Source 2 Engine FREE!!!

[Deleted User]

Lets pump up the volume even more. Because you know, UE4 and Unity5 FREE news are not enough

http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/3/8145273/valve-source-2-announcement-free-developers
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/source-2-engine-officially-announced-available-for-free-to-content-developers/

JedTheKrampus

How free exactly? Is there a catch? Is there source code available? Are there middleware licenses we have to pay?

ZacD

It's free for content creators at least, which makes sense, here use this to make stuff for our games that we can both profit on. But is it going to be free to make games with? My guess is that it may be free to release a Source 2 game on Steam, but they'll still take the 30% Steam cut of sales, if they make the full version of the engine free to use.

Deathstick

Sweet swirling free engines from different companies batman!

I love Valve and miss using Hammer all of the time, hoping to see what the engine will actually consist of soon both on actual graphics themselves and especially on the development tools. (Is it just Worldcraft Editor/Hammer 3.0? Or almost an entirely new reboot/preferably streamlined process on the tools and workflow? Hopefully with a new GUI rather than 10 batch executables that I have to type out commands in DOS on!!!)

Oh how modern development tools have spoiled me...

JedTheKrampus

If you want a taste of new Hammer give the Dota 2 Workshop Tools Alpha a download. It might be a little slow and crashy for you but you'll be able to get an idea of some of the workflow improvements they've been working on.

Fuiosg

meh Valve can stuff it, free to hat makers, gee thanks. I don't see anything here that's exciting or even new.

Richard Kain

It's Christmas come early! Three major engines going free-to-develop in as many days!

The original Source is a bit old, it will be interesting to see what manner of upgrades this new version is going to bring to the table. Some of the things I need from Source 2...

1. Blender support - I'm a Blender-head, and the original Source was notoriously difficult and finicky when it came to model importing. At the bare minimum, we need to see some decent support for widely accepted formats, like Collada and FBX. I don't want to have to do back-flips to get my models into the engine, especially not when so many of the other engines have improved significantly in this area.

2. Lip-Sync support - I'm not actually worried about this one. Source 1 still has one of the best lip-syncing solutions in the game industry. Chances are good that Source 2 will follow in its footsteps.

3. Flexible editing - I'm interested in making more than just FPS titles. I need an environment that will let me experiment a little. Source 2 will probably improve a little bit in this area, but I seriously doubt it will reach Unity's level of flexibility.

Deathstick

You know what would be really nice, a sequel in a major game franchise we're all familiar with to show off all the new improvements that are in Source 2, and I don't mean Ricochet 2

Portal gun in Half-life 3 with ragdoll physics and insane rigging/animation combination so combine soldiers can get up naturally after falling through a portal and surviving. I'm calling it now!!!

Muzzoid

I wonder how much of the dota 2 functionality is included!

Unity and Unreal are architectured around certain ideas, which makes certain things difficult. (there is a reason there is no serious rts efforts happening in either). Hopefully Source2 has enough of a difference in architecture that it spurs new creativity.

Really hoping this means more online competitive games!

Minato

You can say whatever you want Valve, but we all know you did this so Alex and Gordon look their best when we finally get to see them again, so get to the point and tell me when am I going to see them again!

That being said, I'm really curious about the specs and features, doubt it can directly compete with UE4 but there should be some unique Valve flavored surprises in there, don't tease us Valve... come on already.

Joost

Source 1 was a game changer when it first came out, wasn't it? I'm curious to see how 2 will stack up to UE4 and Unity.

Makkon

Unless they'd ditched BSP entirely, and have a more impressive lighting solution than baking lights, I'm not particularly interested.

Still, cool of them to do this.

Son Kim

Makkon wrote: »

Unless they'd ditched BSP entirely, and have a more impressive lighting solution than baking lights, I'm not particularly interested.

Still, cool of them to do this.

BSP is gone in Source 2: http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/topic.aspx?f=83&t=91506

The jury is still out on the lighting, I think they'll have both dynamic GI and lightmap baking.

Needles

Source 1 was my first adventure into 3d modeling and modding.

I found polycount looking for hl1 and quake 2 models xD, and then i found the forum section .... omg XD

All of this is just making me feel all nostalgic about the old polycount website and COLDFUSION!!!

Makkon

Son Kim: Ah, good to know! That makes me a lot more excited.

fearian

To cut short something I posted elsewhere:

I don't see many devs taking this seriously for the first year or so. Unity and Unreal are proven successes with large support structures. Source has a huge community but valve are historically bad at releasing solid tools.

I see the community taking charge of support and filling in gaps with 3rd party tools. In about a year of maturing, I'll be interested. There will probably be a wealth of small scale projects, but I think its unlikely to come out the gate as a viable competitor to unity or unreal.

It should do better than cryengine at least vOv

Fuiosg

The plot thickens

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/03/04/source-2-is-actually-free-like-for-free/

ZacD

So it's free as long as you release the game on Steam (you can release it on other sites + Steam). That's a bit better than I expected. So my guess earlier in the thread was pretty accurate.

ambershee

To be fair, that isn't *really* free, since Valve take a very significant 30% cut from you for being on Steam in the first place - it's not like they really need to charge you another 5% or whatever for the luxury of using their tools too.

Wonder what they'd charge you to not release on Steam?

JedTheKrampus

You can release it in other places than Steam, it just has to be on Steam as well as those other places. Not too different from how you'd probably release your game anyway to be honest.

Muzzoid

It's important to note that Source 2 is supporting the Khronos groups new effort, Vulkan.

https://www.khronos.org/vulkan

ZacD

AMD basically gave all of their tech for Mantle to Vulkan which was Next Gen OpenGL. Epic and Unity are going to be working with them as well.

Muzzoid

Exciting times! Going over the tech doc they released. Seems like a crazy huge architecture change. Especially using compiled shaders!

Richard Kain

What kind of platform reach are we talking about? Given Valve's various moves over the past few years, the major PC operating systems are pretty much all a given. (Windows, OSX, Linux/SteamOS)

But will Source 2 be portable to Android, or iOS? Will it be possible to get it to run on tablets and smartphones? What about most of the major home consoles? The platform reach and ease of porting for Unity is one of its best points, and Unreal 4 isn't that far behind. In order for me to consider dappling in Source 2 seriously, I would need to know more on this particular issue.

I am hopeful that the platform reach of Source 2 would be fairly broad. Valve managed to spread the original Source out fairly far, despite its age. And with them looking to support a cross-platform rendering API like Vulkan, it seems likely that cross-platform support is a priority for them.

iniside

Richard Kain wrote: »

What kind of platform reach are we talking about? Given Valve's various moves over the past few years, the major PC operating systems are pretty much all a given. (Windows, OSX, Linux/SteamOS)

But will Source 2 be portable to Android, or iOS? Will it be possible to get it to run on tablets and smartphones? What about most of the major home consoles? The platform reach and ease of porting for Unity is one of its best points, and Unreal 4 isn't that far behind. In order for me to consider dappling in Source 2 seriously, I would need to know more on this particular issue.

I am hopeful that the platform reach of Source 2 would be fairly broad. Valve managed to spread the original Source out fairly far, despite its age. And with them looking to support a cross-platform rendering API like Vulkan, it seems likely that cross-platform support is a priority for them.

Why would Valve support platforms, to which they don't have reach ?
Source 2 is probably going to be PC exclusive. At least out of box and for free.

SideEffect

Muzz wrote: »

Exciting times! Going over the tech doc they released. Seems like a crazy huge architecture change. Especially using compiled shaders!

Where can we find this tech doc?

Richard Kain

iniside wrote: »

Why would Valve support platforms, to which they don't have reach ?
Source 2 is probably going to be PC exclusive. At least out of box and for free.

The one and only stipulation for using Source 2 is that games have to at least be published to Steam. There are a huge number of developers who focus on mobile and tablet, and those numbers are only going to increase. Reaching those platforms with their engine gives Valve access to a wealth of new developers who would be required to at least release a port of their game on steam. The more decent games that get released on Steam, the more money Valve makes.

Funneling more development into Steam is good for them, and thus a good feature for their Source 2 engine to support.

Muzzoid

SideEffect wrote: »

Where can we find this tech doc?

It's pretty sparse but it has extra info than the site.

https://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/developers/library/overview/2015_vulkan_v1_Overview.pdf