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Portal 2 engine branch

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Portal 2 engine branch
In-game screenshot of Portal 2, running on Portal 2 engine branch.
In-game screenshot of Portal 2, running on Portal 2 engine branch.
Developer(s)
Release date(s)
April 18, 2011
Latest release(s)
February 5, 2025
Status
Actively updated
Forks
Titanfall branch Titanfall branch (heavily modified)
Improved shadow mapping in Portal 2.
Blob particles in Portal 2.

The Portal 2 engine branch Portal 2 engine branch was introduced with Portal 2 in 2011. It was forked from the Left 4 Dead engine branch between Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, with some elements (and new features) from the Alien Swarm engine branch (which it succeeded). It was superseded by the CS:GO engine branch. With the release of Portal 2, this marks the first time Source engine was ported to PlayStation 3, since the release of The Orange Box.

Note.pngNote:Counter-Strike: Global Offensive used to be on the branch that debuted with it, but as of Counter-Strike 2's official release, which upgraded the game to Source 2, and renamed CS:GO to Counter-Strike 2, this make the Portal 2 engine branch the latest Source 1 branch with the newest features (alongside the Team Fortress 2 branch) that is still being actively maintained by Valve.

Features

New since the Alien Swarm engine branch is:

Improved shadow mapping
The entity env_projectedtexture is significantly improved. Compared to previous implementations, it has higher default resolution, better edge filtering and support for the caching of shadows from static objects.
Video playback on materials
Added support to render Bink Video in-game on surfaces, used for elevator screens in Portal 2.
Blob particles
A particle renderer that renders blobs of liquid, used for paint gel in Portal 2. A similar blob particles system are originally present in Source 2007 Source 2007 or Source 2009 Source 2009, but was disabled in code.
World portals
World portals that can seamlessly link together separate parts of the world. This feature is exclusive to this engine branch.
Sound operators
For defining complex audio behaviour.
Finished water debris flow
The base texture water flow feature from the Alien Swarm engine branch has been finished, with flowed normals now distorting color lookup and the flow map's alpha channel controlling color map opacity.

Tools

Hammer Hammer new features
DotA Camera - restrict the camera to be in the DotA orientation and distance from the ground. Likely included because Valve was developing Dota 2 simultaneously with Portal 2, leading to this feature slipping into Portal 2's engine branch.

PS3 exclusive features

Official PS3 Support
PS3 is now officially supported by Valve. Unlike the PS3 port of The Orange Box The Orange Box, which was outsourced to Electronic Arts, Portal 2's PS3 port was developed in-house. Valve seemingly put more effort into making use of the PS3 hardware than EA did, allowing the game to achieve better performance by taking advantage of the SPE cores on the RSX processor.
Needless to say, this is not particularly useful to most modders though.
MLAA anti-aliasing
Post-processing effect used to reduce stair-step (aliasing) effect on geometry and transparent textures, while having less performance impact compared to MSAA.
Steam integration (Steamworks)
The PlayStation 3 version of Portal 2 features Steam integration. Achievements are synced with both PSN and Steam, and PS3 users were able to play cross-platform co-op with Steam friends. Steam services on PS3 were shut down in 2016, although as Steam itself obviously still exists, it is possible to restore this functionality on a modded PS3 using third party plugins.
PlayStation Move support
Portal 2 on PS3 supports PlayStation Move motion controller.

Availability and usage

List of games that run on Portal 2 engine branch.

A third-party, heavily modified version of this engine used for Titanfall & other games by Respawn Entertainment, called the Titanfall branch Titanfall branch, is also available, and it is used on the following games:

Source code and SDK Base for these branches is not available. However, authoring tools exist for custom content.

Navigation

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