensure a precisely controlled user experience. The continued evolution of game engines has created

1100-479: Is an overhaul of many aspects of the Source engine through the development of the Left 4 Dead series . Multiprocessor support was further expanded, allowing for features like split screen multiplayer, additional post-processing effects, event scripting with Squirrel , and the highly-dynamic AI Director . The menu interface was re-implemented with a new layout designed to be more console-oriented. This branch later fueled

1155-436: Is another legacy offering that is still available. The term "game engine" arose in the mid-1990s, especially in connection with 3D games such as first-person shooters with a first-person shooter engine . Epic games, founded by developer Tim Sweeney, debuted Unreal Engine in the year 1998. Such was the popularity of Id Software 's Doom and Quake games that, rather than work from scratch, other developers licensed

SECTION 20

#1732772709998

1210-913: The MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot are based on the Gamebryo engine, and the MMORPG Lineage II is based on the Unreal Engine. Game engines are used for games originally developed for home consoles as well; for example, the RenderWare engine is used in the Grand Theft Auto and Burnout franchises. Threading is taking on more importance due to modern multi-core systems (e.g. Cell ) and increased demands in realism. Typical threads involve rendering, streaming, audio, and physics. Racing games have typically been at

1265-449: The backward compatibility -breaking "version jumps" of its competitors. Different systems within Source are represented by separate modules which can be updated independently. With Steam , Valve can distribute these updates automatically among its many users. In practice, however, there have been occasional breaks in this chain of compatibility. The release of Half-Life 2: Episode One and The Orange Box both introduced new versions of

1320-514: The 1980s that are also considered to be game engines, such as Sierra's Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) and SCI systems, LucasArts' SCUMM system and Incentive Software 's Freescape engine (in 1986 ). Unlike most modern game engines, these game engines were never used in any third-party products (except for the SCUMM system which was licensed to and used by Humongous Entertainment ). As game engine technology matures and becomes more user-friendly,

1375-819: The Destinations Workshop Tools, a set of free virtual reality (VR) creation tools running using the Source 2 SDK. In June 2005, Valve opened the Valve Developer Community wiki . It replaced Valve's static Source SDK documentation with a full MediaWiki -powered community site. Valve staff have occasionally produced professional and/or academic papers for various events and publications, including SIGGRAPH , Game Developer Magazine and Game Developers Conference , explaining various aspects of Source engine's development. Titanfall , Titanfall 2 , and Apex Legends are not included because their engines, while originally based on

1430-476: The Source SDK, were modified to the point that they are effectively different engines. Game engine Game engine can also refer to the development software supporting this framework, typically a suite of tools and features for developing games. Developers can use game engines to construct games for video game consoles and other types of computers . The core functionality typically provided by

1485-484: The Xbox Live Indie Games channel designed specifically for smaller developers who do not have the extensive resources necessary to box games for sale on retail shelves. It is becoming easier and cheaper than ever to develop game engines for platforms that support managed frameworks. Producers of game engines decide how they allow users to utilize their products. Just as gaming is an industry , so are

1540-834: The application of game engines has broadened in scope. They are now being used for serious games : visualization, training, medical, and military simulation applications, with the CryEngine being one example. To facilitate this accessibility, new hardware platforms are now being targeted by game engines, including mobile phones (e.g. Android phones, iPhone ) and web browsers (e.g. WebGL , Shockwave , Flash , Trinigy 's WebVision, Silverlight , Unity Web Player , O3D and pure DHTML ). Additionally, more game engines are being built upon higher level languages such as Java and C# / .NET (e.g. TorqueX , and Visual3D.NET ), Python ( Panda3D ), or Lua Script (Leadwerks). As most 3D rich games are now mostly GPU -limited (i.e. limited by

1595-475: The asset pipeline, as well as a few GUI-based programs designed for handling more complex functions. Source SDK was launched as a free standalone toolset through Steam, and required a Source game to be purchased on the same account. Since the release of Left 4 Dead in late 2008, Valve began releasing "Authoring Tools" for individual games, which constitute the same programs adapted for each game's engine build. After Team Fortress 2 became free-to-play, Source SDK

1650-458: The box , to develop a game application while reducing costs, complexities, and time-to-market—all critical factors in the highly competitive video-game industry . Like other types of middleware, game engines usually provide platform abstraction , allowing the same game to run on various platforms (including game consoles and personal computers) with few, if any, changes made to the game source-code . Often, programmers design game engines with

1705-507: The codebase that was currently released, and Src referred to the next set of more risky technology that we were working on. When it came down to show Half-Life 2 for the first time at E3 , it was part of our internal communication to refer to the "Source" engine vs. the "Goldsource" engine, and the name stuck. Source was developed part-by-part from this fork onwards, slowly replacing GoldSrc in Valve's internal projects and, in part, explaining

Source (game engine) - Misplaced Pages Continue

1760-438: The components of an engine may become outdated or insufficient for the requirements of a given project . Since the complexity of programming an entirely new engine may result in unwanted delays (or necessitate that a project restart from the beginning), an engine-development team may elect to update their existing engine with newer functionality or components. Before game engines, games were typically written as singular entities:

1815-428: The core portions of the software and designed their own graphics, characters, weapons and levels —the "game content" or "game assets". Separation of game-specific rules and data from basic concepts like collision detection and game entity meant that teams could grow and specialize. Later games, such as id Software 's Quake III Arena and Epic Games 's 1998 Unreal were designed with this approach in mind, with

1870-516: The engine and content developed separately. The practice of licensing such technology has proved to be a useful auxiliary revenue stream for some game developers, as one license for a high-end commercial game engine can range from US$ 10,000 to millions of dollars, and the number of licensees can reach several dozen companies, as seen with the Unreal Engine . At the very least, reusable engines make developing game sequels faster and easier, which

1925-487: The engine that could not be used to run older games or mods without the developers performing upgrades to code and, in some cases, content. Both cases required markedly less work to update its version than competing engines. The Source 2006 branch was the term used for Valve's games using technology that culminated with the release of Half-Life 2: Episode One . HDR rendering and color correction were first implemented in 2005 using Day of Defeat: Source , which required

1980-629: The engine's shaders to be rewritten. The former, along with developer commentary tracks, were showcased in Half-Life 2: Lost Coast . Episode One introduced Phong shading and other smaller features. Image-based rendering technology had been in development for Half-Life 2 , but was cut from the engine before its release. It was mentioned again by Gabe Newell in 2006 as a piece of technology he would like to add to Source to implement support for much larger scenes that are impossible with strictly polygonal objects. The Source 2007 branch represented

2035-434: The engines they are built off. The major game engines come at varying prices, whether it be in the form of subscription fees or license payments. Unity and the Unreal Engine are currently the two most popular choices for game developers. Although the differences among the different game engines blur as they build their own tools on top of them, different game developers may be too used to a system to change, or attracted by

2090-477: The forefront of threading with the physics engine running in a separate thread long before other core subsystems were moved, partly because rendering and related tasks need updating at only 30–60 Hz. For example, on PlayStation 3, physics ran in Need For Speed at 100 Hz versus Forza Motorsport 2 at 360 Hz. Although the term was first used in the 1990s, there are a few earlier systems in

2145-704: The huge benefits of such engines regardless of pay-walls. In the broader sense of the term, game engines themselves can be described as middleware. In the context of video games, however, the term "middleware" is often used to refer to subsystems of functionality within a game engine. Some game middleware does only one thing but does it more convincingly or more efficiently than general purpose middleware. The four most widely used middleware packages that provide subsystems of functionality include RAD Game Tools ' Bink, Firelight FMOD , Havok , and Scaleform GFx. RAD Game Tools develops Bink for basic video rendering, along with Miles audio, and Granny 3D rendering. Firelight FMOD

2200-421: The main engine codeline. It includes asset converters, cross-platform play and Xbox Live integration. Program code can be ported from PC to Xbox 360 simply by recompiling it. The PlayStation 3 release was outsourced to Electronic Arts , and was plagued with issues throughout the process. Gabe Newell cited these issues when criticizing the console during the release of The Orange Box . The Left 4 Dead branch

2255-484: The mid-1980s was the smooth side-scrolling engine developed by Shigeru Miyamoto 's team at Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The engine they had developed for the side-scrolling racing game Excitebike (1984) was later employed for the scrolling platformer Super Mario Bros. (1985). This had the effect of allowing Mario to smoothly accelerate from a walk to

Source (game engine) - Misplaced Pages Continue

2310-511: The power of the graphics card), the potential slowdown due to translation overheads of higher level languages becomes negligible, while the productivity gains offered by these languages work to the game engine developers' benefit. These recent trends are being propelled by companies such as Microsoft to support indie game development. Microsoft developed XNA as the SDK of choice for all video games released on Xbox and related products. This includes

2365-626: The process of porting, Valve rearranged most of the games released up to The Orange Box into separate, but parallel "singleplayer" and "multiplayer" branches. The game code to these branches was made public to mod developers in 2013, and they serve as the current stable release of Source designated for mods. Support for Valve's internal Steam Pipe distribution system as well as the Oculus Rift are included. In May 2014, Nvidia released ports of Portal and Half-Life 2 to their Tegra 4 -based Android handheld game console Nvidia Shield . Source 2

2420-433: The reasons behind its unusually modular nature. Valve's development of Source since has been a mixture of licensed middleware and in-house-developed code. Older versions of Source use Bink Video for video playback, however more recent releases of the Source engine use WebM videos for menu backgrounds, Full Motion Videos , and splash screens. . Source was created to evolve incrementally with new technology, as opposed to

2475-644: The release of the Steam client on the same platform. Valve announced that all their future games would be released simultaneously for Windows and Mac. The first of Valve's games to support Linux was Team Fortress 2 , the port released in October 2012 along with the closed beta of the Linux version of Steam. Both the OS X and Linux ports of the engine take advantage of OpenGL and are powered by Simple DirectMedia Layer . During

2530-463: The releases of Alien Swarm and Portal 2 , the former released with source code outlining many of the changes made since the branch began. Portal 2 , in addition, served as the result of Valve taking the problem of porting to PlayStation 3 in-house, and in combination with Steamworks integration creating what they called "the best console version of the game". In April 2010, Valve released all of their major Source games on OS X , coinciding with

2585-510: The same game engine to produce different games or to aid in porting games to multiple platforms. In many cases, game engines provide a suite of visual development tools in addition to reusable software components. These tools are generally provided in an integrated development environment to enable simplified, rapid development of games in a data-driven manner. Game-engine developers often attempt to preempt implementer needs by developing robust software suites which include many elements

2640-448: The scene will look like in the game engine. The Hammer Editor, the engine's official level editor , uses rendering and compiling tools included in the SDK to create maps using the binary space partitioning (BSP) method. Level geometry is created with 3D polygons called brushes ; each face can be assigned a texture which also defines the properties of the surface such as the sounds used for footsteps. Faces can also be converted into

2695-455: The state of an entity can be sent between entities such as buttons, NPCs , intangible trigger brushes, and map props. The Source Dedicated Server (SRCDS) is a standalone launcher for the Source engine that runs multiplayer game sessions without requiring a client. It can be launched through Windows or Linux and can allow for custom levels and assets. Most third-party servers additionally run Metamod :Source and SourceMod, which together provide

2750-660: The wide range of functionality needed by games. These engines rely upon the game developer to implement the rest of this functionality or to assemble it from other game-middleware components. These types of engines are generally referred to as a "graphics engine", "rendering engine", or "3D engine" instead of the more encompassing term "game engine". This terminology is inconsistently used, as many full-featured 3D game engines are referred to simply as "3D engines". Examples of graphics engines include: Crystal Space , Genesis3D , Irrlicht , OGRE , RealmForge, Truevision3D, and Vision Engine . Modern game- or graphics-engines generally provide

2805-623: Was announced by Valve as the successor to Source at the Game Developers Conference in March 2015. There, Valve stated that it would be free to use for developers, with support for the Vulkan graphical API , as well as using a new in-house physics engine called Rubikon. In June 2015, Valve announced that Dota 2 , originally made in the Source engine, would be ported over to Source 2 in an update called Dota 2 Reborn . Reborn

SECTION 50

#1732772709998

2860-487: Was effectively made open to all Steam users. When some Source games were updated to Source 2013, the older Source SDKs were phased out. The three applications mentioned below are now included in the install of each game. There are three applications packaged in the Source SDK: Hammer Editor, Model Viewer, and Face Poser. The Model Viewer is a program that allows users to view models and can be used for

2915-526: Was first released to the public as an opt-in beta update that same month before officially replacing the original client in September 2015, making it the first game to use the engine. The engine had succeeded Source by the late 2010s. Source SDK is the software development kit for the Source engine, and contains many of the tools used by Valve to develop assets for their games. It comes with several command-line programs designed for special functions within

2970-750: Was succeeded in 2015 by the release of Source 2 . Source distantly originates from the GoldSrc engine, itself a heavily modified version of John Carmack 's Quake engine with some code from the Quake II engine . Carmack commented on his blog in 2004 that "there are still bits of early Quake code in Half-Life 2 ". Valve employee Erik Johnson explained the engine's nomenclature on the Valve Developer Community: When we were getting very close to releasing Half-Life (less than

3025-596: Was the leading edge of the market at the time—meant that most of the code would have to be thrown out afterwards anyway, as later generations of games would use completely different game designs that took advantage of extra resources. Thus most game designs through the 1980s were designed through a hard-coded rule set with a small number of levels and graphics data. Since the golden age of arcade video games , it became common for video game companies to develop in-house game engines for use with first-party software. A notable example of an in-house game engine on home consoles in

#997002