| Submitted by , posted on 20 July 2003 |

Image Description, by White Knuckle Games is an independent game development studio in Atlanta Georgia. This is a collage of our work in progress, 'Singularity', a third person action-RPG set in a dismal cyberpunk future. The engine has been written from the ground up, and includes all the elements you'd expect from a commercial game engine, including precise, fast collision, skinned characters, an advanced particle system, AI, a flexible scripting system, physics, and a suite of content creation tools.
The engine has been written to take advantage of next gen graphics hardware, and is very data driven. Most of our constants and parameters are referenced by name, and bound at run time, thereby eliminating the need for code changes if a new shader needs additional information or we decide to change other parameters. The collision system includes both BSP and Octree-based approaches, although the Octree based method offers far more flexibility in our production pipeline. Octree based culling is used to par down the visible set.
Because of it's data driven nature, most any shader can be applied to most any geometry. In our library, we have all the standard lighting models, including bumpy-shiny and reflective/refractive shaders, and even cel shaders. Some quite interesting results can be achieved by applying our water shader to the environment...
Many developers choose to create level builders or other tools from scratch. Because we spent so much time on the engine and underlying technology, it made sense to make up our time wherever possible. We decided to use 3DS Max for most of our content creation, from level building, character building, animation, skinning, setting bone priorities for animation blending, prop placement, and generally anything that would involve placing objects in 3-space. Overlooking the quirks and crashes, Max does it pretty well, and using it for all the 3D work means a consistent interface for content creation and extraction To that end, we have developed a suite of plugins for Max.
Further information about our company and technology can be found at: www.whiteknucklegames.com or just email me.

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