added a new Maya viewport to the SDK, so now artists working inside Maya can see the effect of their assets lit with Enlighten without having to import the asset into the full game engine. They can tune lighting configurations fully
in real time, move around objects and see all of the changes instantly. This can be a major saving for an artist – they can do far more prototyping of ideas within their favourite tools and don’t need to export their assets until they are happy with the look.
You are a member of Epic’s Integrated Partner Program (IPP). How has that worked out for you? The IPP has been a core reason for Epic’s strength on this console cycle and has helped make UE3 the all-conquering engine it is. Epic makes everything easy for the IPP members and a healthy percentage of our sales have been to developers using UE3. I’m sure this will continue to be the case for UE4. Epic will continue to pick the areas that they believe are most important to the core engine, and then open things out to other middleware companies to further enhance the offering. We are confident that our unique expertise will allow us to provide differentiating tech for the engine.
Epic have started UE4 demos. What are your thoughts on what you have seen? A number of the big publishers and engine companies are starting to show off their next- gen tech, and they are all talking up the importance of lighting. It’s great to see them following our lead. We’ve been preaching the importance of lighting throughout this generation and I think the games coming out now justify our claims. What Epic is promoting with UE4 is a new
technique aimed solely at high-end PCs. What they were showing is what we can do on today’s consoles, mobiles, handhelds and Wii U. The real test of all these technologies is
getting it running in a game with limited resource and memory on a console. We are totally confident in our ability to deliver this. The great thing about demos like UE4 is that everyone wants fully dynamic lighting, and they want it now.
Some of the lighting effects Epic were showing at E3 have, some would say, parallels with some demos for Enlighten. I’m glad you remember. In fact, this summer’s Develop Conference marks the sixth anniversary of us first showing global illumination running in real-time. Our early demos showed examples of dynamically updating the colour of surfaces and having that bounce around the world in real-time. That technology is central to the look of Quantum Conundrum. That game relies on our ability to generate real-time global illumination in-game on today’s hardware.
We are reaching saturation point
with 2D games with novel input devices, and people are going to start craving for more.
Chris Doran, Geomerics
Do you see much possibility of a long tail for this console cycle? Take-two have talked publicly about this, and I’m sure other publishers are thinking along the same lines. The current PS3/360 installed base is vast, and if a decent percentage of Wii owners upgrade to Wii U they will also become a target for high-end ‘current gen’ games. Add to that the increasing power of tablets, mobiles, PCs, laptops and Vita, and you get to a massive installed based all with levels of performance within the same order
of magnitude. The attraction of making games that could service an installed base pushing half a billion, as opposed to jumping exclusively onto new hardware, must be very attractive to publishers. Of course, for us this is perfect, as this is the baseline performance level set for Enlighten. We service all of these platforms, as well as offering differentiating tech for the high-end.
When we last spoke you were about to reveal Enlighten on mobile platforms at GDC. How was that received? The reaction was huge – I don’t think anyone was expecting that level of real-time performance on tablets. We are now seeing current generation console performance on mobile devices. There are still issues with the way the market for mobile games is currently structured. The current model is to take a concept, release it out as quickly as possible, see how the market responds, and keep tweaking until you have a decent user base, then find ways to monetise the users. This ‘get it out quickly’ concept was how
Stock Aitken Waterman used to work in the 80s, and it’s not a recipe for quality. We are reaching saturation point with 2D games with novel input devices, and people are going to start craving for a more substantial offering. Uncharted on Vita is a real eye-opener in terms of what can be achieved on handhelds. Already developers are starting to use Enlighten for mobile games, and we are going to see a big leap in quality in the next two years.
Finally, congratulations on your nomination for a Develop Award. Are you confident for the Awards? We were delighted with the nomination in the Technic al Innovation category. But there’s lots of great stuff in that category and it’s an area in which the UK is maintaining its strength. www.geomerics.com
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Kim Swift’s Quantum Conundrum (all main images) demonstrates how lighting can become gameplay mechanics