Now that it’s confirmed that Valve Corporation is left all by itself to develop the first-person shooter video game “Left 4 Dead 3” following the decision of Turtle Rock Studios to go independent again, reports are going around that the game developer will be using a Source 2 engine for the upcoming game as well as “Half-Life 3.”
Valve originally developed the Source engine in 2004. It is a 3D video game engine designed in constant incremental updates. Some of the more popular Valve video games that used Source engine are “Counter-Strike,” “Half-Life,” “Half-Life 2,” “Left 4 Dead,” and “Left 4 Dead 2.”
As early as 2012, Valve has been working on the development of a Source 2 engine in an attempt to replace the outdated content authoring tools for Source. But it was only in August last year when Valve announced the release the alpha of “Dota 2” Workshop Tools ported to a new engine.
Valve officially announced the release of the Source 2 engine in March this year, which the company made free to developers. The Source 2 engine is apparently compatible with the new Vulcan Graphics AP.
Next video games on Source 2 engines
As the two upcoming games from Valve are “Left 4 Dead 3” and “Half-Life 3,” it was already speculated that the game developer will develop them using a Source 2 engine, which is quite logical.
As early as February however, Moviepilot has already revealed that in a recent “Half-Life 3” speculation video, the UGC tools in a “DOTA 2” update uncovered the code ‘h3l.’ The update also detailed about the physics testbed program that Valve is implementing into Source 2.
However, upon further scrutiny of the main game directory in Valve’s Source 2 game list, one of the key titles that were also found is “Left 4 Dead 3.”
Basically, having the upcoming Valve video games on Source 2 engine means that they would be faster and their graphics more detailed.
Signature gaming style
Turtle Rock Studios was the first to conceptualize “Left 4 Dead” before Valve Corporation bought in to the project and they collaborated with its development and officially released it to the PC and Xbox 360 in October 2008.
They continued the collaboration with the sequel “Left 4 Dead 2” which significantly earned a greater level of success than its predecessor when it was released in the same gaming platforms in November 2009.
However, Turtle Rock recently announced that it will no longer be involved with “Left 4 Dead 3” and is leaving everything to Valve.
Turtle Rock co-founder Phil Robb confirmed in a February interview that they are pretty much done with the “Left 4 Dead” video game series.
He said that Turtle Rock has gone into its own direction already and the game is pretty much in the hands of Valve now. He added that the only way he and Turtle Rock can go back to the game is as a fan and not a developer.