By Jeff Bond on August 6, 2013 at 10:23am
A redditor by the name of ReaverXai got a tour of the Valve offices the other day as they were gearing up for TI3 (The International Dota 2 Championships), and one of the photos taken during the tour has sparked a flurry of excitement.
It all started out innocently enough. The tour seemed to be focused on the merchandise being showcased, artwork being produced, and an introduction to the famously "cool" office environment. The album of photos was posted to the "Dota 2" subreddit and was initially intended to show off their tour of the offices and reveal information about merchandise that would be for sale at the upcoming event, but one photo stood out in particular. A member of Valve's staff had a second monitor set up as a stream of updates from the internal change logs and ticketing system, and buried in that list were strings of text from developer Ted Carson that threw everyone into an uproar.
[Source2] Changed L4D3's test_networking unit test to use the devtest level again. Ran assert-free...
[Source2] Restored L4D3's devtest unit test. Ran locally 6 times without an assert. There may be so...
This seems to all but confirm that we are going to see another installment of the "Left 4 Dead" franchise. The success of the franchise is widely known, and it makes sense that it is being actively developed. However, this is the first piece of solid proof that has been illuminated that seems to confirm what everyone had been suspecting all along.
Also interestingly, it does call out the "Source 2" engine, furthering speculation that it is closer to release. The "Source" engine was developed by Valve and debuted in 2004 with the releases of "Counter-Strike: Source" and then "Half-Life 2," and it has been in active development ever since. Originally designed for first-person shooters, the engine has been modified and powers everything from RPGs, puzzle games, side scrollers, and more.
Back in Aug. 2012, ValveTime revealed that "Source 2" was in the works after digging up some promising strings from "Source Filmmaker." Later in Nov. 2012, Gabe Newell confirmed that "Source 2" is indeed in development and that Valve is "waiting for a game to roll it out with." Newell also confirmed that it will be an entirely new engine, not just another update to the existing Source engine which has been updated regularly over the years. Further evidence of these projects surfaced when a mailing list from Valve's project management and bug tracking software, Jira, was discovered. "Half-Life 2," "Left 4 Dead 3," and "Source 2" were all shown in the leaked screenshots.
Original Reddit Post Full Size Photo OXM VG24/7 IGN ValveTime
