We've *almost* made the decision to move to Valve's new Half-Life 2 Source engine. The final decision will not be made until the Half-Life 2 SDK has been released, and it has been looked over. There are many reasons to justify the move, and these are:
- Better graphics. While this reason alone would not justify a complete move, it is certainly a factor.
- Source provides client prediction for hitscan, projectile and physics based weapons. Half-Life 1 only provided prediction for hitscan weapons. The majority of weapons in Shattered-Horizons are projectile based, so it makes sense to take advantage of this.
- The engine is capable of realistic physics, and one area of this is of particular interest: cable physics. Hopefully this can utilised be used to create a realistic grappling hook for the thief.
- Source allows mappers to use displacement mapping in their maps, which improves outdoor areas immensley. Seeing as many maps will be located outside on natural terrain, this feature would be heavily used.
- Although we wouldn't want to turn the game into a Vehicle vs Vehicle combat game, the Source engine would allow us to create drivable catapults, that would be able to launch physically-accurate rocks. Catapults would not be a major part of the game.
- The support for custom shader effects would allow us to make a special vision mode for the werewolf...
Although it can not be directly copied over, much of the artwork and maps can be converted to the new engine. It will take a while to catch up coding-wise, but it should be worth it. Until then, work will continue on the current version, and 1.0-g should still see the light of day.
