Valve has not talked about a new version of its engine

Aug 7, 2014 11:16 GMT  ·  By

Earlier in the day, the developers at Valve working on DOTA 2 have launched a set of new mod options for the game, called the Workshop Tools, which allow players to create their own custom maps and game modes for the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena title.

Now it seems, according to a number of fans posting on the official Reddit of the title, that the new content is loaded with references to Source 2, an entirely new engine that apparently the studio is testing with one of its most popular titles.

One of the users says that “That script also allows for different dlls to load and render different assets (vmaps are rendered by worldrenderer.dll, etc). This is a completely new architecture from Valves previous system. This bit alone would indicate a significant amount of engine work has been done to split these bits out of the engine and into their own libraries.”

At the same time, those who are actually running DOTA 2 have not seen any sort of changes that would indicate that Source 2 is being used to render the experience.

It’s entirely possible that Valve has added a bunch of references to its modding tools for the title just to make sure that they fully support a new engine once it actually delivers it.

The studio has not offered any comment on the matter up until now and it’s known for being unwilling to actually talk about its future projects, especially when they are as sensitive as Source 2.

On Reddit, the community adds, “The main game is still running Source 1. The files that the workshop tools spit out are compatible with Source 1, and run in the version of Dota 2 that everyone else has.”

The delivery of a new game engine would be a big deal for Valve because it would spur another round of speculation from its fan community, specifically about a new Half-Life project that might use the new technology.

The Workshop Tools for DOTA 2 are at the moment in alpha stage, and the company said that the high system requirements for them are linked to the fact that more development and optimization is needed for them.

At the same time, the hardware upgrade might be a clear sign that this is an entirely new tech that is designed to run on powerful PCs and maybe even on the newest home consoles from Microsoft and Sony.