David on 3/2/2004 at 15:56
Quote:
February 3, 2004 - Valve, developer of best selling games and leading edge technologies, today announced a Source Engine licensing partnership with Arkane Studios, creators of Arx Fatalis. Already in development, Arkane's Source-based project is targeted for the PC.
Valve's Source Engine Technology, the same used to create Half-Life 2, gives developers the ability to create expressive digital actors and physically simulated worlds. It also offers advanced rendering capabilities and the industry's most convincing artificial intelligence.
"It is a very comfortable feeling for a developer to be able to concentrate on the content of its game and have access to a set of stunning features and capabilities," said Raphael Colantonio, CEO of Arkane Studios. "Source is solid, performant [sic] and extremely complete in terms of the amount of innovative features. But more important, it is also open and flexible enough to allow us to build creatively upon, without having to bare the technological risks. Working with Valve is not only a fan's dream, but also an excellent opportunity to be one of the fortunate developers in the world to benefit from the Source engine's most impressive features."
Arkane Studios joins Troika Games as the second announced Source licensee. Source is designed for the creation of games and MODs from all genres, and contains a host of proprietary tools for level editing, character direction and more.
"The Half-Life technology was pushed well beyond our expectations by the MOD development community," said Gabe Newell, Valve's managing director. "This provided invaluable knowledge for producing a cutting edge, flexible, and easy to use set of tools and engine technology."
<a href="http://bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=46884">Source: Blues News</a>.
Will Arx2 be using Source, or is this an announced project? I note they say it is in development, so I would guess it IS Arx 2! Wow! :D
MSX on 3/2/2004 at 22:03
I hope they don't go overboard on the graphics and forget to put a game in there. I'm sure they won't let us down though if it is Arx 2 they're source-ing.
So it looks like a few RPG's biased on source are coming out. Thats good.
Nedan on 3/2/2004 at 22:10
This makes it the second project using the HL2 engine that I'm more interested in buying than the actual HL2 game.
I'm really looking forward to Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines & can't wait to pick up a copy of it. And if Arkane Studios is using the HL2 engine for Arx 2, then add it on to my list of must have games. But I find it funny that the first two licensee projects of the HL2 engine would be RPGs (assuming Arkane is developing Arx 2 with theirs).
Minion21g on 3/2/2004 at 22:46
;) Dave beat you to it in the Arx Forum.
Renzatic on 3/2/2004 at 22:50
Well hell...guess he can combine my post with his down in the Arx forum.
Still good news though.
twisty on 4/2/2004 at 00:26
WooHoo!
This is great news. I actually think that this can only benefit Arkane by making a game with an engine that has been created by Valve as this will hopefully allow Arkane to concentrate more on other areas. Its not that I didn't like the Arx engine, but I'm sure that it must have been incredibly difficult to start everything from scratch the way that they did.
Chade on 4/2/2004 at 07:02
Whoop whoop whoop ...
Anyway, what the hell, there are things I care more about, and Source's features don't necesarily supply them, but it don't stop it being good news.
Vitali Kram on 4/2/2004 at 09:42
Actually nowadays I glad to any news wich leans toward PC than console. Seems to me SOURCE is PC engine. Thus Arx 2 will PC oriented!
Shadowcat on 4/2/2004 at 11:18
There may well be a good chance of user-modifications as well, if they are using the Source Engine. Arx Fan Missions! (more like Fan Campaigns, perhaps, but you know what I mean...)
Arkane will undoubtedly have a heap of changes to make to Source (as with pretty much any game using a licensed game engine), but with the basic editors being designed for player-usage, perhaps Arkane will build their enhancements in the same fashion, and release the tools to the community...
It's certainly an interesting move on the part of Arkane, and one which should effectively garner them some 'free' marketing to all the Half Life fans (of which there are one or two) as an early adopter of the Source engine.
