 Good evening. I'm sure you've already heard that Valve is now giving out private invites for people to test their new game, Counter-Strike 2. It's a remake of CSGO that runs on that elusive Source 2 engine we've been hearing about for like 10 years now, and tons of famous streamers and YouTubers have already begun syncing their teeth into all the game's quirks and mechanics online. But while this news is obviously exciting, it's also left fans who aren't famous Twitch streamers or who maybe don't care that much about Counter-Strike feeling just a little bit left out because the only other Source 2 title on the market right now is Half-Life Alyx. And since that game requires a pricey VR set to play, it's not exactly the most accessible either. Putting all that to the side though, it's obviously still very exciting to know that the era of Source 2 is finally upon us. And when I first heard the big announcement, I giddily booted up CSGO and happily accepted the in-game invitation that I obviously received. So how was it? This sucks. Okay, so I actually didn't get early access to Counter-Strike 2, but that's okay. Because you know what I did recently get access to? Good versions of Team Fortress 2, Portal and Half-Life all running on that same Source 2 engine. How is this possible, you ask? Well, through the power of British people. Specifically this British person, Gary Newman. You probably know him as the guy behind Gary's mod. Why is he important to this video? Well because since about 2015, Gary has been working on Sandbox, a private unreleased game development platform that's been running on the Source 2 engine since 2020. And not too long ago, Gary for some reason agreed to give me early access to it. I think there's now a world of private Source 2 games that my finger tips ready to be played and shown off to the world in this video. What could go wrong? Jokes aside, this really is a cool opportunity. And after checking out what Sandbox has to offer, I have no doubt that it'll be used to do things much more impressive than upgrading old Valve games from 2007. But for the sake of this video, that's what I'm going to be using it for anyway. So today, I'm going to give you all a look at some ports of Valve's golden age classics running on Source 2 through Sandbox. Compare them to their original counterparts and hopefully give some exciting insight into what a move to the new Source 2 engine could mean for games that aren't Counter-Strike. Starting out, of course, with everyone's favorite class-based shooter. Team Fortress 2 is a game that never reached its full potential. It is one of the most beloved multiplayer FPS games of all time, still retains more than 70,000 daily players despite its age, and was a trendsetter for the genre in a lot of ways. However, despite its continued popularity, TF2 today feels under-maintained. It runs pretty poorly, has a horrible cheating problem, and in general has really started to show its age a bit. And it's because of all this that the idea of a Source 2 port breathing new life into the game has been fueling the wet dreams of TF2 players for a very, very long time now. In fact, you might even remember back in 2021 when this video of a supposed TF2 Source 2 port went viral, even though it was actually just a Unity engine project someone whipped up and never bothered finishing. However, this TF2 Source 2 project, developed by a team called Amper Software, is still actively being worked on and actually does run on Source 2, for real. I've always found it silly when amateur mod teams market themselves like professional game studios, but credit where credit is due, Amper is actually doing some pretty professional work here. The game is for the most part fully functional. You can play as all the classes, and all of their mechanics work pretty much one to one how you'd expect them to. You can sticky jump, rocket jump, taunt, kill your teammates, you get it. The list of maps you can play on is not very big, but those that are available have been pretty much completely rebuilt to take advantage of the new engine. Making use of improved lighting technology, the team has crafted some pretty gorgeous renditions of iconic TF2 maps with almost no hit to the game's performance. Putting things side by side, you can immediately see how different everything looks. And while the visuals may not be perfect, in my opinion they are still very impressive. The UIs are fully functional, although they're a bit clunky, and I couldn't help but notice that there isn't a way to turn off fast weapon switch, which makes me very sad. But given that this remake was built nearly from scratch by volunteer devs, I'm actually very impressed with what I'm seeing here. It looks like the team even has some ideas for new original content they might implement in the future, like new maps and game modes. And I for one am actually very excited to see how the project evolves and how the community will receive it once it's released to the public. Especially because, well, it's becoming increasingly clear that Valve themselves have no intentions of doing any serious work on TF2 anymore. I think this project demonstrates that while an official source to port of TF2 would be a monumental effort, it would also go a long way in modernizing the game, expanding its reach and potential, and of course improving its graphics and performance as well. Who'd have thought? Moving on, though, next up is one of the most iconic puzzle games of all time. Portal's witty writing and cool mechanics have helped it stand the test of time as a truly unforgettable experience. And one of the things the series is known best for is how it has repeatedly pushed hardware limitations to bring us mind bending puzzles and crazy set pieces. Because of this, it's very exciting to think about what possibilities bringing Portal to a more powerful game engine might open up for the series. Back in March 2022, Valve gave us Aperture Desk Job, a short tech demo running on Source 2 meant to market the Steam Deck. But while this game was set in Aperture, it didn't have any puzzles, and it was also only about 30 minutes long. So if you're interested in seeing what an actual fully fledged Portal game on Source 2 might look like, complete with puzzles and portals and everything else we've come to expect, you'll need to look no further than Quanta Box. Quanta Box is a game that brings the mechanics and features of Portal forward to Source 2. It doesn't have its own campaign, but the idea is that once Sandbox releases to the public, people will be able to use Quanta Box to make their own Portal games on a more modern and flexible engine. Now, the whole thing is still in heavy development, and the version I played was admittedly pretty buggy, but keeping in mind how small the team is and how far out this stuff is from release, the work they're doing is exciting, and I think the Portal community is going to have a field day with it once it's finished. But that's about all I have to say about Quanta Box. So let's move on to the last project I'm going to show you in this video, which also happens to be my personal favorite. Half-Life. The game that gave Valve their start and forever changed the FPS genre. The Half-Life series is well known for pushing boundaries with every new release. Half-Life 1 showed us just how immersive a shooter game can get. Half-Life 2 demonstrated just how interactive and lifelike a game world can be, and Half-Life 3, well, sadly, it never materialized. The hype around a mythical Half-Life 3 cool running on Source 2 has never really gone away, but so far, the closest thing we've gotten is Half-Life Alyx, which, don't get me wrong, is a great game. But since Half-Life Alyx is played on a VR set, it doesn't control like a typical Half-Life game does. And three years after launch, a good amount of the community still hasn't had a chance to play it yet. That means for the VR impaired such as myself, the closest thing to an official Source 2 Half-Life experience would be, I guess, playing through these Half-Life 2 workshop maps with the no VR mod. But that kind of sucks. So instead, enter Half-Life Source 2, which lets you play both the classic single-player campaign from the original Half-Life and its multiplayer deathmatch mode, all revitalized on a brand new powerhouse of an engine. Now, this is not a remake. It is a port through and through. It brings Half-Life 1 code forward to Source 2 and fills it in with Half-Life's Source assets, resulting in a really weird and interesting experience. In terms of gameplay, the basics are all there. All the NPCs and weapons are present and mostly work how they're intended. Mostly. In terms of visuals, it's definitely an interesting and cool effect to see these late 90s models tracked by real-time lighting and shadows. And these maps actually look pretty neat in my opinion, despite their sometimes glaring issues. The multiplayer deathmatch is just as fun as it is in the original, though I did run into some problems with weapon animation speeds, and the way the levels reported seems to have led to some funny unintended consequences. But given that this whole thing is apparently created and maintained by pretty much just two people, this is still a very impressive project and I actually had a lot of fun with it. Does Half-Life 1 really meaningfully benefit from being ported to Source 2? Probably not. I mean, if you want a modernized version of Half-Life 1, Black Mesa has been out for like three years now. But that doesn't mean Half-Life Source 2 isn't a cool experiment worth checking out once it releases. So what have we learned today? Well, Source is a really cool engine, and it seems like Source 2 might end up being even cooler. Maybe. It definitely has a lot of potential, and it's gonna be interesting to see what other games Valve and their community end up building with it. Additionally, now that I've gotten my chance to toy around with Sandbox, I finally kind of understand the hype behind it. As a G-modder at heart, I had a lot of skepticism when I first started hearing about how it was a Garry's Mod successor, but after getting my hands on it myself, I've realized that it's not even really a game on its own, but rather a platform for people to build games from. It's obviously never going to replace G-mod, but that's not even really what it's trying to do. Its direction is much broader than that, and I think it's probably going to be a bigger deal than people realize. Anyway, while these ports are interesting and show that bringing these classic games to the Source 2 engine could majorly improve their graphics and performance, there are also harsh reminders that that process isn't as simple as just copy and pasting old code into a new engine. There's a lot of kinks and bugs that need to be sorted out before any of this stuff is released to the public, and there's really no way of knowing how long that will take. That being said, if this is what a small team of ragtag volunteers or even just two people can come up with, using tools that get updated every single week and break their entire project, who knows what we'll see in the future when the broader community gets access to the finished and fully stable versions of all this stuff. It actually makes me think there might be a bright future for the Valve game modding community. Fingers crossed I didn't get anything wrong in this video since I still don't really know all that much about Sandbox or how people develop games on it. But either way, thanks for watching. Thank you again to Gary for giving me Sandbox access. Join this thing and press this thing if you haven't already. Peace and have a good day.