I love Stardock. I really do. But I’ve been seeing someone else for the past year or so…
I don’t know exactly how it started. But I was talking to friends of mine in the industry and we’ve all been frustrated with the direction of 3D game engines. The hardware has been there for awhile that would allow us to have some amazing looking visuals and performance for strategy and role playing games but the software just wasn’t there. They’ve been focusing on first person shooters to the point where even RPGs now have to be made as first person shooters in order to have decent visuals (which if you think about it, is ridiculous).
Remember the huge battles in Two Towers and Return of the King? We should be able to have those kinds of visuals in our games. Today. Your modern video card is capable of it. You take 64-bit, DirectX 11 (or Mantle) and a modern video card and you can do amazing things in theory. Unfortunately, the software has tended to focus on first person shooters. In those games, the player only sees a handful of units at the same time. Ask someone at Nvidia, AMD or Intel and they will tell you how frustrating it’s been to create this amazing hardware only to have it sit there idle most of the time.
So what could we do about that? That’s where I started talking more and more to Dan Baker, Tim Kipp, Brian Wade, Marc Meyer and later Nathan Heazlett. What would it take to develop a new type of 3D engine that we could use and others could use to power strategy games and role playing games where you could have thousands and thousands of high fidelity objects on screen at the same time.
That’s where the idea of Oxide was born. If we could bring together some of the industry’s top talent, put them in a room and provide them with enough resources, we could create something amazing. We’re calling the engine Nitrous and it’s spectacular. If you look at the the Oxide press release you will see quotes from AMD, Intel and Nvidia in there. They’ve seen it. And soon, so will you.
Today, we are finally ready to tell the world about Oxide. Mainly, we have to because some of the things we’re working are are about to get shown by our partners and people would wonder who and what Oxide was and where it came from.
Most game developers, especially ones involved in graphical game development, know, or can imagine, exactly the kinds of things Oxide is working on. But for everyone else who is reasonably technical, imagine a brand new, built from scratch, 3D engine designed with multicore processors and 64-bit from the ground up. No legacy code. No baggage. Just pure awesome.
To learn more about Oxide, visit www.oxidegames.com
Very very cool. I can't wait to see what it's capable of.
Elemental sequel with this? Please?
where do i sign up?
Cool announcement, Brad! I don't know much about game engines, but I can tell one thing...
Specifically, the engine renders calls automatically from whatever CPU core is most available. This allows for a vastly larger number of high-fidelity 3D objects to be rendered to the screen at the same time. Tim Kipp, co-founder of Oxide Games said, “In most modern games, players may see a handful of unique, high-fidelity 3D models on the screen at the same time. That’s because current 3D engines are 32-bit and rely on a ‘main thread’ to talk to the GPU. Nitrous, by contrast, was designed from scratch to be a 64-bit, multicore engine. Nitrous will render epic numbers of units and light sources on a screen at any given time.”
Specifically, the engine renders calls automatically from whatever CPU core is most available. This allows for a vastly larger number of high-fidelity 3D objects to be rendered to the screen at the same time.
Tim Kipp, co-founder of Oxide Games said, “In most modern games, players may see a handful of unique, high-fidelity 3D models on the screen at the same time. That’s because current 3D engines are 32-bit and rely on a ‘main thread’ to talk to the GPU. Nitrous, by contrast, was designed from scratch to be a 64-bit, multicore engine. Nitrous will render epic numbers of units and light sources on a screen at any given time.”
...this changes everything.
Other excerpts:
"The founders have worked closely with AMD, Intel and Nvidia" "which translates into players being able to control an unprecedented 10,000 interactive units in their engine"
"The founders have worked closely with AMD, Intel and Nvidia"
"which translates into players being able to control an unprecedented 10,000 interactive units in their engine"
Is GCIII being developed on Nitrous? Is that how you're going to support larger maps?
I am definitely interested!
This sounds like good news for the gaming industry.
Unfortuntely, it also sound like the door slamming shut on people who don't have the latest and greatest hardware.
I hope I'm wrong though...
Congrats on the announcement!!
And slam that door shut on old hardware. 64 bit and DirectX11 don't seem to be asking for too much, I'd wager most gamers already have both.
Windows Vista/7 isn't latest and greatest.
It does slam the door shut on XP, but asking for games to run on XP would be like asking for Titanfall to run on a PS2.
Does this mean Stardock is using Nitrous instead of Kumquat for GalCiv3? What are you planning to do with Kumquat?
As long as minimum system requirements don't go crazy "because 64-bits", sounds good.
So... cross platform?
Please fill me in here - which Stardock games used Kumquat?
I mean things like requiring certain graphics cards with x feature, 32 gigs of RAM, i12 processor, etc.
I know many people will run out to buy a new PC just to play a new game, (especially on a site like this), but that isn't my priority.
Elemental series.
Thanks for the reply. Do you know offhand what GCII or Sins used? I'm just curious.
GCII was Pear I believe. But that is just a dim recollection.
Elemental uses Kumquat. Sins 1 uses the Iron engine.
GalCiv III is using a new engine designed specifically for it.
I would expect all our future new games to use Nitrous.
sins uses the iron engine by ironclad.
harpo
Is this just graphical engine, or does it concern things like AI, physics and other stuff? And how about Iron engine for example? If you hypothetically collaborated with Ironclad on Sins 2 (and you should). would that game be based purely on Nitrous or some combo of Iron Engine (or its successor) and Nitrous handling graphics?
I am not a programmer, but i am genuinely interested how it works, obviously at certain level of abstraction, so i can actually comprehend it.
EDIT: Anyway, congrats. Looking forward to see some techdemo or something showing its actual capabilities.
looks neat.
it's a bit puzzling that something being presented as a fit for strategy or RPG games only solves a problem which would make the games less about strategy or role-playing...
it's like saying Total War is a better strategy game if you have to control 10 times as many units in a battle.
I just saw this on GI.
It's the Civ V team combined with Frogboy! That's insanely awesome!
I sure wish Total War games didn't look like crap though. Strategy Games are so far behind first person shooters in graphics quality.
so.. given the multi core focus, how would the extra cores on amd compare to the intel quads?
*drool*
I'm cautiously optimistic. There were a lot of disappointments with Civilization V ... I think the biggest buzzkill of the game for me, though, is it doesn't efficiently multi-thread. In late game on large maps, end turn processing can take over a minute (!) to process, taxing out one core at 100% while my other cores sit idle. Taking a minute to complete a turn is atrocious ... I was hoping Firaxis would have noticed GalCiv2's notion of processing AI rivals while the human player is taking his/her turn which is why (as Brad has earned the right to boast about) GalCiv2 doesn't have end turn waits (aside from waiting for unit automoves to complete).
Well ...... if the reality lives up to the Theoretical Outline .... this will be an Industry Game Changer on the same scale of change as when the world moved from 32bit to 64 bit. Its not just an enhancement, its a Big Generational Level Change. Lets hope all the current Partners retain enthusiasm, turn theory into practice, and marketing preamble into reality.
Nice one
I think strategy games and complex simulators (like SimCity .... ugh, don't get me started on five ... :/) would both benefit greatly from 64 bit CPUing. I guess it was too much to hope this new engine could apply to GC3 ... but hopefully it could be a place to test some things out, and maybe a future GC3 expansion could make use of it .... though that would probably not be realistic either, since expansions tend to just use relatively minor enhancements to the original engine. Maybe the next Elemental expansion/game/iteration/title/buh-wut-do-you-wanna-call-eet?
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