The Top 10 Game Engines â?? No. 5: BlitzTech

The top 10 game engines as selected by Develop continues today with BlitzTech. We will be revealing a new entrant to the list every day until this Friday, so keep checking back to see which other tech providers you should be looking at for your next project…

Developer: Blitz Games Studios
Platforms: PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PSP, PC
Browser support: No
Cost: Available on request
Published titles: House of the Dead: Overkill (Headstrong), Power Up Forever (Blitz Arcade), Karaoke Revolution Presents American Idol Encore 2 (Blitz Games)
Titles in development: Dead to Rights Retribution (Volatile Games), Invincible Tiger (Blitz Arcade), many more TBA
Middleware integrations: FMOD, Kynapse, Bink

Given the Oliver brothers’ frequent comments about the horrors of middleware, it was quite a surprise to see Blitz move into the technology licensing arena. But all due credit to them – if you’ve got a platform- and genre-agnostic offering that’s been fine-tuned over the past 10 years, why not let other people use it?

Although the internal uses of the tech are diverse – from the next-gen Dead to Rights to almost all of Blitz Arcade’s digital-distribution titles – the company is keen to market BlitzTech to triple-A developers only. It’s built for large-scale development, with in-built asset management that supports remote working and in-built version control.

The focus is therefore very much on tools and the asset pipeline to support big teams, with the editor allowing designers and artists to work on multiple SKUs – including technologically disparate ones – through one interface. The editor can also be deployed on the target console to give immediate feedback and allow users to move objects, change properties and update assets in real-time.

The engine is also certainly leading in graphical aspects too, as anyone who’s seen the amazing-looking Dead to Rights in person will attest. One particular highlight is that it runs entirely on dynamic lights – there are no pre-baked lightmaps whatsoever – on both the Xbox 360 and PS3,

which gives better lighting and immediate feedback for artists. Of course, if you do want to do any complicated offline baking, the engine’s built-in distributed network processing system will help make it a much quicker process.

Finally, one of the real distinguishing features is BlitzTech’s support for true stereoscopic 3D on current-generation consoles. Blitz is firm in its belief that 3D is the future, but is happily licensing out that technology now, including compatibility for the numerous standards that currently exist.

Contact: Regent Square House, The Parade, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, CV32 4NL, UK
E-mail:business@blitzgamesstudios.com
Web: www.blitztech.com