There’s a dead end junction, late in Half-Life 2’s airboat segment, that’s fairly easy to miss. It’s nothing special to look at. A concrete run-off with a few shanty houses and a handful of zombies. But this corner, with its distant chirping of crickets and the sunset baking the panelled walls in just the right way, is special enough that I always stop by for a visit when returning to the game. It’s a corner that perfectly captures the fleeting, uniquely melancholy beauty of Valve’s Source Engine.
The Source Engine, the software that drove all of Valve’s games from Half-Life 2 through Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, came at a uniquely transitory moment in game development. It was the mid-2000s, and 3D games were starting to look pretty damn good. Ten years earlier, and games were merely suggesting spaces through blocky corridors. A decade later, and we’re looking at games that are near photorealistic.
Source bridged that gap. It’s at once the last gasp of things like bsp-based terrain, baked lighting, and the entire field of level design, and a peek at the lush, living words of games to come. Over the past ten years, developers have gotten really, bloody good at wringing spectacular landscapes out of the engine – but they’re doing so with a level editor built in 1997, using limitations laid down in 2004.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 2021-Ausgabe von PC Gamer.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 2021-Ausgabe von PC Gamer.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
BITING BACK
The tooth is out there in adventure TEETH OF GLASS
SMOKE ALARM
THE INVISIBLE SMOKE FACTORY is back in a Flash
MECH ME OVER
Move over Mario, here's mech-based platforming in ARMORED SHELL NIGHTJAR
"I like Pillars of Eternity better than Baldur's Gate III"
PILLARS OF ETERNITY deserves a bigger space in the CRPG pantheon
"A harrowing dark fantasy about hapless, bright-eyed children"
Spelunking into hell with MADE IN ABYSS: BINARY STAR FALLING INTO DARKNESS
THE IMMORTAL LOCK
A massive, meaty game in a single horrific Quake map.
NEW MANOEUVRES
Building a dedicated sim racing space in an average family house
OVERWATCH 2
Save me space girl.
REET GOOD TIME
THANK GOODNESS YOU'RE HERE is a riotous recreation of Yorkshire
THE PLUCKY SQUIRE
How many games let you make friends with a MtG card?