Auran Jet revitalizes the future of indepedent game developers by
VGLN Staff
Sunday, November 25 2001
The developer of award winning Dark Reign, Auran Entertainment, is releasing a new game engine that will be freely available to the gaming public.
There have been many fairy tales in the computer industry though it has only a short span of few decades. First and foremost, we have all heard the legend of Apple Computer, which started as merely a garage operation and now a giant in the industry. Yahoo, Earthlink, and many other multi-million dollar businesses have all started off with no office spaces and no financial backing, but are able to reach for the top.
In the computer game industry there is id Software, the maker of titles such as Doom and Quake that will forever inspire the game industry. They too, are once what we now refer to as "garage developers". It has been the dream of many new teams to repeat the history of id Software and other successful indepedent developers. However, only few are successful, most failed, and even more are never heard of again.
Even developers with investment fundings are not immune to the fierce competition and rapidly evolving industry either. AnyRiver, a new indepedent developer team, published their first and only title in 1996, named A Fork in the Time. It was an interactive CD-ROM game which featured complete full-motion video from the beginning to the end of the game with some adventure and action elements. AnyRiver hired many Hollywood drop-out actors and wrote their own game engine. As you can imagine, a lot of time and money were put into this project - it was a bold but also risky move for any new game developement team. Unfortunately, the game did not perform well on the market. After burning out their fundings quickly and suffered a poor sales record from their first game, the company had to call it an end. And that was it - the come and go of a new, indepedent game developer, only in matter of months.
Reduce Development Cost
According to Auran's CEO Greg Lane, there has been a growing problem for computer game developers. "It is becoming more and more difficult to survive as a garage developer. Only 10% of PC game titles ever make it 'big', and the high costs to develop a game, mean the small developers are pushed out of the market. It can cost up to $3 million and three years of developing time to create a game, and there is no guarantee that any of that investment will be recouped" Greg said.
This is exactly why Auran Jet is developed. Its mission is to decrease the tremendous entry-cost for indepedent developers. Who are the indepedent developers? They can be students, or business programmers who have some great ideas. Auran Jet will certainly help those of who are new to the gaming industry to start their own projects. Even for people who are already in the gaming industry, Auran Jet will greatly decrease the time and capital needed to make the games keep up with industry's technical standard. Game developers can now convert their ideas into reviewable demos more quickly and cheaply, giving them more time to attract a publisher.
Revitalizes Gameplay
Another great but subtle benefit of Auran Jet is that is focuses developers back to what really makes games great - the gameplay. Here is what VRBone, a developer who is currently using Auran Jet posted on the Auran Jet's discussion forum:
There used to be a cycle that occured when the capabilities of a platform changed less often (if at all). First you would have your typical 'WOW factor' games that utilised the enhanced graphics / sound / processing power etc to sell. Then came some genre diversification, then more wow factor games that start to stretch the capabilities of a platform, then finally some games relying on playability, gameplay etc. Of course technology rolls on and sooner or later a new platform or addition is created that kicks the whole cycle off again. Some of the great stable platforms that got toward the end of this cycle (Atari 2600, Commodore 64, Amiga, Nintendo, DOS VGA, Playstation) have produced some of the most playable games ever in the final stages of their lifetime.
In the PC environment, the last great stable platform was the DOS VGA period. Since then, the cycle of upgradeability has been running too quickly for games built solely on playability to stand out from the crowd (in general of course, there's still been a few that made it). I keep finding myself pining for the good old days of MooII,Civ and Moria. After thinking It must be me just getting old and doddered, not knowing what playability was anymore, I pull them out and instantly get hooked again. Nope, the playability definately has gone downhill.
Finally it looks like we're entering into another period of stability now mainly due to the visual and auditory limitations being reached. PC sound is now pretty much on par with other sound equipment with 48Khz surround sound. 24 bit colour is all your eye can ever see anyway. Graphical processing power is getting enough to put true 3D graphics on screen in an almost immersable quality. This all leads to an environment where once again playability and gameplay are differentiating factors in the game marketplace.
Something like Jet is almost perfectly placed onto this stability by then supplying the fundamentals to people only interested in competing in terms of playability. I'm sure there is a multitude of great, playable games out there that have been put off due to the rapidly changing state of the market. With a quicker development time, less monetary backing required, and a focus on actual game design, I'm hoping a lot of these games can begin to surface. Hopefully games like Black & White can shake up the industry to show what has been missing in the last 7 years. Playability. It's hard to define, it's hard to implement, but when it's there it makes a game more enjoyable than anything else.
Auran Jet Specs
Finally, let's take a look at Auran Jet's spec and see what this baby is offering. As of the Beta1 release on September 30th, the below are features available in the Auran Jet libraries:
* Extensions and enhancements to standard data types * Management of tasks, resources, threads and memory * Utility classes for handling files, strings and basic data types * Operating system and hardware abstraction * 3D mathematical functions and structures * High performance 3D rendering libraries * OpenGL support and optimization * 3D scene optimization and balancing * Extensive graphical user interface components * 3D surround sound and 2D sound and music systems * Peer-to-peer and client-server TCP/IP networking * Input and output device management
These features are not present in Beta1 but will be available in the final release or future beta releases:
* Direct3D support * DirectX 8.0 support and optimization * Artificial intelligence systems * Basic real-world physics * Motion and path searching * Generalized terrain system
There is, however, an unique and interesting strength about Auran Jet that cannot be covered in the specs, and that is the prompt and informative support from the Jet developers. The Auran Jet forum is moderated and often checked by several Jet programmers, who listen to public's feedback and answer any question that might have arised. For example, the Beta 1 package contains only an export plug-in for 3D Studio MAX 2.5, but majority of the developers out there are running version 3.x. Once aware of the public demand, tt only takes a week before Craig, an Auran Jet senior programmer to code the much-needed plug-in. Tell me, when's the last time you get such a good customer support for a software?
Where do I think Jet will carry the industry, you might ask? First of all, Auran is using Jet in its upcoming RPG title, Harn: Bloodline. And Jet's expandability and continual updates will certainly keep the itself up and solid for at least a couple years to come. In the meantime, if C++ is one of your fluent language, you can take a look at Auran Jet yourself at Auran's website.
