OXIDE has launched!

Published on October 23, 2013 By Frogboy In PC Gaming

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

Comments (Page 3)

Kantok

on Oct 23, 2013

Will Oxide consistently develop games or is the studio going to mostly develop and license Nitrous (with maybe a few games to demonstrate what the engine is capable of)?

matrix_v

on Oct 23, 2013

Lavo_2

reply 26

Sins 1 eh? Does that mean there's plans for a Sins 2?

I noticed that too. Another frog teaser...

BlackSmokeDMax

on Oct 23, 2013

Frogboy

reply 29

The reason it can do that is because it inherently uses all the cores on both the CPU and the GPU. It's the result of an engine that's been designed and programmed by people who've been making this stuff for decades being able to begin, from scratch with multicore and 64-bit configs as the starting point. That's the main reason why Intel, AMD, and Nvidia are backing it so publicly. They've seen it in action.

Well shit, when you put it like that, YESSS!!!!!!!!!

matrix_v

on Oct 23, 2013

Frogboy

reply 29

[clipped]

The difference isn't subtle.

The Kumquat engine, which is a DirectX 9 engine, can handle something like 3 point lights. A current, state of the art 3D game can handle say a hundred or so. But Nitrous can handle tens of thousands.

^ I'm trying to get my mind around this.

Brad, with this kind of fully harnessed multi-core power available, isn't it about time someone did a top-down RTS on a huge map with thousands upon thousands of various units duking it out at once?

Gaming no longer needs to consolidate power in titan spaceships, dragons, or a few dozen wizards. It needs a thousand foot-soldiers... to lead the charge.

admiralWillyWilber

on Oct 24, 2013

jim_viebke

reply 4

Cool announcement, Brad! I don't know much about game engines, but I can tell one thing...

0Is GCIII being developed on Nitrous? Is that how you're going to support larger maps?

Have U been on my forum for Galactic civilizations ideas I'm trying to post these so the game developers have an idea on what they need to make their jobs a little easier.

admiralWillyWilber

on Oct 24, 2013

Alstein

reply 8

Windows Vista/7 isn't latest and greatest
Does this mean Stardock is using Nitrous instead of Kumquat for GalCiv3? What are you planning to do with Kumquat?

I hope U R checking out my post for Galactic civilization 3 ideas

admiralWillyWilber

on Oct 24, 2013

The_Biz

reply 18

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 sounds like it would be a good idea to check out my post on ideas for Galactic civilization 3. Sounds like U have ideas to add about the knew stradegy game

admiralWillyWilber

on Oct 24, 2013

TheJaker

reply 20

Quoting The_Biz, reply 18
looks neat.
I sure wish Total War games didn't look like crap though. Strategy Games are so far behind first person shooters in graphics quality.

Personally graphics never killed a game for me. Its always been about playability. That's what spore forgot. Nice looking game, but the problem was I thought it was going to be a stradegy games. I could never people obsession with graphics. Tekken 1 for instance compared to streetfighter did not do much, but because if graphics everyone thought it was the bomb. I would like to see better graphics as long the memory couldn't be better served making it a better game. As long they remember that Galactic civilizations 3 is a turn based tech research space stradegy game. This would be fine. I would like to better utilise graphics otherwise,

admiralWillyWilber

on Oct 24, 2013

Chibiabos

reply 25

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?

The've just started have u seen my thread on Galactic civilization 3 u should probably check it out for ideas u might want to post

admiralWillyWilber

on Oct 24, 2013

Even though I just quoted everyone that I thought could contribute to my post. I have a couple ideas that I think could help for games to have this on. I was thinking of something like spore, but it would be a stradegy game; instead, In the creature stage instead of making animals or making it really hard to make descent Aliens. Take advantage of the fact that stardock has a whole lot of Aliens. U could take some lessons from virtual village for the tribal stage. Make something like empire earth for the civilization stage and for the space stage sins of a solar empire 2. I would like to see this added to civilization 3 as long as it doesn't mess with the turn based space stradegy gaming.

Perderabo

on Oct 24, 2013

Chibiabos

reply 23

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).

I have just started playing a game of galciv2 after playing civ5 and trying to get into Rome 2 total war. And i cant say just how wonderful it is to not have to wait forever( or even at all) for the ai turns to end. Especially since i like playing on larger maps with slower research and build speeds.

Though waiting ages for AI turns in a turn based strategy, is so ingrained in me that i find myself hitting the end turn button in galciv2 and still staring out the window for a minute waiting for my turn.

Athena

on Oct 24, 2013

Exciting day! Congrats!

Alstein

on Oct 24, 2013

What is going to happen with the old engines- are they going to be mothballed, or would you consider licensing them out should someone wish to use them/making them some sort of freeware?

admiralWillyWilber

on Oct 24, 2013

I like the Freeware idea give them over to Linux

tid242

on Oct 26, 2013

Alstein

reply 43

What is going to happen with the old engines- are they going to be mothballed, or would you consider licensing them out should someone wish to use them/making them some sort of freeware?

They are most likely going to sell them on the cheap to the poor - like old Ford Taurus' from the 1990's...

-wmf

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