IGN (yes, those people) have an interesting article about the Source engine, and how is made, and why it still does so well compared to modern day engines like the Unreal Engine 3. The trick in my opinion is to definitely leave gaps in the engine to put new features as technology improve. I doubt the Source engine will be replaced until say, 2012 at the earliest. Even if you hate Valve for some reason, you have to admit the Source engine was (and still is) a mindblowing invention in terms of game development.
And yes, this may be the first time IGN has an interesting article about anything.

I like the physics based engine. It provides an interesting twist to gameplay.

I love the source engine. There is something great about the way it looks. It's not the technical details, there are other games now with better tech, but something about it always looks cool.
If it really still runs on xbox, Valve should really port it to the Wii... a decent scalable engine on wii, plus all the games they could port across... it'd be $$$

Yep, I remember how impressed I was by the Doom 3 engine, until i learned how inferior Doom 3's engine was for outdoor environments compared to the source engine that came soon later. Another technologicl feat of the source engine is that it allows very nice graphics for mid and low end machines. From what i understand, the engine was built around many ideas with one of them being making an engine that both looked good and played well on low end machines. Good things can be said for engines that allow amazing graphics for high end machines(Crysis anyone?), but I feel even more can be said for engines that allows wonderful graphics on low end machines. I feel the later is a higher technological achievement than the former.

If you have a 64bit system with 4gigs of ram you can install the half-Life 2 FakeFactory Cinematic Mod pack (a multigig download) and update all the meshes/textures to something that looks almost CGI in quality.
Ive yet to see anything released on the market that even close to the graphic power source can have when used to its 64bit and texture size limits...
I have to tell you Alyx looks realistic and most of the models do aswell with the Cinematic pack.
[url=]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnX_BG5PlM4[/url] This gives me chills EVERY TIME!

Well it definitely looks BETTER but I'd probably describe it less as "CGI quality" and more as "Game from last year"
Sadly no matter how much they pretty it up, its still half life 2 underneath
Also Starkrun, those 2 vids are the same

I can't really tell what's so great with youtube videos.

I was wondering... do third party Source-engine games (such as Zeno Clash) require Steam?
Because I think thats the only drawback for me.
The engine is a pretty good all rounder, and seems to be quite easy for people to work with, which helps a lot for modders and such.

Well, it's somewhat futile to showcase hi-res textures in a scaled-down video. That pretty much defeats the whole purpose of the exercise.
They're not actually, he just doesn't know how the forum's URL tags work, so the second link ends up pointing to the same URL.
Fixed the links for you.

The Source engine got it right in so many ways. Not least of all is how easy it made the development of new content and even the expansion of the engine's capabilities.
What I'm left wondering is how far the Source engine can be pushed. id tech 4, for instance, went from the small, dark cramped environments of Doom 3 through to the open expanses of Quake Wars with its gigapixel textures.
Now Brink is using it to jaw-dropping effect. When it's released Brink will be using a 6 year old engine and it won't show a bit. It's already looking better than anything else out there.
Whatever else you want to say about Left 4 Dead, it's hard to deny that it made the Source engine show its age. For a horror themed game you'd expect the atmosphere to be one of the most polished aspects of the graphics. Yet atmospheric effects such as smoke, fire and even lighting were really looking quite antiquated.
Maybe there's life in the old engine yet. Left 4 Dead 2 does show some signs of visual improvement. But it's pretty clear that Valve are going to need to find ways of getting more out of it in future.

I guess what angers me is that Source could have easy worked with massive textures, and huge polys in all there meshes... utilizing 64bit cpus and massive ram people use it can still be a contender..
Why are devs so damn scared to up there textures to something great.. even Oblivion had to have Qarl's texturepack to look really good.

Fine, but is there a place you can download it where you don't have to create an account, and where it doesn't come in 50 goddamn .rar files?!?
What is it with splitting downloads into a bazillion .rar files? Didn't we leave that behind around the turn of the millennium?

Ah... you see, all things come full circle.
We have the same problems, just larger files. Too much to host/upload as one file, too much drain on bandwidth, too much cost.
We thought broadband would solve all the problems.. but as more people got in the fast lane, it became slow again...

See, what we need to do is figure out how to widen the tubes. Bigger tubes means more data flowing through... right?
;)

To an extent, yes. However, consider that L4D is meant to have more of a parody/cheesy B movie genre feel rather than true horror a la Killing Floor or Doom 3.