It’s still being used by Valve for inhouse development, but I remember back when HL2 was release it was as big as Unreal. What happened?
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The engine is just plain hard to make maps for. The Hammer editor, although robust, is harder to learn than most games. Couple it with the fact that the maps used a technique called Binary Space Partition to break up the levels. It had the advantage of running fast and looking good but any minor mistake in developing your map could lead to ‘leaks’ where a portion of what should be inside the map accidentally opens to what should be outside the map, and makes things run horribly or not at all.
Tl;Dr it was difficult to develop for. Putting in the time could lead to great rewards, but other engines were just plain easier to learn while offering the same or better rewards
The engine is just plain hard to make maps for. The Hammer editor, although robust, is harder to learn than most games. Couple it with the fact that the maps used a technique called Binary Space Partition to break up the levels. It had the advantage of running fast and looking good but any minor mistake in developing your map could lead to ‘leaks’ where a portion of what should be inside the map accidentally opens to what should be outside the map, and makes things run horribly or not at all.
Tl;Dr it was difficult to develop for. Putting in the time could lead to great rewards, but other engines were just plain easier to learn while offering the same or better rewards
Mainly licensing. Unreal had always been big in the modding scene, and around 2009 they released Unreal Engine 3 as “UDK,” which was basically the release format we still have today that allowed any random person to use it.
Source, like other engines such as Frostbite and Decima, kept it’s licensing on a “contact us for licensing,” basis. You can download some modding tools, but if you want to use it for your game you need to jump through some hoops to get full access. This basically allows Valve to focus more on other things like games and Steam instead of treating their engine like a money maker itself.
Mainly licensing. Unreal had always been big in the modding scene, and around 2009 they released Unreal Engine 3 as “UDK,” which was basically the release format we still have today that allowed any random person to use it.
Source, like other engines such as Frostbite and Decima, kept it’s licensing on a “contact us for licensing,” basis. You can download some modding tools, but if you want to use it for your game you need to jump through some hoops to get full access. This basically allows Valve to focus more on other things like games and Steam instead of treating their engine like a money maker itself.
I want to add one thing to all the answers already posted.
For background, there is a popular Twitch streamer and Youtuber named DougDoug, who is brothers with one of the creators of The Stanley Parable (Originally a HL2 mod, then a standalone game made using Source, recently re-released using Unity), Davey Wreden. On one stream, Doug had Davey on stream and had a Q&A about Stanley Parable and game development ([Here is a cut-down VOD](https://youtu.be/REnFIJhVA-g))
Near the beginning, Davey was talking about Source and porting the game to Unity. He said one of the reasons they ported it to Unity was because Source is good for one thing and one thing only: level design. You can do basically whatever you want level wise but anything else is pretty tightly constrained.
I want to add one thing to all the answers already posted.
For background, there is a popular Twitch streamer and Youtuber named DougDoug, who is brothers with one of the creators of The Stanley Parable (Originally a HL2 mod, then a standalone game made using Source, recently re-released using Unity), Davey Wreden. On one stream, Doug had Davey on stream and had a Q&A about Stanley Parable and game development ([Here is a cut-down VOD](https://youtu.be/REnFIJhVA-g))
Near the beginning, Davey was talking about Source and porting the game to Unity. He said one of the reasons they ported it to Unity was because Source is good for one thing and one thing only: level design. You can do basically whatever you want level wise but anything else is pretty tightly constrained.
It wasn’t as big as Unreal, Unreal was one of the largest engines used at the time. Source was hyped up because it’s physics engine was something that hadn’t been seen to that degree of realism before. Hell, HL2 is basically a glorified demo for the Source engine’s capabilites, the entire first 2-3 hours being physics examples. But that’s also it’s problem, the physics can make things rather taxing on system resources and also were prone to unexpected outcomes you couldnt really account for, such as collision with a large number of objects. Source was great, for HL2, a game tailor made for it. But other devs had problems translating that USP into other games and the engine, while good, faced an major battle for devs who weren’t familiar with it compared to Unreal.
It wasn’t as big as Unreal, Unreal was one of the largest engines used at the time. Source was hyped up because it’s physics engine was something that hadn’t been seen to that degree of realism before. Hell, HL2 is basically a glorified demo for the Source engine’s capabilites, the entire first 2-3 hours being physics examples. But that’s also it’s problem, the physics can make things rather taxing on system resources and also were prone to unexpected outcomes you couldnt really account for, such as collision with a large number of objects. Source was great, for HL2, a game tailor made for it. But other devs had problems translating that USP into other games and the engine, while good, faced an major battle for devs who weren’t familiar with it compared to Unreal.
A lot of the things in this thread are true, but I think the most fundamental reason is that Valve is not good at software development—great game developers, pretty lousy software developers.
Source’s development was even so bad that at one point a large portion of the company pushed for Valve to give up on it and move to Unreal.
A lot of the things in this thread are true, but I think the most fundamental reason is that Valve is not good at software development—great game developers, pretty lousy software developers.
Source’s development was even so bad that at one point a large portion of the company pushed for Valve to give up on it and move to Unreal.
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