| The only thing keeping source alive, really, is the userbase. In truth it's a pretty horrible engine. Hell, it's still based on quake1 code, and hammer is still - aside from some small tweaks - basically worldcraft, a decade-old editor. So it's missing a ton of really basic and standardized shit like simply being able to scale models in-engine (let alone skew and other useful modifiers). But yeah in recent times I've been basically praying that either one of these FPS developers stops failing (for the love of god id Software - learn how to market and SELL RAGE, I want idtech5!), or Valve finally gets a new engine for their games with HL3/whatever. Although really modding is kind of becoming a dead art, almost all recent mods to come out - even for Source, by far and away the biggest userbase to present mods to - have died without getting a decent playerbase (and "a decent playerbase" has gone from 500+ online to maybe 100).
I'm surprised to see others think UE is more user-friendly though. I've taught at least a dozen people how to use hammer and generally the BSP method of building levels (while not as effecient, to be sure) seems to be much easier to understand all around. | 