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. 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, 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. This branch also introduced few bugs noticeable in Half-Life 2 (and it's episodes), such as 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.
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 ambient occlusion 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,
$envmapand$selfillumhave 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… - Improved prop_static lighting
- Static props without normal maps or phong can now be lit by VRAD per-vertex, instead of at runtime based upon their origin or $illumposition.
- 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.
Xbox 360 and basic 
PlayStation 3 support- Of little use to modders, needless to say! Aside from that, native support for the Xbox 360 controller when played on PC has been added, alongside with XInput support.
- 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.
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 can 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.
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.
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 branches when those released. Nevertheless, gamecode for the 2007 branch is included in the now-deprecated Source SDK app.
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)
Third-Party
2007
Age of Chivalry2008
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic ( Xbox 360 only)2009
Obsidian Conflict (ModDB version - Steam version runs on Source 2013)2011
E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy2012
Black Mesa (Mod version only)
Source 2009
Third-Party
2009
Zeno Clash2011
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[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
Third-Party
2010
Bloody Good Time[confirm]
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, all Source 2007/2009/MP branch games will require Windows 7/8/10 or later.
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
- Valve GDC 2008: Post Processing in The Orange Box
- Interview with a Trashmasters dev who wished to remain anonymous
