Half-Life 3 and Left 4 Dead 3 were both scrapped because Source 2 was unfinished

https://www.destructoid.com/stories/half-life-3-and-left-4-dead-3-were-both-scrapped-because-source-2-was-unfinished-596899.phtml

by evo_9 • 6 years ago

20 15 6 years ago

destructoid.com

xigency2• 6 years ago

At a company where people work on whatever they want, there’s probably a lot of reasons why projects might not be “finished.”

0xy2• 6 years ago

Steam's success as a platform masks the very real problems at Valve. When you have an infinite money printer, you can't even tell that you haven't delivered any quality products for years.

Steam itself seemed to be in maintenance mode with very little love until the last two years (when real competition emerged).

Valve seems like the kind of place with constant power struggles and office politics, even more so than a traditional org.

Separately, why are they still bothering with Source 2? Their competition is technically superior in pretty much every respect.

britmob• 6 years ago

I can’t speak for many technicalities between existing engines and Source 2, but from the bit I’ve been playing in Alyx, it seems to be more optimized than any other engine I’ve ever seen, especially with VR. It’s multithreaded across 3-5 cores, and runs better than a lot of games that look worse. I have no doubt that Source 2 offers performance (especially in VR) that existing engines cannot easily match.

0xy2• 6 years ago

VR is essentially an irrelevant niche in the AAA industry. It hasn't caught on, there are no killer apps, and the majority of VR headsets are sitting in the corner of people's rooms collecting dust.

Alyx has 2,000ish concurrent players at this point, while Left 4 Dead 2, a 11 year old game, has over 17,000.

xigency2• 6 years ago

If you're interested in how some multithreaded game engines work, this was a really interesting talk: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022186/Parallelizing-the-Naug...

Shared4043• 6 years ago

"top secret project"since 2018 and there's no information as to what it might be.

Honestly, I really hope this is a Portal getting the Alyx treatment. That would be my dream VR game, even if I did have to take unhealthy amounts of dramamine.

bzb3• 6 years ago

Honestly, I really hope they don't release another VR exclusive game ever again.

Shared4043• 6 years ago

An understandable sentiment, VR isn't for everyone. Honestly, just Portal 3 would be amazing. I just think that a well executed Portal game in VR would peak the medium, at least for now.

ShamelessC2• 6 years ago

I believe there's an interview with the Alyx devs where they explain that a Portal game in VR wouldn't work as that game involves a ton of flying around with momentum in heavy use. A common solution for motion sickness in VR is teleport based locomotion. I don't really see how Portal could work with teleport locomotion.

There's also the issue that the appeal of portals being quite mind bending is satisfying on screen but it's probably rather jarring to go through a portal on a wall and instantly begin falling quickly to the floor. Alyx had issues with falling as well which is why you sort of float slowly when you fall off a ledge.

On the other hand, while I think it's impossible, Valve would be the company to pull it off.

Shared4043• 6 years ago

...motion sickness in VR ...

Thus the dramamine :) .

That being said, I agree with everything you've stated. I don't really see it being doable, but it's Valve we're talking about so who knows. I just know what's wishful thinking.

johnwalkr• 6 years ago

Does anyone know the number of developers at Valve that work on Steam vs on games?

wpdev_632• 6 years ago

I am happy there's the epic store as it seems to be the only thing to get Gabe and his cronies off their asses and start finishing games again.

Source 2 engine has nothing to do with why they scrapped like 4-5 games, it's because why finish anything when you can just collect 30% on steam. It must've been like an adult daycare at valve for the last 7-8 years with no actual work needed to be finished.... Are they hiring?

muttled• 6 years ago

With how often Steam asks to restart for an upgrade I'm pretty sure that's where all that engineer time is going. I generally have no idea what changed after an update, though.

wpdev_632• 6 years ago

Did you notice that the new steam interface came after epic store started getting free games every month?

I have no idea why people are so against the epic store. I have to start believing its steam marketing team at work.

Half-Life 3 and Left 4 Dead 3 were both scrapped because Source 2 was unfinished

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