Why the Source engine?

[Skeith]

Now as a user I will never ever complain about a game using the Source engine. It's a rock solid engine that I wished more games used. From what I've heard the main reason it isn't more widely used is that it's difficult to work with. Was there any particular reason the developers endured these trials and tribulations? Many blog posts talked about needing to bend and break the Source engine to their vision. Do the developers feel the game was richer for it?

[brataccas]

I keep forgetting that it is the source engine as it looks a lot better than the source engine if that makes sense

[Yadda]

I'll give you one good reason, scalability.

The source engine works great on any form of hardware and while the toolsets/engine does seem to fall short by modern day's standards, it allows for better optimization in comparison to a lot of today's engines which simply account for the most budgeted way to display and hide polygons on screen.

If you don't believe me check the minimum requirements for the game.

• OS:Microsoft Windows XP / Vista / Vista64
  Processor:Pentium 4 3.0GHz
  Memory:1 GB RAM
  Graphics:128 MB, Shader model 2.0 or higher
  DirectX®:dx90c
  Hard Drive:2 GB HD space
  Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card

By today's standards that's not asking for much.

Also notice that the designer did such a fantastic job with the overall look and feel of the level that he did not make use of any expensive lighting effects, such as Tonemapping/HDR, Bloom, Expensive smoke particles, etc. He also made use of the simple and cheap card reflections that were added to Portal 2 in order to make the candlelight reflections look even prettier than if they were realtime.

The power and capabilities of the Source Engine is in the hands of the designers. If you work really hard at it, you can make some really beautiful stuff.