I have to say, I really didn’t expect this kind of traffic for my humble little post about the Valve Source engine possibly coming to Linux, especially given that I reported on it a week or two after Phoronix! And seriously, 1500+ diggs, wow.
In any case, that aside, something has been bugging me, and as usual, I can’t just let it go.
Some individuals have been referencing my post, only to be shot down by people claiming my 3rd point is invalid because EA supposedly handled the PS3 port work. I have to say, nice detective work. I haven’t kept up with console release news recently, so I missed the story about EA having done the port.
However… This is completely irrelevant regarding my point. Sure, in the article I imply that Valve did it, ok, so substitute Valve for “EA”, the important point is that the code EXISTS. Somewhere, somehow, there is a version of the Source Engine out there that is powered by OpenGL. Furthermore, I would be willing to bet that the OpenGL work, at the very least, is all Valve’s, and that EA only did the PS3-specific bits.
Why do I say something so speculative? Because when the HL2 source code was leaked years ago, the engine used OpenGL as a backend. Now we all know that the HL1 engine was based on Quake1, and that the Source Engine was developed from scratch specifically for HL2, but it’s possible the general engine components were done first, and the rendering backend last, so maybe this OpenGL code from the leaked version was actually an evolution of the HL1 rendering backend, who knows?
Of course, when you factor in the Postal III port, everything more or less falls into place, and you start to get a picture of what’s going on, Valve has to have their own OpenGL somewhere, because I just can’t see a dev house like RWS or Akella writing an entire rendering backend on their own, if they were going to go through that trouble they would’ve been better off using an engine that fit their needs better.
Now I hope this settles the issue. Keep in mind that my post wasn’t designed to be authoritative on the issue, I am merely looking at the various clues, and drawing certain conclusions from them. If I am wrong, and there isn’t a Linux port, well, the points stand up on their own, in the end all it will mean is that Valve completely wasted some source code that they already had in their hands, for whatever reason.
Anyways, that’s it for me. Until next time, take care of yourselves, and each other. :)