GoldSrc: The Half-Life Engine’s History, Games and Legacy
The engine behind Half-Life and Counter-Strike: where the GoldSrc name came from, what Valve built on top of Quake, which games really used it, and its status in 2026.
Game Engine Guides — Architecture, History and the Games Built on Them
A game engine is the software layer every game is built on: the renderer, physics, audio, input, scripting and tools that turn assets and code into something playable. Knowing how engines are built — and why some lasted decades while others vanished — is one of the fastest ways to understand real-time C++ programming.
MYCPLUS has been documenting game engines since 2004. This section profiles commercial, open-source and historical engines one at a time. Each one gets a look at its architecture, its scripting model, its license, and a checked list of the games actually built on it, so you don’t have to rely on the attributions copied around the web.
Every profile covers the engine’s status in 2026: whether it’s still maintained, which fork carries it forward, and what to use instead if it has gone. Whether you’re picking an engine for a project, studying engine source code or researching a classic game, start here.
What You’ll Learn
- Modern commercial engines — how Unity 6 pairs a C++ core with C# scripting and native plugins, and what it costs in 2026
- Open-source C++ engines — Panda3D, Cafu and the Cube engine family: what’s in the source tree, how to build it and what’s been made with it
- Real-time strategy engines — Pyrogenesis behind 0 A.D. and the Spring engine and its successor Recoil
- Engine lineages and forks — how GoldSrc grew out of Quake, and where qfusion‘s code went after Warsow
- Classic and discontinued engines — SSI’s Gold Box, Ubisoft’s Jade engine and the Marmalade SDK, and how to play or replace them today
- 2D and adventure-game tools — how Adventure Game Studio still ships commercial point-and-click games
Why MYCPLUS: Engine profiles that check every game attribution against a named source, correct the myths repeated elsewhere, and state each engine’s 2026 status, from the site that has covered game development since 2004. For graphics programming and C++ game code, see the Game Development hub.
qfusion: the Quake II Fork Behind Warsow, and Where Its Code Went
qfusion no longer means one repository — it means three, and they have diverged. Here’s the upstream, Warsow’s fork and Warfork’s, when each was last touched, and which one to build from.
Jade Engine: the Ubisoft Engine Behind Beyond Good & Evil and the Sands of Time
Ubisoft Montpellier built Jade for one game and named it after its heroine. It ended up carrying the Prince of Persia reboot. Here’s every game verified on it — and why the Beyond Good & Evil sequel isn’t one.
MT Framework: Capcom’s Engine Before RE Engine — and the Games It Still Ships
Capcom turned down Unreal and built its own engine instead. Here’s every MT Framework version and what ran on it, why RE Engine replaced it, and why it was still shipping games in 2025.
4A Engine: the Metro Engine That Dropped the Rasteriser
In 2021, 4A Games removed the rasterised lighting path from Metro Exodus entirely — every light is ray traced, with no fallback. Here’s the engine behind the Metro series, and why you can’t download it.
Chrome Engine: Techland’s Game Engine Behind Dying Light — and What Replaced It
Techland’s engine, not Google’s browser. Chrome Engine 6 powered Dying Light in 2015 — but Dying Light 2 runs on something else entirely. Here’s the version-by-version map and what Techland builds on today.
OGRE and OGRE-Next: the Rendering Engine That Isn’t a Game Engine
OGRE draws things. Physics, audio and gameplay are your problem — which is exactly why it shows up inside other people’s engines and in robotics. Here’s the OGRE 1.x versus OGRE-Next split, and which to pick.
ShiVa Game Engine: End of Support, and Where ShiVa Developers Go Next
ShiVa put 3D games on the iPhone before most people thought it was practical. In March 2023 its makers stopped selling it and stopped fixing it. Here’s the status, and the migration path its own team recommended.
Banshee 3D Game Engine: What It Became, and Why Its Repository Is Gone
The Banshee Engine repository is a dead link, so the project looks abandoned. It isn’t — it renamed twice, dropped its editor, and shipped commits this month as B3D Framework.
Unreal Development Kit (UDK): the Free AAA Engine That Changed Indie Games
Fifty thousand people downloaded UDK in its first week. Five years later Epic gave away something better and killed it. Here’s what UDK actually was, the $99-and-25% deal behind it, and what to do with an old project.
Source vs Source 2: What Valve’s Engines Run Today, and What You Can Actually Use
Two engines, one confusing name. Source is source-available and non-commercial; Source 2 is proprietary and has never been released. Here’s what each one runs, and exactly what Valve lets you build.
HPL Engine: Frictional’s Horror Engine From Penumbra to Amnesia: The Bunker
Two of HPL’s three generations are on GitHub under GPLv3. The one powering SOMA and Amnesia: The Bunker is not. Here’s the split, the verified game list, and what you can actually build with it.