Orange Box (engine branch)

The Source 2007 engine branch, also known as The Orange Box engine branch, was released in Oct 10, 2007 with the release of The Orange Box (, , and ), succeeding the Source 2006 engine branch.

It was maintained side-by-side with the Left 4 Dead engine branch, which, around this time, all first-party Source 2006 (except ) and Source 2007 games were upgraded to Source 2009 (for singleplayer games) and Source Multiplayer (for multiplayer games) throughout until July 2010, when it was obsoleted by the release of the Alien Swarm engine branch. Despite this, the Source 2013 Singleplayer and Source 2013 Multiplayer branches were released in 2013 as more direct upgrades for these games.

In an attempt to stop Bunnyhopping, Valve updated the movement system to cap the forward move speed, inadvertently creating Accelerated Back Hopping.

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 was also supported on third-party mods.

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

Versions

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

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.

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.^[1]

Motion blur

Cheap and simple camera motion blur.^[1]

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 shadows to give the illusion of a self-shadowing surface.

Automatic displacement texturing

Mitigates texture stretching across displacement surfaces.

Alpha to coverage

Vector-like edges to raster images, fast.

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.

Visclusters

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

Bink video

Replaces the old AVI file format which was used on game intros.

Maplist Thumbnails

A console-oriented server browser UI.

Xbox 360 support

Of little use to modders, needless to say! Aside from that, native support for the Xbox 360 controller has been added, alongside with XInput support.

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.
Furthermore, newer version of macOS since 10.15 (Catalina) no longer support all 32-bit apps and games in general (which also includes every single Source engine games that are complied for 32-bit only).

QuickTime video (MOV) (only in )

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

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.

2013

Source 2013 (both SP and MP) has its own page.

Availability

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

Source 2007

Valve

• 2005 Day of Defeat: Source (Upgraded from Source 2006, Formerly) - Now uses Source 2013 Multiplayer.
• 2007 Source SDK Base 2007 (formerly Source SDK Base - Orange Box)
• 2007 Half-Life 2: Episode Two (Formerly) - Now uses Source 2013 Singleplayer.
• 2007 Team Fortress 2 (Formerly) - Now uses Source 2013 Multiplayer.
• 2007 Portal (Formerly) - Now uses Source 2013 Singleplayer.
• 2007-2008 The Orange Box (Console)
  • 2004 Half-Life 2 (both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version)
  • 2006 Half-Life 2: Episode One (both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version)
  • 2007 Half-Life 2: Episode Two (both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version)
  • 2007 Team Fortress 2 (both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version)
  • 2007 Portal (both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version)
  • 2008 Portal: Still Alive ( Xbox 360 version only)

Third-Party

• 2007 Age of Chivalry
• 2008 Template:Game name (ModDB version - Steam version runs on Source 2013)
• 2008 Zombie Panic! Source^[confirm] (Formerly) - Now uses Source 2013 Multiplayer.
• 2009 Obsidian Conflict (ModDB version - Steam version runs on Source 2013)
• 2011 E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy
• 2012 Black Mesa (Mod version only)

Source 2009

Valve

• 2004 Half-Life 2 (Upgraded from Source 2006, Formerly) - Now uses Source 2013 Singleplayer.
• 2006 Half-Life 2: Episode One (Upgraded from Source 2006, Formerly) - Now uses Source 2013 Singleplayer.
• 2007 Half-Life 2: Episode Two (Upgraded from Source 2007, Formerly) - Now uses Source 2013 Singleplayer.
• 2007 Portal (Upgraded from Source 2007, Formerly) - Now uses Source 2013 Singleplayer.

Third-Party

• 2009 Zeno Clash
• 2009 Vindictus^[confirm]
  • Heavily modified, and uses proprietary file format to store game files.
• 2011 Postal III
  • Added PhysX physics engine for certain cloth models. Also contains a modified MDL format, 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^[1]:

"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."

Source MP

Valve

• 2004 Counter-Strike: Source (Upgraded from Source 2006, Formerly) - Now uses Source 2013 Multiplayer.
• 2004 Half-Life 2: Deathmatch (Upgraded from Source 2006, Formerly) - Now uses Source 2013 Multiplayer.
• 2005 Day of Defeat: Source (Upgraded from Source 2007, Formerly) - Now uses Source 2013 Multiplayer.
• 2007 Team Fortress 2 (Upgraded from Source 2007, Formerly) - Now uses Source 2013 Multiplayer.

Third-Party

• 2010 Bloody Good Time^[confirm]

References

1. Valve GDC 2008: Post Processing in The Orange Box
   
2. Interview with a Trashmasters dev who wished to remain anonymous