Orange Box (engine branch)

The Orange Box engine branch was released in 2007 with the Orange Box (Episode Two, Portal, Team Fortress 2). It existed side-by-side with the Left 4 Dead branch until 2011, when it was obsoleted by the release of Portal 2.

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

Versions

There are actually four Orange Box branches, referred to in the SDK Launcher as Source '2006', '2007', '2009' and 'MP'. The 2009 and MP branches do not have a different feature set, but are incompatible with 2007 due to various under-the-bonnet changes (which include a different SteamID scheme and Mac OS X compatibility).

Features

New since the Episode One branch is:

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.

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 little use to modders, needless to say!

2009

Mac OS X support

2013

GNU/Linux support

(since 14 February 2013)

SteamPipe support

Availability

Source 2007

• Source SDK Base 2007 (formerly Source SDK Base - Orange Box)

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

Source 2013 Singleplayer

Formerly Source 2009

• Half-Life 2
• Half-Life 2: Episode One
• Half-Life 2: Episode Two
• Portal

Gamecode for the 2013 singleplayer branch is included in the Source SDK 2013.

Source 2013 Multiplayer

Formerly Source MP

• Team Fortress 2
• Half-Life 2: Deathmatch
• Counter-Strike: Source
• Day of Defeat: Source

Gamecode for the 2013 multiplayer branch is included in the Source SDK 2013.