#unigine engine

[linuxgamenews]

Unigine Engine Looks To Wasteland 2

The Kickstarter-backed Wasteland 2 game that's already had plans for a Linux client may be powered by the Unigine Engine. Last month word came out that Wasteland 2 would have a Linux client as the sequel to Brian Fargo's original Wasteland game from two decades ago. Via the crowd-sourced funding on Kickstarter, Wasteland 2 has raised over 2.4 million US dollars to fund its development by Fargo's inXile Entertainment company. Many Windows and Linux and OS X gamers are already looking forward to this title even though the game is still quite a ways out. One interesting bit of development news is that this multi-platform game is quite likely to be powered by the Unigine Engine. Denis Shergin, the CEO of Unigine Corp, told me this morning about a proposal made to Brian Fargo regarding the game engine and subsequently there was a tweet by Denis to publicly confirm. Denis mentioned that after seeing the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter success they approached Fargo about the idea of using the Unigine Engine and subsequently provided them with an evaluation kit for their promising but not widely-used engine. There was a belief that Unigine's technology would be a perfect fit for Wasteland 2, so Unigine Corp is willing to provide them a gratis license to their engine. This free license to the Kickstarter project comes a year and a half after they gave away free licenses in an indie game development competition.

The Linux support in the Unigine Engine is first-rate (screenshots in this article are of their Linux-supported Unigine Heaven tech demo) but certainly demanding on graphics drivers and hardware with its GL3/GL4 renderer and there also being a DirectX 11 renderer for Microsoft Windows. Unigine is also obviously quite taxing on the OpenGL stack for Apple's OS X. It will be quite interesting to see this game built atop Unigine. In this Wasteland thread other engine options are talked about, among with are CryEngine3, Unreal Engine 3, and the GPL-licensed id Tech 4. For the Linux support to Unreal Engine 3, Epic Games would need to release their Linux support, which has been dead/blocked in the form of Unreal Tournament 3 without an official explanation (there's rumors it was due to middlware licensing issues and/or Ryan Gordon not being paid by Epic for the Linux port). On the CryEngine side there is a native Linux port of CryEngine 3 with an OpenGL renderer, but hasn't ever been used by Crytek licensees. Going with the open-source id Tech 4 engine would be interesting, but I don't see it being a good matching technical fit for the game as it would require greater development time/costs for customizations.

Hopefully seeing Wasteland 2 running on Unigine could lead more game studios to license this great engine from the Russian-based company. Besides several yet-to-be-announced projects, some of the other games that are release or coming on the Unigine Engine include OilRush, Dilogus - The Winds of War, Relics of Annorath, Syndicates of Arkon, MMT Online, and Cradle.

The Unigine developers have also posted new screenshots of their visually-awesome-yet-Linux-friendly Valley to their development log. Unigine Valley will hopefully be released to the public in one month or so. by Michael Larabel

[linuxgamenews]

Unigine Pushes Engine Changes; More Mesa Friendly

Unigine Corp has announced a set of improvements to their cross-platform and visually-stunning Unigine Engine. With the Source Engine on Linux finally looking to be imminent for entering the public spotlight, new improvements to Unigine couldn't come at a better time. The changes to the latest revision of the Unigine Engine can be read on their devlog. Some of the points that stick out include: - Optimizations within the renderer. - Configurable blending modes for terrain materials. - Improved performance of dynamic vertex/index buffers on open-source drivers in Linux. - Support for vertical synchronization on Linux. - The renderer checks for EXT_texture_compress_s3tc on start-up to help the Mesa open-source drivers. - Increased default shadow bias and slope parameters for light sources. - Separate diffuse and specular color multipliers. - Various Unigine Script improvements. - GUI fixes. - Many Unigine Editor improvements, including Maya 2012 plug-ins. - Unigine Tracker has been introduced as a keyframe-based tool for creating sequences animated over time, to allow for "adding dynamic gameplay elements or making in-game cinematic cutscenes" with various benefits for the developers. This is quite a healthy update to the already first-rate Unigine Engine. The Linux-specific work is also always pleasant to see, and especially the ongoing work to make this visually-stunning-but-demanding engine work with the open-source Mesa/Gallium3D drivers. Seeing multiple Mesa-targeted improvements here is great. If enabling patented S3TC support via the external library, building Mesa with the patented texture-float support, and applying a few driconf options it's becoming possible to run the Unigine Engine on a few open-source drivers with mostly-correct rendering. However, the performance is still at a snail's pace, especially considering that even the proprietary NVIDIA/AMD graphics drivers tend to be stressed a lot by this engine (you can see a range of graphics cards running with Unigine benchmarks in my Radeon HD 7950 Linux review). The Unigine Engine advancements are also important as when it could soon be facing much competition or interest from those interested in high-quality Linux game engines. Assuming the Source Engine with its Linux launch titles are shipping soon (should have more details to hopefully be able to share publicly on that when I'm out there at Valve in just over two weeks), the Unigine Engine will finally have some competition for being the most high-end Linux game engine. It will be interesting to see how the Source Engine and Unigine Engine battle it out under Linux in terms of performance and visual richness, of course with many Phoronix Test Suite benchmarks in the process. If Valve's Linux efforts go well and reach a fair amount of success, it could finally push id Software to getting its idTech5-based Rage Linux client out the door. Who knows, if the Linux gaming experience was really lucky, maybe Unreal Engine 3 would make its long-awaited Linux debut, but for now that's a pipe-dream. Valve's native Linux play could as well end up being a last-stand for the viability of AAA games on Linux. It will be interesting to see how Unigine moves forward in the multi-platform space. Next week I'll also be following up with them concerning Unigine Valley that I'm already quite excited about. by Michael Larabel

[linuxgamenews]

Strange Games Unveils “Demolicious” an Original Action Puzzle-Shooter Game

[This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Gamasutra and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource GamesPress.] Worldwide - November 3, 2011 – Strange Games announced today that it is developing Demolicious ; the ultimate action-puzzle-shooter showcasing cutting edge physics and destruction on mobile devices. Powered by the UNIGINE Engine, Demolicious packs a powerful punch technologically and is available in stunning HD. “It’s fantastic to see such a great use case of UNIGINE Engine for iOS and Android, but more importantly Demolicious is just a lot of fun!” – Anton Ravin, Managing Director UNIGINE Corp. Europe. Strange Games is independently publishing and developing Demolicious , which will be released on the iOS App Store, and Android Market later this year. Demolicious will be available for the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and supported Android smartphones and tablets. Featuring intuitive touch-screen controls, Demolicious challenges you to carefully aim and fire powerful cannons to destroy cargo crates while solving challenging physics puzzles. Test your skills in over 60 unique destruction arenas and mini-games. Destroy all crates in the arena in any way imaginable in order to win. Use the full 3D environment to solve puzzles and destroy explosive crates to do heavy damage. Switch between cannons and viewpoints at any time in order to destroy with tactical precision from multiple firing angles. Create havoc with ricochets, explosions, and domino effects! Enjoy the spectacular fireworks as a barrage of instant replays celebrates your success or failure in all its’ destructive glory! “Our ultimate goal with Demolicious is to unlock the technological capabilities of mobile devices, while providing an extremely fun, challenging, and visceral gaming experience” Said veteran AAA Technical Artist Ken Mayfield, Strange Games’ Technical Director. “Blowing stuff up with tactical precision is just plain crazy fun, and we have attempted to capture that feeling and place it in the hands of gamers on the go.” Stay tuned for the Demolicious launch date announcement, and story trailer in the coming weeks. For the latest information, including the Demolicious Beta gameplay trailer, and screenshots of the game visit www.demolicious-game.com Screenshots About Strange Games A group of the most seasoned and talented minds in the intergalactic video game industry have landed on planet earth, and have joined forces to create a guild for a new age of digital awesomeness called Strange Games. This top secret independent band of game design superheroes has escaped the international space station of big AAA game development to have the power to take larger risks, break modern development stereotypes, and to ensure its sacred right to Creative Sovereignty at all costs. Strange Games’ No Fail Mission is to create mind blowing entertainment without boundaries or creative constraints, with the heavy involvement of the gaming community. To learn more, visit www.strange-games.com About UNIGINE Corp. UNIGINE Corp. is an international company with a long term commitment to bring the best quality products and services to its customers. Over 6 years on the market, the company offers top-notch real-time 3D solutions for video games development, scientific research, simulation, visualization, serious games, virtual reality systems and more. UNIGINE Corp. offices are located in Russia and Czech Republic. To learn more, visit www.unigine.com

[linuxgamenews]

BlueGiant Interactive licenses Unigine engine for future game titles

Hyderabad, India - August 30, 2011 - BlueGiant Interactive game studio has licensed Unigine engine as a technology platform for its upcoming game titles. The studio has already developed a prototype of its first Unigine-powered game to be released: an unnounced RTS. "Unigine has helped us to bring to life our vision by providing powerful, easily extendable toolset along with complete scripting language. Such flexibility has been instrumental in integrating our tried and tested in-house RTS engine with Unigine's state-of-the art Rendering and Physics solutions", said Vinnie Reddy, CEO of BlueGiant Interactive. The game prototype was recently demostrated at Gamescom (Cologne, Germany). The official announcement of the title is planned for the end of September. "BlueGiant managed to get Unigine gears in action for their spectacular-looking prototype in a pretty short time. Unigine technology is the right tool in the right hands here. I'm pretty confident they will be able not only to create the game in no time, but also scale it across all platforms supported by Unigine: from mobile, through console all the way up to the high-end PCs", commented Denis Shergin, CEO of Unigine Corp. About Unigine Engine Unigine™ is a multi-platform (Windows / Linux / Mac OS X / PlayStation 3 / Android / iOS) real-time 3D engine, which unleashes the ultimate power for creating games, simulation, interactive visualization, serious games and virtual reality systems. The engine is a complete out-of-the box solution: Photorealistic 3D render Powerful physics module Object-oriented scripting system Unique management system for extremely large worlds Everything else: tools, pathfinding, GUI, sound and network High scalability of Unigine engine is ensured by its efficient and well-architected framework supporting multi-core systems. It has been successfuly tailored to specific requirements of various VR projects and multi-platform games of different genres (RPG, FPS, RTS, MMORPG) created on its base. Moreover, the same engine has already been used as the core for another upcoming strategy game: Oil Rush (developed by Unigine Corp. itself and planned for release in Q4/2011 for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and PlayStation 3). Unigine engine also powers a highly acclaimed Heaven DX11 Benchmark, which made a big name by showcasing the hottest DirectX 11 (as well as OpenGL 4) technologies with the breathtaking art content. About BlueGiant Interactive BlueGiant Interactive is an independent game studio based in Hyderabad, India. BlueGiant started in 2008 with its inaugural title, APOX, an RTS, which is released on Steam. For more information about BlueGiant, please go to www.bluegiantinteractive.com. About Unigine Corp. Unigine Corp. is an international company focused on top-notch real-time 3D technologies with its development studio located in Tomsk, Russia. For more than 6 years, the company delivers Unigine engine, a real-time 3D solution, that allows software developers to create not only games, but also interactive visualization, simulation and virtual reality systems. Unigine Corp. is a registered developer of Apple, AMD, NVIDIA and Creative Labs. Being a registered developer, the company works closely with hardware vendors in order to provide the best level of performance and stability for Unigine-empowered applications. The company also has a license to develop tools and middleware for PLAYSTATION®3 platform.