Source (game engine)

The Source engine is a video game engine created by a company called Valve Corporation. The engine made its first appearance in 2004 with a game called Half-Life: Source, and was also included in Half-Life 2. Source has been worked on since that date, and is included in many of Valve's games.

Source is meant to power first person shooter video games, but has also been used to create other types of video games as well.

 Features 

 Source SDK 
Source SDK is a toolset used for Source engine. It has tools such as Hammer Editor, Model Viewer, and Face Poser.

 Source Dedicated Server 
Source Dedicated Server is used to run multiplayer game sessions. It can work on Windows and Linux.

 Valve Developer Community 
In 2005, Valve launched a website called Valve Developer Community. It is a wiki about how to use the Source engine.
 Criticism 
 Source SDK 
The Source SDK has been criticized for being out of date and hard to use.

 Origins 
The Source engine originated from the GoldSrc, which was a changed version of John D. Carmack's Quake engine. Carmack said on his blog in 2004 that there's "still bits of Quake code in Half-Life 2".

Valve worker Erik Johnson explains the origins of the GoldSrc engine on the Valve Developer Community:

The Source engine then continued to replace the GoldSrc engine, until Source was mostly used at Valve.

 References 

Category:Game engines