XenEngine
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Note:Although it uses Team Fortress 2 engine as a base, this engine does not provide VScript system, since this system came out in the game much later than first Xengine versions were released.
Tip:The authoring tools for this branch have been released and are available directly from
Note:There is no source code for this branch. However, you still can heavily modify the Qt UI via
QML programming language.
Note:All the shaders (including new lighting, etc) are stored in
Xengine (also known as XenEngine) is a third-party
Source Engine branch using licenced code, created by the Crowbar Collective for Black Mesa. It is a modified version of
Source 2013 Multiplayer with additions from
Team Fortress 2, whose development was influenced by the limitations of Source. Although initially only Cascade Shadow Mapping was planned, Crowbar Collective gained much more knowledge while working on the engine, which allowed for more experimentation and improvements, eventually leading to the introduction of a completely new lighting system, and
deferred lighting. Besides using Team Fortress 2's engine version as a base, this engine version is also a hybrid of the Portal 2 engine branch and Left 4 Dead engine branch.
![Note.png](/w/images/thumb/c/cc/Note.png/10px-Note.png)
Features
- Engine
- Entity and Displacement Limit upgraded from 4k to 8k.
- Backported a lot of optimizations and some entities from
Left 4 Dead and
Portal 2 that
Team Fortress 2 doesn't have.
- Improved AI, whose behavior depends on the current difficulty level (some NPCs also support Main and Assault Behavior Trees from the ai folder).
- Dynamic lights on a lightmap were swapped with new deferred lights.
- Gbuffer that allows the addition of some modern, difficult-to-make effects.
- Made from scratch Qt UI with the ability to be customized and add new stuff without limitations (VGUI can be reenabled with
-oldgameui
launch parameter). - Using
Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing (FXAA) instead of
MultiSample Anti-Aliasing (MSAA) for anti-aliasing
- MSAA does not work correctly on Xengine's deferred lighting, and is worse for performance.
- New and extended Post Processor.
- Native
Linux support.
- Improved DirectX 9.0c shaders
- Enhanced multiplayer with fixes for the client and server.
- Dynamic music system.
- Shader Model 3.
- Visuals
- 4Way blends with support for 4 bumpmaps and tri-planar mapping, enabling all the options from other material shaders.
- Cascaded Shadow Mapping with viewmodel self-shadowing.
- Parallax Occlusion Mapping.
- Procedural Moss.
- Deferred lighting.
- Dynamic lighting system with PBR-based lighting and speculars.
- PCCS-based soft shadows.
- Light cookies for both new point light and new spot light, the last can be animated.
- Support for up to 2K dynamic lights per scene and all rendering features on secondary render targets (reflection/refraction, monitors, TV screens, etc.)
- Upgraded flashlight using the new deferred lighting system.
- Godrays with disk for both the sun and local lights (which also support the "Fancy" godrays type).
- Screenspace Fog ("Xog"), that can be applied globally or locally using cuboid/ellipsoid volumes.
- Flowing water.
- Swaying trees.
- Cinematic lens flares.
- Web shader.
- Upgraded tonemapping with bloom which uses a modified version of the Reinhard filter.
- Optimized shaders for faster compilation and better runtime performance.
- Tools
- In-game new lights editor and xog editor.
- Multiple VRAD upgrades, such as support for Alpha-Tested textures, 4-way blends, baked Ambient Occlusion, Real Sky Ambient Light, and more.
- 64-bit shader compiler.
Removed
- DirectX compatibility levels support lower than 9.0 (dxlevel 90).
- The entity was removed because it renders scene twice, making it very expensive.
- Reflections from func_reflective_glass.
- The entity is still available, but the shader is not ported, it shows wireframe instead of reflection.
- The shader is not ported. All the features is available in LightmappedGeneric.
System Requirements
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Minimum | Recommended | |
Operating system (OS) | 10 | |
Processor (CPU) | 2.6GHz Dual Core Processor or Greater | 3.2GHz Quad Core Processor or Greater |
System memory (RAM) | 6 GB RAM | 8 GB |
Hard disk drive (HDD/SSD) | 30 GB | |
Video card (GPU) | DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3 capable 2 GB VRAM | DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3 capable 4 GB VRAM or greater |
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||
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Minimum | Recommended | |
Operating system (OS) | Ubuntu 14.0+ or other Linux distros | |
Processor (CPU) | 2.6GHz Dual Core Processor or Greater | 3.2GHz Quad Core Processor or Greater |
System memory (RAM) | 4 GB RAM | 6 GB |
Hard disk drive (HDD/SSD) | 30 GB | |
Video card (GPU) | Vulkan 1.3 capable 2 GB VRAM | Vulkan 1.3 capable 3 GB VRAM or greater |
Other | NVIDIA - Does not support the ![]() |
NVIDIA - Does not support the ![]() |
Media
Availability
![Tip.png](/w/images/thumb/4/45/Tip.png/9px-Tip.png)
![🖿](/w/images/thumb/1/11/Icon-gnome-folder_alt.png/15px-Icon-gnome-folder_alt.png)
Black Mesa\bin\
.![Note.png](/w/images/thumb/c/cc/Note.png/10px-Note.png)
![Wikipedia icon](/w/images/thumb/9/9a/Wikipedia_icon_small.png/16px-Wikipedia_icon_small.png)
![Note.png](/w/images/thumb/c/cc/Note.png/10px-Note.png)
![🖿](/w/images/thumb/1/11/Icon-gnome-folder_alt.png/15px-Icon-gnome-folder_alt.png)
Black Mesa\hl2\hl2_misc_dir.vpk
.- 2020
Black Mesa
- 2017
Black Mesa: Black Ops (restored version)
- 2020
Black Mesa: Azure Sheep
- TBA
Black Mesa: Blue Shift
- 2017
See also
External links
- Chetan Jag's Blog about XenEngine
- Qt Qml 6.8.1- half of the documentation for Qt UI. You'll need it if you want to edit Qt UI for your
Black Mesa mods.