As the years wore on, there continued to be significant jumps in terms of graphics processing, and while Valve's products remained popular, it was clear that a significant update would be unavoidable. Early first person shooters like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D had their roots in share-ware and community modification, but Valve's ability to support the Half-Life toolset and universe as genuine platform was unprecedented. Counter-Strike became an international phenomenon, played obsessively and competitively around the world, from the far-flung internet cafes of Western China (where I first encountered the game), to the high-end machines of American competitive gamers. The Half-Life version of Team-Fortress formed the gameplay grammar of almost every online shooter since. In the years following the release of Half-Life, the strategy of supporting user mods, expansions, and offering a stable technical platform for everything proved to be monumental. "Changing the engine risks breaking all of the work these up-and-coming developers are creating." "You may be aware there is a whole community of fans developing modifications and add-ons for Half-Life," Pitchford explained. Gearbox's Randy Pitchford, whose company developed Half-Life: Opposing Force and Half-Life: Blue Shift, said Valve wanted to make sure they didn't dramatically alter the core game tools in developing the expansions. Instead, they preferred to focus on mods and expansion packs to build out the Half-Life eco-system. After Valve's initial success with Half-Life, which sold over 2.5 million units in its first year, they shied away from immediately committing to a full-fledged sequel or a new epic project. Even before it had its own name and brand, it was considered a work in progress, an amalgam of different elements fused together for gameplay rather than sheer technical prowess. While most game fans tend to think of game engines as discrete and stable platforms, the Source engine has always stood for adaptability and continuous evolution. "$Goldsrc" was Valve's term for the code that was already released through Half-Life, while "$Src" was the name for the continually evolving toolset that would, eventually, become Source. It was decided to leave the final code of the game untouched, but branch off with a second set of code to continue implementing new ideas and features internally. "We found there were already some projects that we needed to start working on, but we couldn't risk checking in code to the shipping version of the game," said Erik Johnson, Project Manager at Valve. Over the next two years, Valve significantly modified the Quake engine to better suit their game, revising the animation system, reworking the AI tools, and adding Direct3D support.Īfter several delays the game was finally ready for release, but Valve still wasn't done tinkering with the engine. Working with their own money and a license to use id Software's Quake engine, Valve created Half-Life. It Started Like This Valve Corporation sprang to life in 1996 when Gabe Newell, a Harvard dropout, quit his job at Microsoft to make videogames with fellow Windows team alum Mike Harrington. For developers who have complained about having to "rebuild" their camera every time they make a game, Source makes a strong argument that gaming's camera has already arrived. Epic's Unreal Engine has become the market leader in the near term, but Valve's Source Engine has proven to be the most durable, consistent, and approachable. Over the last several years a healthy competition has emerged between different companies making their own engines open to licensing and modification from other developers. Game engines are the central technology in game development, the toolset that connects character art, animation, level geometry, AI code, event scripting, and special effects into one cohesive whole. The most common analogy is that of a film camera. What has emerged to replace them is the "game engine," a commonly used but generally misunderstood, term to describe the tools with which a modern game is made.
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