Half-Life Fallout: HLF Debate: A New Source? - Half-Life Fallout

I think streaming (like City 17 mentioned) would be one of the best additions to Source. I think their graphical updates are doing fine. Although if under the hood isn't able to be re-worked to include things like streaming, it should probably be scrapped for something that include it. If not, load times are just going to get longer, and levels smaller as more and more detail is added.

Overall the updates to source have kept it from falling completely of the map, but I feel those steps are limited.

You can't expect Valve to make a top of the line engine, though. Source and their surveys are an indication that they are not looking to be accessible to many gamers even those lagging behind on the upgrade curve. So expecting a Cry-engine is out of the question.
More than likely their next few games are going to use Source and I guess we'll see how far those upgrades take that engine. The art style and aesthetics have carried their games more than the graphics themselves, though.
I think creating a new engine or at least doing a major overhaul of Source to the point where it's more like a new engine might be needed in the near future, though. Especially for the tools, since they are apparently a bitch to use.

EDIT: Oh Dell Sucks options, why must you taunt me so.

EDIT2: Yeah they should definitely improve loading times. It's strange that Portal employed with such small levels, when they hired Minerva's Adam Foster I thought they would get a better grasp on using space.

Obviously, consoles are holding back bleeding edge graphics nowadays. But as I said in the 1st post pre-debate, graphics are already pretty damn good in big budget games, there's not a whole lot to accomplish anymore, compared to, say, 10-15 years ago, when 3D games were just blossomming. Even indie-made engines can be gorgeous (see Hard Reset).
Again, for streaming, I remember when UE3 was 1st shown off as a tech demo, they had huge streaming levels with high detail, but again, console RAM is holding that back. It's a choice between using resources for level of detail Vs. streaming the next bit of the level.
But loading times on source have always been terrible. Remember just loading the HL2 main menu? Urgh, what a chore. They have worked on imporoving that, but they should proabbly keep working on it.

they cant change the mechanism, the engine is not designed for real time streaming of maps, they essentially kept the same loading code since goldsrc and would require a massive re-write to implement.

Valve's maps contain a bunch of essential details such as lighting, shadow & brush, node info, etc, information that the engine doesnt generate in real time so its imprinted on the map itself (great for older machines with lesser memory, but sets back the engine for newer systems), streaming a map would cause insane amount of conflicts because both maps would point to the same memory regions and expect two different values.

I think the real problem with valve keeping source is that it has pretty much killed the mod community, where are the mods? There arent enough good tools to really make something shine with the source engine (unless you dedicate a lump of cash or insane amount of time (see black mesa south) and most of the mods out there still look like they belong in 2004.

Valve no longer cares about the mod community and its shown with Source.

suicide_mission, on 16 September 2011 - 01:15 AM, said:

Brumisator, on 15 September 2011 - 12:13 PM, said:

Also, they release the SDK every time with a game. Well, not always on time, but it's Valve, eh?
Also, they put worthy mods straight on Steam, and often hire from the mod community.

Brumisator, on 15 September 2011 - 06:21 PM, said:

And how many good mods have been out since 2007? (TF2 engine updates, shaders, improved lighting, etc) lots of WiPs, most are forgettable and often abandoned once initially released (if they even get there)

Brumisator, on 15 September 2011 - 06:21 PM, said:

Valve has the distribution down, no doubt, and they have extended that to the community, but they have arcane tools that still feel like its 1998 and the best effort they have made to support modders is to buy their concept and sell it back to the community.

suicide_mission, on 16 September 2011 - 01:30 AM, said:

Well here are a few. Also, we just had news about one this week.

I guess your point is that source uses outdated tools and outdated map generation, and that can't be fixed. A fair point.
But hey, Valve still makes great games with them. And a few others do too.

City 17, on 15 September 2011 - 04:18 PM, said:

I remember playing Half-Life like 12 years ago, and imagined that in the future the loading screen didnt took like 15 seconds or something (I had a Pentium II 350mhz & 64mb),
but that it loaded in the blink of an eye, but it still isn't happening
Maybe when using SSD will help?

And Portal 2 the loading screen, I don't know why they did it, but it must have been that the levels are very detailed, look at how big the maps are in L4D2, and that is a console game too..

Sure there were a lot of loading screens in Portal 2, but they all loaded super fast for me. Same with L4D2's maps, I'm usually one of the first people in the game while waiting for others.

Luckily the loading doesn't take long but it are so many, when playing L4D2 I'm also mostly the first to enter the game after loading (yay ).

But that means the Harddrives today are the most antique part of our computers, it took very long before they came with something new that isn't a rotating noisy thingy.
Anybody got experience with SSD?

I don't have an SSD, but I've heard from reliable sources that they are very very fast, and game loading times are stupendous. Hopefully in a few years, their price/capacity ratio will be similar to HDDs

Talking of mods what the hell is going on with black mesa source? Are people still working on that?

Think so, they've almost achieved "Episode 3" status

Brumisator, on 15 September 2011 - 06:42 PM, said:

Yes, it only took the company that made the same engine 3 years to make a new game, and that is with their own tools & money!!! You really expect people without both to make something near as nice?

Yes, portal2 looks nice, but its no match for other engines...

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There stance has always been that someone is working on it...

I honestly think they should stick with Source especially if they continue to try and be multi-platform. The other engines, while may handle flasher DirectX effects, limit cross-platform capability because they use DX. I hope they don't dump it for UE3 because almost every game I have ever played on an Unreal Engine has suffered from instability and crashing.