Orange Box (engine branch)

Orange Box (engine branch)

In-game screenshot of Half-Life 2: Episode Two, one of the three new games in The Orange Box package.

Developer(s)

Valve Corporation

Release date(s)

October 10, 2007 (Source 2007)^[1][5]
June 3, 2009 (Source 2009)^[1][5][Note]
October 19, 2011 (Source MP)^[1][6][Note]

Platform(s)

Windows
macOS (2010)
Linux (since Feb 2013, only)^[8]
Xbox 360
PlayStation 3

SDK

Source SDK
Source SDK Base 2007

Predecessor

Source 2006

Successor

Left 4 Dead engine branch
Source 2013

This article is about the Orange Box (Source 2007) engine branch. For the documentation on Source SDK Base 2007, see Source SDK Base.

The Source 2007 engine branch, also known as The Orange Box engine branch or New Engine branch, was released in Oct 10, 2007 with the release of The Orange Box (, , and ), succeeding the Source 2006 engine branch. Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One were also ported to Source 2007 only on consoles (until 2010 when the PC port of Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One were later ported to 2009 branch).

While Valve later created Left 4 Dead engine branch with the release of Left 4 Dead, Orange Box branches are maintained side-by-side between Left 4 Dead engine branch and subsequent branches after it (, , ), until 2013. Two Orange Box branches, Source 2009 and Source Multiplayer branch later released in circa June 2009 and October 2011 respectively, replacing Source 2007 (outside of SDK Base), the MP branch had additional features not available on 2009 branch.

All 3 original Orange Box branches (2007, 2009 and MP) were eventually directly succeeded with the release of Source 2013 Singleplayer and Source 2013 Multiplayer branches in 2013, during transition to SteamPipe content distribution system. Both Source 2013 SP and MP were based on Source MP branch, and was the final iteration of the Orange Box engine branch. Valve stopped maintaining the original Orange Box branches after the release of Source 2013.

In an attempt to stop Bunnyhopping, Valve updated the movement system on Orange Box branch to cap the forward move speed, inadvertently creating Accelerated Back Hopping. This branch also introduced few bugs noticeable in Half-Life 2 (and it's episodes), such as NPC eyes no longer blinks, the Dropship container gun no longer rotates, and thus unable to shoot unless you stand in the front of the gun, which significantly make the battle on the Sandtraps chapter much easier.

In May - June 2010, all first-party Source 2006 and Source 2007 games for PC (except for Half-Life: Source, Half-Life Deathmatch: Source, and Half-Life 2: Lost Coast) were upgraded to Source 2009, which adds support for macOS, aswell introducing achievements for PC/Mac version of Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One. Optionally, achievements are also supported on third-party mods. Later in October 2011, all MP Source 2009 games were upgraded to Source Multiplayer.

The Orange Box builds on the original Half-Life 2 branch, requiring its content installed to work.

Versions

There are six Orange Box branches. The first three are referred to in the SDK Launcher as Source 2007, Source 2009, and Source Multiplayer. The 2009 and MP branches (beside MP branches receiving more frequent updates) do not have a different feature set, but they are incompatible with 2007 due to various under-the-hood changes and different  ABI. Both Source 2009 and MP branches also lacks the SDK Base. The other three are collectively referred to as Source 2013, consisting of Source 2013 Singleplayer, Source 2013 Multiplayer, and the Team Fortress 2 branch, with the latter succeeded Source 2013 Multiplayer. Source 2013 makes several more significant changes, and has its own page.

Binaries for the Orange Box engine branch was distributed under the following files (prior to SteamPipe):

• Source 2007 branch - source 2007 binaries.gcf
• Source 2009 branch - source 2007 binaries 2.gcf (despite the GCF file name, it's actually 2009 branch)
• Source MP branch (formerly 2009 binaries for multiplayer) - multiplayer ob binaries.gcf
  • This file was present before the release of Source MP branch in 2011. This was originally 2009 branch (which are used for multiplayer titles at the time) before Valve forked 2009 branch and it's binaries for singleplayer titles in 2010, naming it source 2007 binaries 2.gcf. During 2010 - 2011, the GCF files (source 2007 binaries 2.gcf and multiplayer ob binaries.gcf) are both Source 2009 binaries, but the Multiplayer's 2009 branch later received new features not available in Singleplayer version of 2009 branch, and with 2011 SDK update, Valve added the Source MP option to the Source SDK tool, and all titles using multiplayer ob binaries.gcf now meant that the game uses Source MP branch.

Engine versions:^[1]

• Source 2007 branch - build 3258 up to 4104 (Protocol 11-14)
  • Xbox 360 version builds are build 3219 up to build 3896 (Protocol 8), PS3 version unknown.
• Source 2009 branch - build 3861 up to 5135 (Protocol 15)
• Source MP branch - build 4574 up to 5212 (Protocol 16-23)
  • Protocol 16 and 17 are likely Source Multiplayer beta, and Protocol 18 was the earliest Source MP build to be made public.

Features

New since the Source 2006 engine branch are:

2007

Threading

Logic, rendering and audio have been threaded for performance gains in multi-core environments.

Soft particles

An all-new, artist-driven particle system, replacing the old hard-coded particle system.

VTF 7.3 and 7.4 support, and big-endian VTFX for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Source 2007 adds support for newer version of VTF texture format. VTF textures on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are stored in big-endian. More information here.

Shadow mapping

Special dynamic lights such as the player's flashlight can now cast high-quality dynamic shadows.

Improved High Dynamic Range rendering

Remade HDR tonemapping that better fits outdoor scenes.^[2]

Motion blur

Cheap and simple camera motion blur.^[2]

Hardware Morph (HWM) flexes and Wrinkle maps

A new, powerful facial animation system, with support for textures that add fine wrinkling detail to the face during flex animation.

Conditional statements

New conditional statements for use in materials to optimize them for lower-end machines.

Phongwarp textures and other Phong improvements

Source's phong shading, introduced in Source 2006, has been upgraded with additional features such as reflection tinting, albedo tinting, phongwarp textures, and more.

Self-shadowing bump maps

A special, cheaper kind of bump map for brush shaders with baked in ambient occlusion to give the illusion of a self-shadowing surface.

Automatic displacement texturing

Mitigates texture stretching across displacement surfaces.

Alpha to coverage

Applies anti-aliasing to transparent textures. MSAA must be enabled for this to work.

Alpha to distance

Vector-like edges on raster images.

Flowing emissive textures for models

Advanced flowing emission for VertexLitGeneric, notably used on the Vortigaunts in Half-Life 2: Episode Two

Fresnel for specular reflections and self-illumination on models

On VertexLitGeneric, $envmap and $selfillum have new parameters to enable shading with the Fresnel effect.

Cinematic Physics

Baked physics animations that are rendered offline and brought into the engine for playback with minimal performance cost.

Todo: This isn't really new; GoldSrc did it in Condition Zero Deleted Scenes…

Better per-vertex lighting on foliage

Static props with per-vertex lighting can now have their vertex normals ignored when calculating lighting, reducing hard shadows on foliage.

Bink video

A video codec used in game intros, such as the Valve intro during the game startup. It replaces the old video playback system which uses the AVI file format.

Maplist Thumbnails

A console-oriented server browser UI.

BSP compression (only in )^[3] (also in )

BSP lumps are compressed on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version of this branch.

Confirm:While BSPSource reports LZMA size differences and the text "LZMA" can be seen inside BSP file. Using BSPInfo (shipped with BSPSource), reports that the map are not compressed.

Achievements support

Source 2007 adds support for earning game achievements. This feature is available on Xbox 360 and PC only, and wasn't on PS3 until the release of Portal 2 (since PS3 doesn't have Trophies until 2008).

In Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 version of The Orange Box, it comes with new menu that are optimized for controller.

Support for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 console

Most of the game files (BSP, VTF, etc.) on both consoles (both have PowerPC architecture) are stored in big-endian.

The PlayStation 3 version was ported by EA (Electronic Arts) due to the complexity of the hardware at the time. This result in the game running worse than the Xbox 360 counterpart.

Xbox 360 (or XInput-compatible) controller support on PC

Native support for the Xbox 360 (or any XInput-compatible) controller on PC has been added.

Additionally, the tools have been upgraded:

Visclusters

A new entity to be placed in large open areas with unbroken visibility, reducing compile times.

Texture shadows

Static props with transparent or translucent textures can now cast shadows based upon their alpha channel.

DMX model format

Deprecates SMD

2009/MP

Mac OS X support

Supported since 2010 engine update. The engine can now run on Mac. However, Mac support outside of official games may be spotty.
However with the release of macOS since 10.15 (Catalina), it drops support for all 32-bit apps and games in general (which also includes every single Source engine games that are complied for 32-bit only).

Linux support (in all games since )

Shortly before SteamPipe and the release of Source 2013 Multiplayer (on March 2013), and Source 2013 Singleplayer (on May 2013), Counter-Strike: Source, Team Fortress 2 (since Feb 14, 2013), and most Source Multiplayer games can now run on Linux.^[4][8]

QuickTime video (MOV) (only in )

Replaces BINK video and only used on macOS systems. Some games may also support Bink video on macOS.

OpenGL support

OpenGL uses ToGL to convert DirectX shaders to OpenGL for macOS and later in (since February 2013) on Linux and uses OpenGL version 2.1 which is similar to Direct3D 9.0b.

Particle system adjustments

Particles can now render blobs and models.
Not available in subsequent branches (removed in Source 2013, and not ported upstream to Alien Swarm engine branch).

Disable phys_bone_followers

phys_bone_followers can now be disabled on dynamic props for performance gains and lower entity counts.

Direct3D 9Ex / Windows Aero DirectX Extensions^[9] (in all games since ) (also in )

Improve performance depending on GPU hardware and drivers. Additionally, running those games on Windows 10/11 will automatically enable fullscreen optimization, which will allow quicker Alt + Tab ⇆. First introduced in Source Multiplayer (since 2011),^[9] later available in Singleplayer titles when Source 2013 Singleplayer was released.

2013

Source 2013 ( Singleplayer, Multiplayer, and Team Fortress 2 branch) has its own page.

Removed features

2007

Features that have been removed or deprecated in Source 2007 are:

DirectX 7.0 (dxlevel 70) compatibility level

Support for DirectX 7.x GPUs has been dropped.

env_terrainmorph

env_terrainmorph dynamically morphs displacements by pulling vertices along a normal, similar to the Paint Geometry tool in Hammer.

Steam Friends menu (and Friends v2)

In-game friends list & instant messaging, allowing you to chat in-game without Alt + Tab ⇆ to Desktop and open Friends in Steam client.

While Friends was already removed in Source 2006 in July 31, 2007 before the release of Source 2007, this is the first Source engine branch to not have the feature, as Steam Overlay replaced many of it's functionality.

Availability and usage

Most games using this branch (except Console version of those games) were upgraded to the Source 2013 Singleplayer or Source 2013 Multiplayer (and later Team Fortress 2 branch for multiplayer games) branches when those released. Nevertheless, gamecode for the 2007 branch is included in the now-deprecated Source SDK app.

Source 2007

See also:  Category:Source 2007 engine branch games

Valve

• 2007 Source SDK Base 2007 (formerly Source SDK Base - Orange Box)
• 2007 The Orange Box (Console)
  • 2008 Portal: Still Alive ( Xbox 360 only)

Third-Party (Standalone)

• 2007 Age of Chivalry
• 2008 Dark Messiah of Might and Magic ( Xbox 360 only)
• 2010 Bloody Good Time
• 2011 E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy

Third-Party (Mod, SDK Base)

• 2009 Obsidian Conflict (ModDB version - Steam version runs on Source 2013)
• 2009 Dear Esther (ModDB version)
• 2012 Black Mesa (mod)

Source 2009

See also:  Category:Source 2009 engine branch games

Third-Party

• 2009 Zeno Clash (PC)
  • Note:Xbox 360 version of Zeno Clash (Ultimate Edition) runs on Left 4 Dead engine branch.
• 2011 Postal III
  • Added PhysX physics engine for certain cloth models. Also contains a modified MDL format, certain features from Left 4 Dead engine branch (VPK v1), unique scripting language (Postal3Script), a system for using env_sprites for trees and hair, as well as a unique implementation of Nextbots. A former developer described it as such^[5]:

"We messed it up from the start. In the later stages we were trying to upgrade to the latest source version [Source 2009] with some luck – that was part of the multiplayer effort. But we messed a lot to a source engine core, we messed with client/server architecture. It is a miracle the game was working at all."

• 2012 Dear Esther (Steam, delisted)
  • Replaced by Landmark Edition remaster which instead runs on Unity.
  • The original mod version from 2009 (on Source 2007) is still available. And the 2012 Steam version is still available on Humble Store.

Source MP

Third-Party

None.

History and changes

October 10, 2007: The Orange Box was released for Xbox 360 and PC. Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One was also ported to the Orange Box branch (Source 2007), but initially only on consoles, while Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2 runs on Orange Box engine on both console and PC.

July 2, 2008: Day of Defeat: Source - Palermo Update was released. This update upgraded the game from Source 2006 to Source 2007, adds 51 achievements (now 54) to the game, "nemesis/revenge" freeze cam like Team Fortress 2, and adds one new map, dod_palermo.

February 17, 2009 or June 3, 2009: Day of Defeat: Source was upgraded from Source 2007 to Source Multiplayer (originally Source 2009, but use MP-specific binaries)

May 26, 2010: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One was ported to macOS, and ran on Source 2009. Both games originally ran on Source 2004 and Source 2006 respectively. This was initially exclusive to macOS (when Steam has been ported to Mac systems). This engine update was later rolled out for Windows in June 10, 2010. Additionally Half-Life 2: Episode Two was also upgraded from Source 2007 to Source 2009.

June 10 to June 23, 2010: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One and Half-Life 2: Episode Two are ported to Source 2009 on Windows. Two weeks later, Counter-Strike: Source was ported to macOS, and also upgraded to Source 2009 on both Windows and Mac.

February 14, 2013: Source Multiplayer has been ported to support Linux.

March 15 to May 2, 2013: During this period, SteamPipe transition begins. All Source engine branches (2009 or earlier) and games switched from .gcf to depot .vpk files. Source 2007, 2009 and MP are all superseded by Source 2013 Singleplayer and Source 2013 Multiplayer respectively, and all Valve games are also upgraded to this branch.

System Requirements

These system requirements applies to Source SDK Base 2007 (and some Source 2007/2009/MP game) only. Some other games may have their own system requirements.

Windows Minimum Specs :

• OS: Windows XP, Vista, 7 or later
• CPU: 1.7 GHz and/or Dual-core
• RAM: 1GB RAM
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 6xxx series, ATI Radeon X1600, Intel HD Graphics 3000 (with 128MB VRAM)
• Direct3D 9.0 compatible video card (with atleast DirectX 8.0 compatibility level or higher)

Note:As Steam dropped support for previous version of Windows, and this branch requires Steam (unlike Source 2013), all Orange Box branch games will require Windows 10 or later. Orange Box branch games are still currently playable with the last version of Steam running on Windows 7/8/8.1.

Mac OS Minimum Specs:

• OS X 10.5.8, 10.6.3 (up to 10.14.6)
• CPU: 2.0 GHz and/or Dual-core
• RAM: 1 GB
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 8xxx series, ATI Radeon X1600, Intel HD Graphics 3000
  OpenGL 2.1 compatible
• Audio: OpenAL compatible

References

References

1. Source Engine Build List - Google Spreadsheets Updated Source Engine Build List - VDC. 2. Valve GDC 2008: Post Processing in The Orange Box. 3. The text "LZMA" can be seen inside .360.bsp or .ps3.bsp when viewed using any text editor software. BSPSource also detect them and show warning "Difference in LZMA data length" on some files.. 4. Team Fortress 2 is now on Linux. 5. Interview with a Trashmasters dev who wished to remain anonymous. 6. Source SDK release notes archive (05/11/2010) - Valve Developer Community Note:Before 5/11/2010 Source SDK (Launcher) update, both Source 2007 and 2009 are referred as "The Orange Box" (see video) when selecting the Engine Version on the SDK Launcher prior to 2010 update. After the update, along with Half-Life 2 being upgraded to Source 2009 engine with the release of Steam for Mac, the terminology for Engine Version was changed. The earliest game to use Source 2009 was likely Day of Defeat: Source (starting June 3, 2009), which use Protocol Version 15 that most Source 2009 games uses. . 7. Source SDK release notes archive (10/19/2011) - Valve Developer Community Added a new Engine Version called ‘Source Engine MP’ which is the proper one to select if working with Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, or Day of Defeat: Source. Users should select ‘Reset Game Configurations’ in the SDK Launcher so that these games become properly associated with the new engine version. - Changelog written by Mike Durand (Valve Software Engineer) Note:Day of Defeat: Source and Counter-Strike: Source received updates in May 12, 2011 with both game uses Protocol version 16 and higher, which would meant that it use Source MP branch. However, Source MP was not mentioned on SDK Launcher until October 2011 (which also meant that 2009 and MP branch (during May 2011) both use tools located on SourceSDK\bin\orangebox\bin). By the time Source SDK Launcher gets updated in 2011, CS:S already runs on Protocol version 18 (since September 2011). Another thing to note is that MP games (since 2009) actually use multiplayer ob binaries.gcf (2009 binaries, for MP games), while SP uses source 2007 binaries 2.gcf (which are actually 2009 SP binaries). Both are referred as Source 2009 branch at the time, and present before SDK update which renamed the former to Source MP, while the latter is still Source 2009. . 8. SteamDB - TF2 Linux client The earliest Linux SteamPipe build available on Steam is dated April 17, 2013. First SteamPipe build of TF2 was available on Windows in March 2013. The Linux version of TF2 (which runs on Source MP) was released on February 14, 2013 (and said version isn't available on Steam manifest, but likely still exist in Steam servers).. 9. The earliest changelog to mention D3D9Ex (Windows Aero DirectX Extensions) was in Dec 15, 2011. This change applies to all Source MP games. Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch Updates Released. Source Engine Changes (TF2, DoD:S, HL2:DM) - Fixed a bug which caused Windows Aero Extensions video option to always be enabled, regardless of setting. Disabling this can improve compatibility with third-party programs and overlays, but may also affect performance. . Retrieved on July 20, 2025.