Epiphany picks xaitment

Sydney-based developer Epiphany has secured a licensing agreement that will see it use xaitment’s five AI tools to develop fantasy RTS Frozen Hearth.

Epiphany’s game, which currently carries a working title, will make use of xaitMap and xaitMove² for pathfinding, navigation mesh generation, movement and crowd simulations.

The Australian team will also harness xaitment’s tools xaitKnow and xaitThink for NPC knowledge handling and behaviour. Additionally, xaitControl will be implemented for modeling character behaviors, and for making live changes to behaviors through the tool set’s integrated debugger.

“Our project is an RTS game and we estimated that for us to build the AI ourselves, it would take quite a long time – time that we do not have,” said Morgan Lean, CEO of Epiphany Games. “By using xaitment’s AI tools, we can quickly and easily implement the AI elements we need into our game so we can concentrate on the story design. Using middleware will save us up to one year on development.”

“Epiphany Games is an example of the potential and success of modern game development,” added Andreas Gerber, group CEO of xaitment.

“Using xaitment’s AI tool set in combination with the middleware of our partners allows for faster development and allows developers to concentrate on the core questions of the game, like how their AI behaviors and gameplay should look – instead of wasting time with doing the basics themselves.”