Gabe Newell Confirms Source 2 Engine 88
dotarray writes "Valve's Gabe Newell has confirmed that they are building the Source 2 engine, but haven't yet had the game to roll it out with. From the article: 'If you're not smiling yet, you'll definitely be doing so after you hear how the announcement was made. It was Gabe Newell's birthday on November 3rd, and 4Chan's /v/ (videogames) board decided to pay him a surprise visit. In addition to an enormous birthday card signed by many of /v/'s regulars, they also gave him an an actual Mann-Co crate, which he had to pay $2.50 to unlock in order to receive the gift of a combat helmet similar to the one worn by the Team Fortress 2 soldier. Irony at its best.'"
Re:Source 1 was awful (Score:3, Informative)
idTech 4 is from 2004, the same year Source was released. Not only that, but idTech 4 was saddled with one of the shittiest FPS games in recent memory: Doom 3.
As for the other engines you mention, all of them are newer than Source, so it's not surprising that they would look better. As a reminder, UE3 was introduced with Unreal Tournament 3 in 2007. Crytek was introduced with Crysis in 2008.
Then again, if you're saying Source is bad, you may want to look at newer games made in it, such as Portal 2, rather than relying on Half-Life 2 from 2004. Source is an iteratively designed engine and newer Source games use newer iterations and thus newer technologies.
As for Team Fortress 2 (mentioned by the GGP), it's non-realistic even compared to Valve's other games. This is intentional... it makes heavy use of Phong shading to make the art style appear as if it were an early 20th century magazine ad, ala Norman Rockwell. Which also offers a clean, uncluttered look... just the opposite of the other Source games. Which works quite well for a multiplayer FPS game that relies heavily on silhouettes like TF2 does.