Source 2/en
Source 2 is a 3D video game engine developed by Valve as a successor to Source. It is used in Dota 2, SteamVR Home, Half-Life: Alyx, S&box, Counter-Strike 2, and much more.
Source 2 was first made public with the Dota 2 Workshop Tools Alpha in August 6th 2014 and formally announced by Valve in March of 2015 at the Game Developers Conference. It was then implemented into Dota 2 on June 17th 2015. Valve has announced that Source 2 will be released to the public for free, and it will only take money should it be used for commercial products.
The engine is capable of rendering highly complex and well detailed scenes with minimal framerate drops, thanks to its new 64-bit support alongside Vulkan, Direct3D 11, allowing for better multi-core rendering, better graphics and more efficient 3D rendering.
Contents
Features
- Integrated asset management via the Asset System.
- New engine-integrated authoring tools, rebuilt from the ground up.
- Completely rebuilt Hammer level editor, featuring modern polygon mesh editing tools.
- Support for both forward and deferred rendering pipelines.
- Lower latency and more responsive input.
- Improved audio and voice processing.
- New in-house physics engine, Rubikon. Includes support for Cloth Simulation.
- Screen Space Ambient Occlusion support.
- Physically Based Rendering support.
- Volumetric lighting support.
- Support for the Steam Audio sound system.
- WebM video, replacing the previous Bink Video format.
- Enhanced Panorama GUI, designed to be more user friendly.
- Native DirectX 11® and Vulkan® support, with support for Shader Model 5.0 and later.
- Higher texture resolutions (more than 4096x4096/4K).
- 64-bit supported
- Previously, Source 2 also support 32-bit, which has been dropped with the release of Dota 2 update in 2021 (except SteamVR Home).
Limitations
Furthermore, newer games like Counter-Strike 2 will also require a CPU with SSE 4.2 support.
Products using Source 2
Valve
Products made by Valve.
Released
Year | Title | Co-developed with | Platforms | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
2015
|
Dota 2 | PC | Originally using Source, ported to Source 2 in 2015. | |
2016
|
SteamVR Performance Test | PC (VR) | Non-interactive version of the Robot Repair demo | |
2016
|
Robot Repair – Included in The Lab | PC (VR) | ||
2016
|
Destinations | PC (VR) | Replaced by SteamVR Home. | |
2017
|
SteamVR Home | PC (VR) | ||
2018
|
Artifact | PC | The Dota Card Game. | |
2019
|
Dota Underlords | PC, Android, iOS | ||
2020
|
Half-Life: Alyx | PC (VR) | First Half-Life game to be released since the release of Half-Life 2: Episode Two, which was released 12 years prior. | |
2022
|
Aperture Desk Job | PC (Steam Deck) | ||
2023
|
Counter-Strike 2 | PC | Originally planned to be released in Summer 2023, it was delayed and later released in September 27, 2023. This is a port of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to the Source 2 engine, under it's new name " Counter-Strike 2", which eventually replaced the original game. Various Counter-Strike: Global Offensive maps were removed, while others have been remade from scratch. |
Unreleased
This section are for unreleased Valve games / tools that are not publicly released or is in Beta/Early Access.
- There are currently no unreleased first-party Source 2 game.
Third-Party
Products made by third-party companies and mod teams.
Released
- None yet.
In development/Unreleased
This section are for unreleased 3rd party games that are in development, not publicly released or is in Beta/Early Access.
Year | Title | Developer(s) | Publisher(s) | Platforms | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
TBA
|
S&box | Facepunch Studios | Facepunch Studios | PC (VR) | As stated by Garry Newman himself, this is not intended to be a remaster of Garry's Mod, but rather, a spiritual successor. This is also the first time, and only time Source 2 was licensed to third-party developer. |