We can still hope can we? Valve (and HTC) had the Vive VR headset to show off Yesterday during the 2015 Game Developers Conference (GDC). The Internet, however, seems more excited about the timing of Valve’s presentation: it takes place at 3PM today, the third day of the third month. That’s THREE THREES. Half-Life 3 confirmed.
Sadly there will be no Half Life 3 as Valve announced Source 2, Streaming Device and more. Source 2 is a new games engine which will supplant the venerable Source engine (which has been puttering along since 2004) and will be free to developers and “content creators”, joining both Unity 5 and Unreal 4 in the free game engines category. The new Source 2 engine has been designed with a view of assisting not only developers, but those interested in creating content for existing games developed in the same engine. According to “our focus is increasing creator productivity. Given how important user generated content is becoming, Source 2 is designed not just for the professional developer, but enabling gamers themselves to participate in the creation and development of their favourite games.”
Apparently, the Source 2 engine will support the new “Vulkan” OpenGL API which allows developers direct control to GPU acceleration via application control and SPIR-V shader language flexibility. It’s a very clever piece of shader wizardry you can read about in more detail here.
In addition, Valve will be releasing a streaming device for Steam games called the Steam Link, which will be available in November alongside several Steam Machines and the Steam Controller. It’s a sauna of Valve releases, really. Steam Link will support 1080p, 60hz streaming for all Steam games and will be available for aroun $50, which sounds like an absolute steal but let’s see what it ends up costing here.
Unfortunately, no mention of a third life for Half-Life. In other news, the earth continues to revolve around the Sun, you still require oxygen to live and the gravitational constant remains fixed at 9.8m/s. There’s still a Valve Vulkan demonstration tomorrow where some, “live demos of real-world applications” will be on display, so fingers crossed?
