The article attributes all these free engines to Unity but I think they've missed 20+ years of videogame history. First, Valve has always been very open to game mods. Some of their most popular franchises (TF & CS) grew out of the mod community around HL1 and they've always made tooling available for the Source engine. HL1 was based on the Quake engine and id has always embraced the mod community. Id software has als…
Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free
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Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Real Time Ray tracing is still very far off. Brigade serves as a good proof of concept, but a lot of things are yet to be researched and implemented to make it viable in commercial sphere. Seeing the progress, I do not think commercial real time ray traced game will be a reality any time soon in this decade.
It's been "next gen" for decades. It's just a terribly inefficient brute-force approach to lighting a scene. I don't think it'll ever be viable for real-time graphics.
Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Steam recognizes the Source libraries as a distinct element I don't think that's correct, all Source1 games include their own copy of the engine and aren't automatically updated to newer versions etc. (Valve does update them though). The engine download is only for mods and some 3rd-party games.
What do you call Source1 games? I'm pretty sure I had a common source download for CS:S, DoD:S and HL:DM
Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free
#64Based on the context of the "free for content developers," it sounds to me like they mean it will be free for people developing add-on content for existing games, not that it will be free for people making their own games.
I think that they'll have monetisation in place either through royalties like Epic, or just their cut of Steam sales. I don't see why they'd worry that someone used Source to make a brand new game they're almost sure to profit from anyways.
Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free
#65How does Source and Steam fit together? Would it make sense to lower a potential fee for Steam exclusive games built on Source? Would it be "risky" trusting the same company with both the game engine and distribution? It's really great seeing Source 2, Unreal Engine and Unity lowering the bar for game developers to deliver their products.
How does Source and Steam fit together? Source is an engine, Steam is a distribution platform. I think the only truly significant interplay is: - Source games will probably behave well with the Steam Overlay and probably work in Big Picture Mode with controllers - Steam recognizes the Source libraries as a distinct element, so you only have to download the Source engine once even if you have many games that use that…
Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free
#66"Announces ... Free" - as if they had a choice.
Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free
#67Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
They sold the company, and now Carmack at Oculus. It makes sense that the values of the company have changed.
"...the values of the company have changed..." - a polite way of saying "the founders sold out".
He went above and beyond what you could expect of anyone who cofounds a game development house and he is treated like a literal programming icon for good reason.
Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free
#69"Announces ... Free" - as if they had a choice.
Was Source even licensed as extensively as Unreal or idTech? I got the impression that most Source games were Valve's own and licensing the engine wasn't really a priority (or source of revenue) for them.
Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
"...the values of the company have changed..." - a polite way of saying "the founders sold out".
Carmack didn't "sell out", he spent decades at id and was responsible for vast swathes of 3D technology and the open-sourcing of multiple cutting edge game engines. He went above and beyond what you could expect of anyone who cofounds a game development house and he is treated like a literal programming icon for good reason.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software
=> sell out