Gabe Newell confirms Valve working on new game engine

Valve is a company that most gamers keep an eye on. This is mostly because of the complete silence the company exhibits about new and upcoming projects, especially when it might be a new game. According to Lambda Generation, head of Valve Gabe Newell has officially confirmed that the company is now working on a new next-gen game engine.

Gabe Newell revealed the news about the next game engine when some members of 4chan’s game-centric imageboard, /v/, visited Newell on his birthday. There is a full video of the birthday visit that is 52 minutes long, but the highlight would be the confirmation of the game engine.

A fan asked Newell, “Is Valve potentially already working on a new engine?”, to which Newell responded, “We’ve been working on Valve’s new engine stuff for a while, we’re probably just [incomprehensible, subtitled as: “waiting for a game to roll it out with”]”

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The Source Engine is confirmed to be getting a new version

Back in August, some data miners had discovered references to a Source 2 in Souce Film Maker. According to the report, there are many references in the script files to “Source 2”. The exact script is on line 1387 of the script file and reads:
“Return an str with the current engine version.
If key doesn’t doesn’t exist, assume ‘Source’, otherwise invalid – assume next-gen ‘Source 2’.”

There are references to Source, Hybrid, and Source 2 in the file. It is speculated that Hybrid is the base for which Source 2 is sitting on. Source 2 also seems to be using the same pipeline as Source, meaning that it will probably be keeping the .BSP format it uses for levels. There haven’t been any references to DirectX or OpenGL found yet, or Episode 3 or Half-Life 3 for that matter.

Valve says this about their current Source Engine: “We don’t like to brag, but Source is considered the most flexible, comprehensive, and powerful game development environment out there. And it’s about to get even better.”

Valve released the Source Filmmaker in July this year. In its blog, Valve said, “The Source Filmmaker (SFM) is the movie-making tool built and used by us here at Valve to make movies inside the Source game engine. Because the SFM uses the same assets as the game, anything that exists in the game can be used in the movie, and vice versa. By utilising the hardware rendering power of a modern gaming PC, the SFM allows storytellers to work in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get environment so they can iterate in the context of what it will feel like for the final audience“.

Few companies in the gaming world are followed as closely as Valve. This may be largely because of its utter silence on the sequel to Half-Life 2: Episode 2, which is based on the Source Engine. The game ends on a cliffhanger, and has caused people to be thoroughly annoyed with the company as it has been almost five years since Half-Life 2: Episode 2 was released through the Orange Box. Many speculate and talk about rumours of the fabled next iteration of the game. Some believe it will be Half-Life 2: Episode 3, others believe it will be Half-Life 3. If Valve were to follow their regular pattern, a supposed Half-Life 3 would showcase the capabilities of a new graphics and physics engine.