SIN2 to be released via Steam

[skdr]

Whoa this came from nowhere, suprise indeed. Ritual licensed Steam and is going to release SIN2 thru Steam this winter

Ritual Entertainment's long-awaited Sin 2 is to be released episodically over Valve's Steam digital distribution system, with episodes lasting around six hours each to be released "every three to four months" for around $20 (£11.38) an episode.

The Valve-Ritual relationship is to go even further than that, with SiN 2 being developed using a tweaked version of the same Source engine that powered the legendary Half-Life 2.

Good to hear that other developers than Valve is taking Steam and online distribution seriously. This raises a question, is it time to Valve develop P2P sharing system to Steam so ppl can seed updates and games to other users, lowers bw costs and content server stress..

Anyway, SIN2 on Steam and HL2 engine. Discuss

[von*ferret]

Though the system is buggy I think its moving in the right direction. I'm glad to see developers trying something new with episodic releases. We discussed this in one of my classes last week. I'm a little sketchy on how its going to all turn out, but I'm willing to try episodic games out. I for one dont watch shows like 24 until they come out on DVD cause I'd rather get the whole adventure immediately rather than wait a week for the next, so I dunno if that train of thought will carry on to video games.

[sensee]

Source engine is already outdated...

on the other hand, valve is planning to make HL3 on source :roll:

[skdr]

Source is outdated? Please tell me more about this if you have something to share because I'd like to know how it's outdated...

[Zacker]

Finally other firms than Valve are beginning to use Steam. I am wondering why this have not happened before.

Yeah, Steam is buggy and crappy in many ways, but is for sure a good idea. Distributing content over the net without having to involve the usual publishers and distributers is THE future imo.

I am pretty sure Valve is going to add some kind of p2p distribution to Steam someday. They could spare quite a bunch of money by having content distributed through p2p instead of the cs way. I guess that p2p was also the reason why they brought in Bram Cohen. Being without him now is probably the reason why it takes so long.

Yep, the Source engine is outdated. When working with it I often feel more limited than I did with the HL engine.

[sensee]

Source is outdated? Please tell me more about this if you have something to share because I'd like to know how it's outdated...

things I miss:

- dynamic shadows

- self shadowing

- better dynamic lights

- no compiling / wysiwyg editor

- model scaling in editor

- parallax mapping

- better workflow when importing textures or models

- easier AI scripting (like UE3)

.

.

.

you know, I love HL2 and also source - that's why I'm mapping for it. But this engine is definitely not capable for next-gen.

[skdr]

Well, Valve already said that they're developing Source further and you can see this happening with the recent HDR tech included in Source engine...

Also, there are parallax mapping lines in HL2 base code so I guess this would be something to look forward in the future. It's a base to develop further, its not like they're going to raise hands and give up with the current tech. They're developing it more and more and I wont be suprised if we see dynamic shadow a'la D3 in Source someday...

[Mazy]

Cool stuff. Love the old Sin. Even though it has its share of flaws, then its still an awesome shooter when its patched up n working. When Half-Life n Sin were released (they were release around the same 2 month period), I had to decide on getting one of them, I went with Sin, only got hl like a half year after that ~

Anyway, steam, okay, uhmm yeah i like whatever

[Zacker]

It was meant to be funny not agressive and attacking post. Sorry if it felt like it, I just had to post that image with that quote :>

Yeah sorry, I was probably a bit bitchy because of some other stuff with that pic. My apologies.

Even though it has its share of flaws, then its still an awesome shooter when its patched up n working.

Yep, did you also try the expansion? It really added most of what there was missing in the original Sin.

Anyway, steam, okay, uhmm yeah i like whatever

Nice diplomatic sentence:)

[Tequila]

Glad to know Sin 2 is still alive, and I'm glad it's using the Source engine too. I like its style.

[Mazy]

Thing is however, that Sin 1s style was extremely cartoony, where as Source seems custom made for realistic looking stuff, or at least something close to it. But who knows, might be flexible enough to do stuff like this.

[Kosmo]

Now who the fuck wants to play something like Sin?

It sucked so much that my neighbors had to put their grandmother on one of those retirement homes.

But I'm intriqued by this distribution over Steam, the possibilities are endless, plus security and patching becomes more convinient. Now we just wait and watch EA steal it.

[RD]

steam rox, never had a bug with its. Its bwiwiant.

As for source being outdated, so was hl1 a year or two after its release. Luckily its got some great gameplay/physics

[Kosmo]

What is this outdated bull crap? How do you define outdated exactly? Is it all graphics or more than that?

The way I define outdated is released AND atleast year or so old, since when engines come they do tend to be usually build for specific work, as in Source's case, they wanted a engine that rolls like a piece of greased fat, techniques worked on by Ageia for physics and many industry leaders on graphics have loads of tricks up their sleeve for the foreseeable future (this is mainly microsoft and their DirectX), so if you define outdated by ratio of how much engine uses of currently available techniques you are never going to see a cutting edge engine.

Unreal Engine 3 is even right now outdated compared to renderers like Brazil, they have much more advanced shader output and are constantly adding more advanced techniques, but Brazil is pretty crappy game engine, eh? I think Source is the best engine currently since it produces excellent visual quality and has some juice left for future in terms of graphics, like the textures used in HL2 were clearly very low res compared to what it can do, and that compared to solid framerates the engine is far from outdated, maybe some dev will come up with a game with better visuals than what valve did for HL2.

[kleinluka]

Stay level headed you guys.

SKDR, is there a source for this news article?

BTW, comparing a game engine to a non-realtime renderer like Brazil is not very fair.

Both engines have their ups and downs. UE3 has probably more ups than downs in comparison to source. But I'm sure Valve is aware of that and is gonna work on something to change it. Or not.