Valve's Source 2 engine shown in leaked Left 4 Dead 2 prototype screenshots

Shawn Knight

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A series of leaked screenshots allegedly from a confidential Valve PowerPoint presentation show the company’s Source 2.0 engine in action. The images were posted by reputable Neogaf user “CBOAT” which gives them a bit more credibility if nothing else.

What we have here is an updated version of the Plantation level from the Left 4 Dead 2 campaign Swamp Fever. As you can see, the screenshots demonstrate the increase in detail that is possible with the Source 2 engine which includes enhanced foliage, improved lighting and shadow effects, among other things.

Elsewhere, one of the slides outlines some of the redesigned tools and workflow of the engine. Some of the slide is cut off but what we can see discusses a powerful GUI front end for content authoring that can be extended with custom and pre-game assets, a browser for quickly finding, managing and editing assets and automatic compiling of content.

We’ve known for some time now that Valve has been working on a follow-up to the original Source engine a CEO Gabe Newell revealed as much back in 2012. At the time, he said Valve would launch the engine when they had a promising enough game for it.

There are no hints as to what that debut game might be but I imagine most are crossing their fingers for Half Life 3. Other options could include Left 4 Dead 3 or perhaps even a completely new series but with any luck, we’ll see the engine debut sometime this year.

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When the first Source Engine released, the first time I saw Half-Life 2 with my own eyes, it looked incredible.

This also looks incredible.

Will be nice to play a source game which will put my GPU to good use as the old one, well it doesn't really need to try very hard xD
 
Curious what kind of requirements to expect to run games in this..feels a little bit like frostbite.
 
I hope they put code in there so it only runs on Windows 7 or SteamOS or Linux.
 
Holy cow, just take my money. It would be sweet if they had a zombie that looked like foliage. Damn the survivors.
 
Source was amazing on HL2 when it debuted, the biggest thing I have liked about source though is it has changed it kept getting better, source from 2004 was not as sharp and good looking as source in 2009 for L4D2 or when CS:GO came out. If source 2 is just as upgradeable I see valve having another good streak of games for the next decade.
 
Idk what you guys see in this but to me it looks jagged and square and blocky and... old?

If you compare something like unreal engine to this source engine picture its not even close. Still a picture doesn't really show anything, we'll have to see a video to really get an idea.
 
Idk what you guys see in this but to me it looks jagged and square and blocky and... old?

If you compare something like unreal engine to this source engine picture its not even close. Still a picture doesn't really show anything, we'll have to see a video to really get an idea.

Yeah the brush and trees look particularly disappointing. Hopefully these shots don't compare to the final product.
 
More eye candy is certainly better but I'd imagine this engine is more directed towards the SteamOS and OGL movement so I'd imagine its not a huge upgrade in the way of what you see but more what it'll run on. Games like L4D focus more on fun than graphics IMO
 
It's been a long time since I have had any wow factor in games. A few noticable ones I have had over the years included Wing Commander Prophecy (3DO) and it's fmv scenes, Cannon Fodder on the Amiga and its carton cut scenes, TombRaider + 3dfx, Halflife and the opening train journey (again 3dfx), Unreal and the amazing water effects.
 
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