It's been some time since the last update on SourceWorld, but we've come back in full force since the last demo, the first demo we released as most know was in August 2024 and we've received a lot of feedback, whenever it be players or content creators, whenever the map generator itself was a bit stiff at the time, or had barely anything to offer, or the city being too bland and empty, we're still working on most, but almost a year later since then, we heard you, we answered, so here's the 2025's Sourceworld demo for Steam Next Fest for June.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3654230/

There's been many changes since last article from about 3 months ago. During all this time, we've been working really hard to push the Demo today. There's so many changes and small additions that we can't fit them all in this single article. However, we can still just show you some proof of our work.
Inventory has received some visual tweaks like 3D item preview and key hints. Aside from that, to replace vanilla HL2 armor, we added equipment items which currently provide damage resists.

Healing works slightly differently too. You can now assign usable items to limited amount of Quick Slots, in which you can use items without opening inventory. Player's now have to rely more on their inventory mid-combat.
SourceWorld's weapons system works in tandem with inventory. Instead of being locked to predefined weapon slots, players are able to assign any weapon to any of their available 6 slots. You're also able to carry multiple instances of same weapon.

For example, you can carry 2 pistols and upon certain conditions you may as well dual wield.
Added specifically to teach players how inventory and weapon systems work.

The single new weapon we bringing you in today's release is Kriss Vector - something we've been wanting to add since long time ago. Fires rapidly and has minimum recoil.
Textures by The_Guardian™. Modelled by yours truly.
Limiting players to saving only at certain places is very harsh considering the unpredictable nature of the game. You're now able to choose to load from last checkpoint. Checkpoints are triggered by any map transitions, so players are now able to continue from the moment they entered the generated world or the moment they returned back to the lab, in case they died during events.


Overall, this should drastically lower the amount of progress and time lost with every death. Don't see this as oversimplifying the difficulty, as we're not intending to make the game into a hardcore Roguelike. Besides, it's better to make things a little too easy, than overly difficult.
Of course some of game's mechanics were heavily requested to be improved, and some still require work, so bugs and glitches are still a possibility with the number of features this 2025 demo comes with, and still many to approach and implement with, most likely being the current limited number of enemies and tilesets which the demo still suffers from, Half-Life 1 enemies would be a good start to begin with in the future.

Now some may still ask whenever SourceWorld has a full release date in the future - This remains uncertain unfortunately as Bronco Development is a 2 men project + people contributing to the project in their own fair share for free (Whenever it be voices, assets, coding, etc.) and so we're doing this on our own free time too, although in our hopes a full release could be somewhere in 2026, this plan can change any time.

It's saddening for us to not have much new content in the modification compared to previous demo. All these months we were focused on overhauling things that already existed. Map generator was completely rewritten from scratch. Inventory and new weapons systems turned out way more complicated than we expected at first. Implementation and especially bug-fixing along with quality-of-life improvements were our primary focus. There might be lack of content, however, we did what we could to make this Demo a much more refined and fun experience, compared to previous one.
We are very grateful to everyone who took part in our recent closed playtests and gave us feedback. Most of the appeared issues were taken care of.

Hopefully, this release will be worth the wait.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3654230/

We have finally managed to get the SourceWorld Steam store page up and running, it took us a lot of set up and filling up e-documents but it all paid off in the end. We've set up the basics on it and a thread in discussions where you can ask us whatever you want if you have questions for us! The steam page wouldn't have been possible without the Supporters who helped us to make this a reality and give our mod the real chance to shine among all unique mods!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3489490/SourceWorld/

We'll be very happy if you would wishlist SourceWorld, as this greatly helps in growing up to be more noticed and seen on Steam. By the time of writing this, we have already gained 500 wishlists.


In Demo Post-Mortem article it was mentioned that the whole world scanning mechanic needs to get changed in favor of something drastically different.

Map Legend: Green - Explored | Yellow - Scanned | Gray - Visible | Unreachable - Barely visible dots.

At the start of any playthrough, there's a fixed amounts of worlds being generated into a single multiverse, looking similar to a starmap. Worlds that players visit will not be completely random, but rather playthrough consistent, meaning that if you meet your demise in one world, you can try it again after reloading last save.

Scanning was changed too. Players now have access to a Multiverse map, which shows all accessible worlds that player can scan and travel to. Upon visiting worlds, the neighbouring worlds get unlocked for scanning. For now the multiverse is limited by a number of 200 generated worlds that you can explore.

Worlds themselves now consist of stages. Formerly a player would jump into a generated environment and return back after a short while, but now there are so-called "stages" for each world player has to go through in order to finish their mission.

We consider utilising this change to get around engine limitations, slicing big worlds into smaller stages. It's also not excluded that an optional save system could be added in between stages to let players feel less risk of losing their progress and being pushed all the way back to the lab.

The Terminal's interface was reconstructed from scratch. It used to be a very simple console with few commands, but now it's changed to have a bigger gameplay role.
Updated terminal has a multiverse map menu, scan details map, portal control, stats menu which will serve as display for previously explored worlds, files will work as way to interact with pieces of information or software the player gathers over time and of course messages tab.

www.youtube.com/embed/mWTPS3LG4uU


Without proper pathfinding, SourceWorld's combat feels redundant when enemies barely move around. However, with some help from Nbc66 we finally managed to get working AI Pathfinding for generated environments. This solves many problems, including the ones which prevented adding companion/ally NPCs into the mod. Besides, enemies will be able to roam or chase player around and just be less dumb overall.


Just like many other things you've seen in the Demo version, minimap has been remade from scratch to match the new map generator. Levels now consist out of premade rooms or "tiles". Formerly, the Exploration mechanic worked in a way which forced player to walk to almost every corner possible, sometimes often having to open the minimap to see which tiny spots you've missed.

New minimap shows only the rooms that player has visited much like the former one, except that unexplored pathways are now highlighted so that any time player opens the map, they will instantly see which parts of the level they haven't checked yet.

www.youtube.com/embed/EdVwc_dnG8A


Since SourceWorld follows a brute approach of placing playable enviroments when a map is already loaded, we had to add some kind of optimisation to prevent the whole level from rendering at all times. We came up with a very primitive Potentially-Visible-Set algorithm for occluding non-visible areas. Not only this disables drawing of far level geometry to improve perfomance, but it also helps with making lighting not bleed through floors and walls.


We've also added a screen-melt effect when loading into a map.


The District Security receives an additional unit in their roster which in reality wasn't planned or accounted for but the message that The_GuardianTM has to transmit is that "It is a happy accident", thanks to a user on the Garry's Mod workshop which demanded the people that ported and made the District Security as functional NPC's there was someone that also asked for a Security Riot unit, which at first was far from happening, but later on a second thought eventually this idea wasn't too far fetched from happening, so now we have the Riot Control Unit to become a reality and soon-to-be functional in-game too! (They will basically just rise up their shields at you to protect themselves from your bullets.)


The maps are also seeing some touches too, either adding or modifying, but most importantly optimising them for computers which have issues with the district city! Aside from that there are also some WIP stuff such as a story named Tunnel Fission (Still heavily WIP as it is, still laying out ideas for it and designing it.)

Thanks for reading the devlog, make sure to check out the steam page. We also have a Q&A thread in its community hub where you can ask us any questions. Leave your thoughts in the comments!