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First Person Shooters (Games) PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Source Engine - In The Belly Of The Beast? 41

Posted by simoniker from the jonah-and-whale dept.
Thanks to Half-Life 2 Fallout for its fan-written feature discussing the content of Valve's Source videogame engine, as used for Half-Life 2. The piece explains: "The Source engine is not just a 3D engine (in the sense it's not just a renderer) -- it contains many different modules that are all brought together into one package", and tries to clarify discussion on subjects as diverse as lighting ("Something that has caused confusion in the past is 'dynamic lights' [in the Source engine].... All a light has to be in order for it to be qualified as dynamic is to be able to move and have changeable attributes.... It doesn't mean that it will [necessarily] cast real time shadows like in Doom 3 or Unreal Engine 3.0"), and in-game water ("When Valve say the water is physically simulated, they mean objects have buoyancy. They don't mean the Source engine has fluid dynamics.")
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Source Engine - In The Belly Of The Beast? More

Source Engine - In The Belly Of The Beast?

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  • AI is "very, very powerful" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lunarscape ( 704562 ) on Monday June 28, 2004 @07:38AM (#9549770)
    The sequence where the Strider blows up the bridge was unscripted and unexpected by Valve

    That was unscripted??? Wow. Just wow.

    The NPC's will refuse to take stupid orders

    What do you mean you won't walk into that flaming pool of death? I gave you an order!!!

  • This piece is definately intended for the layman, for the somewhat more technically inclined there's a PDF about the actual inner workings of the engine over at the developer's section of ATI ... [ati.com]
  • Since it is 'fan written' where did they get all this information on source from? There's not a lot of detailed info but there's quite a lot I haven't seen before.

    Could this be something do with a certain hack?

    Or am I just paranoid? - probably
    • There's not a lot of detailed info but there's quite a lot I haven't seen before.

      Valve have said quite a lot about the capabilities of the engine (see the VERC link above) - I was a bit suspicious about this article when I first saw it a few days ago, but on closer inspection it looks like someone's read a few things about the capabilities and trundled off in their own imagination.

      It's not a bad article, but it doesn't look like it's been written by someone particularly familiar with the internals of 3D
  • That's great. Look for my upcoming release to "Totally Real Interactive Virtual Fighter" where "interactive" means when you press the one button the big on-screen square hops over the monster sprite. All, when I say "immersive 3D technology" I mean that every pixel has an X and Y position and you are seated a certain distance Z from the display.

  • Unscripted... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by th1ckasabr1ck ( 752151 ) on Monday June 28, 2004 @08:02AM (#9549910)
    When the HL2 source was leaked, it became evident that many of the things Valve claimed were not scripted actually were. Keep that in mind and take this with a grain or two.

    • Re:Unscripted... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ford Prefect ( 8777 ) on Monday June 28, 2004 @09:22AM (#9550554) Homepage
      I might as well copy-and-paste from a comment I posted a few weeks ago. I can't be arsed writing another detailed criticism of all these 'scripting' allegations...

      "Then there are claims of 'scripting' in the leaked demos. Believe it or not, some things have to be scripted. Decent AI might get a simulated soldier to behave realistically and evade or attack the player at appropriate moments, but higher-order behaviours (like, say, breaking a door open) need to be scripted. It would be impressive for a human player to instantaneously figure out all the interactive aspects of a map, let alone a computer-controlled enemy. The scripting for such complex behaviours needs a lot of work to take account of many different possiblities, and it's obvious that Valve didn't include all of them in the demonstration map. But it's not as if the whole lot was faked, like the E3 2000 Halo demonstration...

      "I've done a bunch of single-player mapping for Half-Life. One of the hardest things is the scripting - not the obvious, scripted sequence stuff, but the behind-the-scenes mechanics which makes the world come alive. AI works for the moment, while scripting is needed to set the scene, and to make the enemies more than simplistic automata. AI drives the scripting, and scripting drives the AI."

      • Re:Unscripted... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 28, 2004 @09:56AM (#9550849)
        some things HAVING TO BE scripted has nothing to do with facts that things valve said weren't scripted were scripted.

        that's like saying "this game doesn't just spawn enemies around the player, it's a full living world" and then when you play the game you go "WTF?" when the world is just one room after another of fancy graphics AND enemies that get spawned right in front of your eyes after you enter the room.

        it's just total bullshitting, like saying that the game is ready in a month when in fact it needs so much work they can't get it out in a fucking year.

        valve has gotten so much forgiven already for making half-life 1 an excellent game, after that they haven't really delivered anything except hype.
        • " like saying that the game is ready in a month when in fact it needs so much work they can't get it out in a fucking year."

          So basically your just pissed off that you don't have a new computer game to play and you are going to have to spend your summer vacation in some other way?

          Oh darn. Sucks to be you.

          • Re:Unscripted... (Score:3, Interesting)

            by aliens ( 90441 )
            He might have been one of those people who got sucked into upgrading last year with the promise of HL2 a month away.

            Not that what they upgraded to is suddenly bad hardware. But for the money he spent last year he could be getting an X800 or 6800 GPU now.

            He also might be pissed if he was somehow involved in business with Valve. Unless they told ATI that the game was in fact going to need another year, and ATI went ahead with the HL2 coupon anyway, I'd be pissed if I was ATI.

            • Re:Unscripted... (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Zed2K ( 313037 )
              Anyone that upgrades their computer for a particular game BEFORE the game is actually on the shelves is an idiot.

              Why would ATI be pissed? They sold a ton of cards they could care less what they are used for as long as they sell their product.

    • Re:Unscripted... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by dfj225 ( 587560 )
      Now I didn't view the HL2 at all and haven't compared what they said was not scripted to what actually was, so I am just taking a guess here as to what they may mean. Perhaps when they say that things weren't scripted they mean that the NPC's reaction to the situation wasn't scripted. For instance, there might be a script to open a door, but it is the NPC's choice as to what action is better: opening the door or simply trying to shoot through a window or other opening. Also, for the scene when the stride
  • Maybe I'm just out of the loop, but in the article he says:

    "We can only hope that it's not too long before Valve implements it into Source so the in game bouncy castle is no longer a dream but a reality."

    I'm not sure what this "bouncy castle" is, but is it kinda like castle anthrax? ;)

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