Source Engine 2

[TorQueMoD]

No no, Hollow. While I agree with you that there will be improvements to the current consoles like the Wii HD and even updates to the PS3 and 360, a company doesn't invest millions upon millions of dollars in hardware only to drop it all a few years later because its not turning a profit.

Do you know how long it takes to turn a profit on a product? And besides, they don't make a profit from the hardware itself, that's why MS sunk billions into the xbox and the 360. They make a profit on peripherals and even likely (or hopefully) on royalties that developers pay to make their game a 360 or PS3 title.

MS's perspective is something like this... We put everything we've got into making our console. Why? So its in everyone's living room. Who cares if we loose money, we're a multi billion dollar corporation. We get our console in everyone's living room and then we have the power. We control the market and all the future money comes back to us.

Its the sameway Walmart works, its the same way Starbucks works. If you want a cup of coffee and as you walk down the street you see a starbucks on EVERY corner, where are you likely going to buy said cup of coffee?

If you want to buy something, a t-shirt, a blender, a videogame, a tv, a toothbursh, some toilet paper, a pack of gum, and the easiest and the cheapest place to get any of those items is Walmart, hell, the fact that you CAN get ALL of those items in one location, where are you going to go?

That's why Microsoft, Starbucks and Walmart are evil. They are imperialistic corporations. The dictionary definition of Imperialism "the creation and maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire".

That's EXACTLY how these business work. They don't give a shit about the local businesses who are started by Joe Blow and run by his wife and kids. They don't care that they hire all of their employees at 50 cents on the minimum wadge and then convince them that its better for them cause its less stressful than being on commission. They don't care period.

So, do you think a company who's business tactics rival those of world conquorers like Genghis Khan or Julius Ceasar is really going to get up and walk away from something they've invested billions of dollars in? No. Why? Cause they'd be negatively competing with themselves. Its the same reason why Activion's shooters were pushed back to early 2010 release dates instead of releasing at christmas as per usual. Not just that they didn't want to compete with Call of Duty MW 2, but because they'd be competing with themselves.

Someone else said in a gamespot post why Valve isn't releasing HL2 Ep 3 yet was because they know that as soon as they announce Ep 3, even a single screen shot, no one is going to buy any of their other games because "HL2 ep 3 is coming".

On top of that, Valve is now positioned as one of the biggest publisher/distributors of PC games with Steam. If they announce Ep 3 too early, they'll not only be squashing any of their own titles, but any other competing title (and even some non-competing) available on steam.

[Hollow]

maybe that '4th' episode was going to be made by Gearbox? I don't know. I haven't heard that before, though I was always sceptical of a third party game (like OP4). I reckon it was probably in the works, but got scrapped. Maybe Valve just had a little too much on their plate to make it possible?

I would love to play as Adrian Shepard again. Seems his fate will forever remain in stasis

EDIT: @ Torque. I can understand totally where you are coming from, I never said Sony or Mircrosoft was going to scrap the PS3/360, it would be massive investment fail. But what I'm saying is it is known FACT that Crytek are preparing there iteration of Cryengine3 for the new consoles...in which they believe could be around 2012, NOT that they would, they dont know, but it is their assumption.

There will most certainly be a slightly beefed up 360 probably next year released with their project NATAL gizmo, & the Wii HD....but thats about it for at least 3 years minimum..in my books. I'm not really bothered to be honest

[TorQueMoD]

... despite Valve owning the Half Life franchise, does Gearbox own rights to characters and such they made? Adrian Shepard and the likes...

Short answer; No.

If Valve owns the IP, when Gearbox was contracted to make the game, they would have signed an agreement that all work they do on the title becomes the property of Valve. Doesn't matter if they're conceptual or fully realized elements of the game, if it has to do with the HL Universe, absolutely guaranteed, Valve owns it.

As for the 4th episode, I never heard about it, but it could happen. Actually its probably more likely that any future HL universe games developed with the current Source engine WOULD be third party as it doesn't make any sense for Valve to work on anything else with this generation when they could be creating a brand new franchise that will probably do as well or better than HL. That way both could be developed simultaneously and they would see far better financial gain this way.

[vcool]

Srred, it was stated somewhere that the fourth episode won't be made.

[arieas]

Since the source engine is modular, they'll probably be working in ways to give new graphical power and features, while expanding the physics to provide even more interactivity, like distorted water, incredible improvements so more can happen. Mainly nice stuff for the end user, but for developers perhaps they will significantly begin adding onto real-time development. Still with the compiling and such of bsp's but with built on editor to begin doing things in a WYSIWYG sort of environment. I don't know if they could actually go straight to real-time, it would pretty much mean a massive addition to the engine so maybe it'd just begin to clutter it up with older code and new. And it probably would mean a whole new engine anyway.

I'd just like to see much for flexibility with the engine, like less limiting factors with lighting, physics, much more world space, and handling for massive open environments. They are supposedly or were working on that render to texture feature which renders models to textures that appear far away saving a lot of rendering power.

[TorQueMoD]

Another benefit they could add to the engine is better handling of imported prop models. If you had the ability to scale models in the editor (skewing would be awesome) and better collision boxes, there would be so much more you could do with your levels and the compile times would virtually disappear since you'd pretty much build the walls and ceilings in Hammer and everything else would be made in XSI or Max or another modeling program. It would also offload everything onto the videocard freeing up the CPU to handle more complex physics simulations.
They could really vastly improve the engine with its current tech I'm sure. Still, I'd love to see what Valve could do with their second engine. I mean really you have to hand it to them in the sense that Source is really their first game engine. HL1 used id's tech.

[Major Banter]

If it comes with a vastly improved level editor and more model dependancy, so much the better.

[poisonic]

the ps4 will arive much sooner than you think.... the ps4 is already in my living room when the xbox720 hits the shitty fan... sony learned allot by releasing its console later than the xbox360 .....
M$ made a none quality choice in wanting to be the first... ring of death/dvd demolisher.... that nice circle you get on a game dvd....

[Psy]

The problem with Source lies within it's Quake 3 roots. No developer would want to work with BSP anymore as it's too much hassle having to make sure everything is sealed off from the void whilst the likes of UE3 is a lot simpler and quicker to work with as you simply plonk stuff into the void and build outwards without having to worry about such annoyances.

Oh, and other engines have superior out-of-the-box tools. I mean, come on, why the christ does Hammer not have an import feature for models or textures? This is 2009, not 1996.

[Zipfinator]

The problem with Source lies within it's Quake 3 roots. No developer would want to work with BSP anymore as it's too much hassle having to make sure everything is sealed off from the void whilst the likes of UE3 is a lot simpler and quicker to work with as you simply plonk stuff into the void and build outwards without having to worry about such annoyances.

Oh, and other engines have superior out-of-the-box tools. I mean, come on, why the christ does Hammer not have an import feature for models or textures? This is 2009, not 1996.

That's what I was getting at with the .qc and .bsp file removing. Anyway CoD4 and MW2 radiant are based off of Quake 3 I thought and they don't use .bsp. Valve decided to keep it for some reason.

[TorQueMoD]

I'm no expert on Unreal Ed, but I'm pretty sure it uses BSP as well.

I'm not going to re-state my PS4 theory else it would become moot. Only time will tell.
MS are tards for only giving the original Xbox a 3 year life span. PS2 had a 6 year lifespan and Sony is planning for the PS3 to last even longer.

[Corigami]

The ut3 engine does use a small amount of bsp, but next to everything you end up seeing in a finished map is modeled.

[TorQueMoD]

yeah, which is what I said in the last post. If Valve added better model support (scaling and collisions) the improvement to the visual quality of the maps would be 10 fold.

[nub]

If Valve simply made models light the same way as brushes, then maps would look loads better. Right now they use vertex-based lighting, while brushes use lightmaps.

I think Zeno Clash actually did this for character models, but I'm not entirely sure.

[Psy]

Why would they use lightmaps for dynamic character models? :\

Anyway, I agree. Lightmap support for models is a must.