Orange Box (engine branch)
June 3, 2009 (Source 2009)[1][5]
October 19, 2011 (Source MP)[1][6][confirm]
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).
It was maintained side-by-side with the 
Left 4 Dead engine branch. All first-party Source 2006 (except 
and 
) and Source 2007 games (both SP and MP titles), starting from June 2009 until June 2010, were eventually upgraded to newer version of Orange Box branch, later referred as Source 2009 (after 2010 SDK update), both Orange Box and Left 4 Dead branch were eventually succeeded with the release of 
Alien Swarm engine branch. Despite this, the Source Multiplayer was created in October 2011, upgrading all Multiplayer Source 2009 games to this branch, and later 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. 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 (which include a different SteamID scheme and Mac OS X compatibility). 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 - multiplayer ob binaries.gcf
Engine versions:[1]
- Source 2007 branch - build 3258 up to 4104 (Protocol 11-14)
- Xbox 360 version uses build 3219 (Protocol 8), PS3 version unknown.
- Source 2009 branch - build 3861 up to 5135 (Protocol 15)
- MP games initially use 2009 branch prior to 2011 SDK update, these games also initially use Protocol 15, then later 16 and 17.
- Source MP branch - build 4727 up to 5212 (Protocol 18-23)
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.- 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 the release of macOS since 10.15 (Catalina), 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 (only in )- 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 Source 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.
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.
Availability
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.
The full source code for this branch is not publicly available, but was leaked back in 2012.
Source 2007
Valve
- 2007 Source SDK Base 2007 (formerly Source SDK Base - Orange Box)
- 2007 The Orange Box (Console)
- 2008
Portal: Still Alive ( Xbox 360 only)
- 2008
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 version only)
Source 2009
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.
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
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