Orange Box (engine branch): Difference between revisions

From Valve Developer Community
Jump to navigation Jump to search
(2007 and 2009)
(→‎2009: add css beta)
Line 45: Line 45:
* [[Team Fortress 2]]
* [[Team Fortress 2]]
* [[Day of Defeat: Source]]
* [[Day of Defeat: Source]]
* [[Counter-Strike: Source Beta]]


[[Category:Engine branches]]
[[Category:Engine branches]]

Revision as of 15:40, 15 May 2010

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.

Versions

There are actually two Orange Box branches, referred to in the SDK Launcher as Source '2007' and '2009'. The 2009 branch does not have a different feature set, but is incompatible with 2007 due to various under-the-bonnet changes (which include a different SteamID scheme).

Todo: Any new features in 2009? Anything Mac-related?

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.
Xbox 360 support
Of no use to modders, needless to say!

Availability

2007

Gamecode for the 2007 branch is included in the Source SDK.

2009