Abyssal Engine & Tools [commercial]

[Tami]

[url=\"http://www.abyssalengine.com/\"]The Abyssal Engine[/url] is a powerful professional game creation tool kit and rendering system for creating quality games. All aspects of the technology is designed to reduce development time while empowering developers with a strong suite of tools they need to produce great visual effects and immersive worlds.

The platform tools allow you to quickly create and test all game necessary assets while the runtime system is carefully optimized for the rendering of large real world environments , massive number of playable and artificial intelligent characters and large datasets loading.

The technology allows the developer to quickly and efficiently create everything from complex RPG titles to real time strategy games as well as powerful simulation applications for more mainstream use.

Our 10 day Tools Trial includes all the tools your team can develop with except for source code. It includes full documentation, samples and information you'll need to determine whether or not Abyssal is right for your projects.

Download the Fantasy World Tech Demo designed to demonstrate Abyssal world rendering capabilities and produced using the Abyssal Tools chain.

[b]Features[/b]

Creation Pipeline
One of the most important subsystems is represented by the platforms tool chain. These tools are specifically designed to cover all the necessary artwork creation aspects.
# Artwork creation export and import from 3rd party authoring tools
# Visual effects creation and testing
# Landscape editing and scene preparation

3DSMAX Exporter
The Abyssal Tools technology supports integration with the most used 3D authoring package: 3D Studio Max. It supports exporting geometry, both static and animated, from 3DS Max (versions 6, 7, 7.1, 8, 9.0) via a special export plug-in developed by the engine team.
# Static meshes
# Skeletal animations
# Visual effects
All of these data elements can be extracted and saved in engine optimized storage formats.

Batch Exporting
While dealing with large data sets, the exporter permits batch exporting. Simply set your options, indicate the location of MAX data, click the export button and let the exporter do all the work. Entire directory trees are automatically exported by recursively loading the data from each folder.

Geometry Editor
Create and test visual effects
# Scene lights
# Particle systems
# Lens flares, coronas
# Environment settings and more

Shader management
# Edit and compile
# Set rendering order
# Preview

Prepare geometry for the game
# Create level of details
# Set textures and shaders
# Change texture mapping
# Sectorize indoors

The Geometry Editor is the tool for editing and viewing the geometric objects used by the engine. The place of this tool within the workflow is usually between the geometry modeling software (such as 3ds Max) and the World Editor or Terrain Editor tool. Its purpose is to assemble and optimize the exported “raw” geometry data into more complex geometry structures which can be used later as building blocks in editing new world configurations.

Animation Editor
Animations and character setup and testing
# Character customization
# Multiple cloth layers
# Spells setup
# Testing

The Animation Editor is an editor specialized in handling animated entities that are engine specific. It can be used to assemble animation data, set character specific properties and create particle systems and other visual effects. All the exported engine animation elements must first pass through the animation editor so they are properly prepared for the game run-time. The editor has a simple user interface with floating windows for every animation element and a real-time preview viewport.

World Editor
# Landscape editing and entity management
# Procedural terrain geometry and textures generation

The Terrain editor application gathers multiple world building features in one single software tool. Its main purpose is to synthesize the world terrain model and to assemble data resources into realm files. The terrain synthesis tools currently implemented in the tool allow for complex landscape shaping and texturing, therefore the terrain surface can be modelled entirely in the editor, without the need to divert workflow to some other modelling tool.

Geometry spawning and transformation
# Spawn entire cities with a mouse click
# Use the object brush tool to easily spawn vegetation

Client-side Engine Features
Visual Effects
# Complex scripted particle systems
# Customizable spells linked to character animations and events
# Screen post processing filters

Complex Character Systems
# Complex cloth layers system
# Animation blending, multiple animations on the same character
# Detachable body parts with customizable colors and shading
# Attachable items

Huge Worlds
# Produce Infinite sized worlds
# Large visible field made possible by the visibility algorithms for outdoor environments while the optimized portal based system links to indoor scenes. Terrain rendering with dynamic level of detail including detailed textures, multi patch support and quad tree visibility
# Fast collision detection and response suitable for large environments with thousands of moving entities (various implementations: BSP, spherical, range based, object oriented trees)
# Environmental settings changeable from one zone to another to give each a distinct look and feel.

Shader driven system
# Rendering priorities
# Offscreen surface rendering
# Support for pixel and vertex shaders

In-game User Interface
# Fully customizable and skinnable user interface supporting multiple types of controls

Immersive Sound System
# Dynamic loaded music (with buffering)
# 3D sound positioning with Doppler effects
# Event based sounds

Optimized Gaming Platform
# Engine’s data structures and critical code are optimized for modern processor architecture (instruction and data cache friendly formats)
# OpenGL 2.1 hardware acceleration with optimizations for NVIDIA Geforce and ATI Radeon
# Texture and vertex memory prioritized management (video, AGP and system). Vertex buffers implemented through Vertex Array Range (NVidia - Geforce), Vertex Objects (ATI - Radeon) or common ARB path (vertex buffer objects)
# Animation optimized with hardware accelerated vertex programs and CPU optimized SSE instructions
# Support for audio hardware via Direct Audio (Direct X) and OpenAL. Compressed music in .OGG format

Extensible Architecture
# Modular structure with separate libraries for main engine parts
# Interface driven C++ code for functionality and data encapsulation
# Built-in memory leak detection mechanism
# Runtime type checks
# Debug tools (bug reports, memory dump triggered at exceptions)
# Extensible scripting language
# Artist oriented documentation built in the tools with context help, searching and indexing
# SDK with comprehensive programming documentation including tutorials, examples and class hierarchies