Orange Box (engine branch)

The Orange Box engine branch was released in 2007 with the Orange Box (Ep2, Portal, TF2). It is currently being maintained side-by-side with the Left 4 Dead branch; the two branches share technology, but it is unclear if they will ever be merged or if one will come to be favoured.

The OB builds on the original HL2 branch, requiring its content installed to work.

Note:There are actually two Orange Box branches, the newer of which (TF2, DODS) uses a different SteamID scheme. The 'original' OB branch, which mods generally use, is often forgotten when updates are released!

Features

New since the Episode One branch is:

Threading

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

Soft particles

An all-new, artist-driven particle system.

Shadow mapping

A modern dynamic lighting and shadowing technology.

Alpha to coverage

Vector-like edges to raster images, fast.

Self-shadowing bump maps

For a more realistic illusion of a 3D surface.

Automatic displacement texturing

Avoids ugly stretching.

Maplist Thumbnails

A console-oriented server browser UI.

mat_dxlevel 98

DirectX 9 running on DirectX 10 hardware. Benefits are unclear.

Xbox 360 support

Of no use to modders, needless to say!

Availability

• Half-Life 2: Episode Two
• Portal
• Team Fortress 2
• Day of Defeat: Source
• Garry's Mod
• Source SDK Base - Orange Box

Gamecode for this branch is included in the Source SDK.