Alright, after a long delay I'm back! Jumping right into this I'm gonna be talking about one of my favourite game engines for this new class, the wonderful engine that has given us so many games by Valve: The Source Engine! I'll be doing a quick-review off it from its beginnings to its future while going through some of the special features implemented it as time went by, but first I'll give a quick summary of what the engine is!
As mentioned before, the Source Engine is Valve's in-house game engine. It was designed to be used for first-person shooters (a genre which Valve excels in) but has been successfully repurposed to be used for other genres (such as top-down shooters like Alien Swarm). It evolved from the GoldSource Engine which was built off of the Quake Engine.
Now, there's something rather special about the Source Engine in relation to our class: It is made entirely in C++ (well, C++ and then it uses OpenGL and DirectX3D for shaders). This means that there are only two things to stop a UOIT student from making an engine as powerful as Source: Experience and manpower. I consider that fantastic motivation to start learning the ins-and-outs of engines to make my own. Anyway, on to the features that were added!
So the Source Engine is constantly evolving with new games adding new features to it. For example Left 4 Dead 2 added dynamic 3D wounds for the engine, these essentially being a unique way of creating wounds on characters that would change the appearance of the model in a drastic way (i.e. arms falling off and having the bone sticking out). The game DOTA 2 introduced keyframed vertex animation to the engine and then there's a much longer list of features (with things like blending skeletal animation, inverse kinematics, dynamic water effects, etc.). The development of the engine does not have them keeping track of it by versions like you would typically see (i.e. version 1.0.0, version 1.0.1, etc.), instead simply updating in smaller or bigger ways as required.
Looking at its design, the Source Engine has the capacity to constantly grow as time goes on and add new features. Though this approach would ultimately prove a bad idea as new techniques and design patterns are constantly emerging and the base code for the engine simply could not easily be altered without potentially ruining the engine. This seems to be something that Valve has picked up on as they are currently developing (or, if rumors are to be believed, have already released) a Source Engine 2. This engine should see an overhaul to the lower-level architecture of the system so that it could run much more efficiently and have greater potential than the previous one.
On a semi-unrelated note though, the Source Engine is also a great example of how powerful a game engine can be in the right hands. Valve has used their engine not only to make games but also to make offline tools such as the Source Filmmaker and Hammer Editor which they could then use to improve their production pipelines. The Source Filmmaker allows for easy development of in-engine cutscenes by allowing them to create a scene in the engine like you would with Maya, but it instead uses the engines lighting systems. The best example of its potential is the Meet the Team videos for Team Fortress 2. Meanwhile, the Hammer Editor functions as the company's in-house map editing tool, Not only does it allow users to create the shape of the map, it also allows them to set up things such as game triggers which the engine can then use to construct the full level experience.
Overall, the Source Engine is a fantastic piece of technology, in my mostly biased opinion. Unfortunately, I have not ever used it so I could not make any comments on how user-friendly it is or some of the downsides it has developing for it. I hope you've enjoyed reading this rambling blog!
Cheers!
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