Portsmouth, UK - Monday 17th November 2003: The Climax Group today announced a major technological breakthrough with the unveiling of its next generation game development engine, Blimey 2. Created by Climax's Core Technology Group (CTG), an internal team of expert programmers, the powerful cross-platform engine replaces Blimey 1 and consolidates the company's position at the forefront of cutting edge game development.
MotoGP 1 and 2: Ultimate Racing Technology, Hotwheels World Race, The Italian Job: LA Heist, ATV 2: Quad Power Racing and Rally Fusion: on paper these games seem to share little in common, but one thing binds them all - Blimey 1, Climax's first cross-platform game development engine. Acclaimed for its versatility, simplicity, power and user-friendliness, the engine enabled Climax to turn around PS2, Xbox, GameCube and PC games in double-quick time. And now, with a new generation of gaming platforms looming on the horizon, Climax has again stolen a technological march on its rivals by revamping the engine for PS3, Xbox 2 and PSP. Simply called Blimey 2, the new engine boasts a host of enhancements and improvements that will ensure Climax remains among the games development elite.
"The Blimey engine has served us well over the last couple years, but Blimey 2 takes us to another level" commented Karl Jeffery, CEO of Climax. "It's more powerful, more adaptable and, most importantly, it keeps us ahead of the competition. We've already got games in development that are using Blimey 2 and we're ready now for PS3, Xbox 2, PSP and any other next generation games platform."
Blimey 2's improvements include:
* New plug-in based rendering architecture allowing complete control of rendering.
* Massive terrains - dynamic LOD, streaming heightfields.
* Advanced particle systems - multiple chainable behaviors.
* Full screen effect - motion blur, depth-of-field, bloom effects.
* Highly optimized 4 pass rendering - allowing base texture, environment map, specular highlights and damage / scratches and scrapes.
* Advanced character animation - supporting blending, overlays, component animations, IK, ragdoll and event triggers.
* Solid multi-platform core libraries - streaming file systems, powerful memory management, optimizes vector mathematics.
* State-of-the-art sound rendering - Dolby Surround, 3D sounds with multiple realtime effects, streaming music.
* Highly optimized libraries - optimization using Sony's PS2 performance analyzer ensuring maximum performance.
* Fully cross-platform online support (including support for online API's such as Gamespy, Xbox Live, SCE-RT etc).
* DYNE2 highly advanced and optimized physics library - constraint based rigid body dynamics, adaptable, flexible and accurate collision detection, multi-body equation solver.
* Advanced AI framework and library for all racing games, including those that have split routes.
* Enhanced toolset allowing artists and designers greater control over fine tuning game assets for outstanding visuals and gameplay (Nipple, Tomcat).
What are the benefits of Blimey?
It enables the creative talents of developers within the Climax Group to concentrate on making the best games possible, without worrying about the hardware platform.
Key Features:
* Modular architecture
* Solid design principles
* Dedicated core development team
* Fully cross-platform
* Open and extensible
Performance Specs:
* 4 pass renderer - 12 million poly/sec
* Sprite renderer - 6 Million sprites/sec (12 M polys/sec), fully textured
* Terrain renderer - 10 million poly/sec
* Textures - 12MB per frame, fully managed
* Xbox - Full usage of both pixel and vertex shaders
* Hundreds of interactive objects in one scene
32 players online
-END-
