ENGINE
Our truly cross-platform runtime code provides all hardware specific and common code for the game titles supporting Xbox 360™, PlayStation 3™, Wii™, PC and PSP™. Highly integrated with BlitzTech Tools, it facilitates rapid prototyping and development by providing a common code framework right out of the box and frees the game team to concentrate on the game.
Broad Feature Set
- As well as providing a rich set of visual and audio capabilities, BlitzTech Engine covers all of the core functionality required for game development, areas which are often ignored by third party solutions. Automatic resource management and background data streaming technology are built in. Submission requirements are well covered by support for controllers, storage and other devices as standard.
Real Time Physics
- Integrated custom physics code for simulating rigid body physics in real-time, including vehicles with wheels, friction and suspension, and character physics as well as systems to scale to multicore and GPU-processing.
Immersive Audio
- Complex layered sound effects authored using our tools can be played back with Dolby surround sound. Also supports multiple audio streams for voice-over and music playback with support for interactive music that reacts to the on-screen action and sounds that dynamically change in timbre and reverberation according to proximity and position.
Online Play
- Facilities for LAN and Internet gaming are provided by the Engine so that game teams can get on with creating the multiplayer experiences straight away. The system is fully configurable for bandwidth management and plug-in lobby support for third party community servers. Our systems fully support Xbox Live and Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and Nintendo Wi-fi Connection. Technology to allow paid downloadable content via integrated in-game commerce is also implemented.
Multi-Core
- The continuing focus of engine development is to extract maximum performance from multiprocessor platforms such as Xbox 360™, Playstation3™ and PC. Technologies to despatch and synchronise engine and game processing in parallel are integrated into the BlitzTech Engine, as well as dynamic load balancing and leveraging multi-core CPU and GPU-based processing where appropriate.
Material Effects and Lighting
- BlitzTech supports multiple lighting techniques from pre-calculated vertex and static lightmaps to complete real-time dynamic per-pixel lighting and shadows including stencil, projected and shadow buffer methods. A library of real-time surface effects are shipped as standard including:
- Normal Mapping
Normal map shaders are a key technology, allowing fine surface lighting detail to be added to game meshes, making them appear many times more complex than they are.
- Parallax Mapping
A virtual displacement map technique that can greatly enhance the three dimensional appearance of surfaces.
- Cube Mapping
The included cube map shader utilises a technique for rendering environmental reflections using separate reflection textures for each axis.
- Refraction Mapping
Full pixel control over refraction is provided using the refraction shader supplied with the Editor library for effects such as textured glass and water surfaces.
- Fur
Our latest fur shader moves well beyond the previous state of the art multiple shell technique to develop an entirely new process allowing much greater artist control of hair length, movement and direction.
- Sub-Surface Scattering
This technique models the transmission of light through an object as well as the usual direct lighting model. Materials such as marble, plastic and wax show this property clearly. It is also just one building block of a full skin shader.
- Skin Shader
The skin shader included in BlitzTech uses many layers in subtle combination to produce convincing skin lighting.
- Eye Shader
Much of a character's realism comes from the appearance of the eyes. The library includes a specific shader for eyes to simulate the specular highlights seen on the iris and cornea.
Wii™ Effects
- The Wii™ graphics hardware is incredibly flexible and fully supported by our engine and tools to create highly configurable effects such as:
- Embossing
A bump mapping technique similar to normal mapping this effect provides a surface relief appearance that increases perceived detail.
- Variable environment mapping
A powerful technique using multiple channels to control how environment maps are blended enables a wealth of visual and lighting effects to be recreated with much more subtlety than traditional uniform shiny surface.
- Distort mapping
Use of multiple texture channels to offset textures on a per-texel basis allowing impression warp and displacement effects to be created such as liquid surfaces, shockwaves and magical effects.
Cinematic Effects
- Just as in pre-rendered and film footage, image post-processing is now becoming very important to the final appearance. The engine provides stock effects that adjust and composite over the image in real-time.
- High Dynamic Range (HDR)
HDR gives an essential vibrancy to current generation titles. It allows a wider range of light and dark to be rendered without loss of detail. The HDR image is converted down to a standard image in real-time every frame. The parameters of this process are controlled by tone mapping a process that simulates how the eyes adjust to light and dark situations over time. A frequently-seen visual effect combined with HDR is bloom where very bright areas bleed light over the surrounding area. HDR can also be combined with image-based lighting that uses light reflected in the scene to create more complex lighting.
- Depth of Field
To simulate the focus range and length effects seen through a camera lens, a depth of field shader effect is included as a post-process effect which operates in real-time. It allows, for example, objects closer to the view to be in focus and distant ones to be blurred.
- SSAO
Screen space ambient occlusion is a cutting edge post-process effect to simulate ambient lighting in real-time. It adds a huge degree of realism and depth to a scene and can be combined seamlessly with other lighting and shadowing techniques. It has no pre-computed element so is highly suited to dynamic objects where shading will be updated to reflect the scene in real-time. It also means no need for costly rendering of ambient occlusion texture maps. Our pipeline fully supports this effect and allows for a high degree of adjustment to suit the scene.
- 3DTV
BlitzTech is at the forefront of rising interest in 3D displays for the home with exciting possibilities for presenting content with higher realism and sense of player immersion in breathtaking 3D. In a complex market with competing technologies the key to increasing adoption is to ensure compatibility with the widest possible range of displays to unlock the potential of amazing 3D display hardware out there. The engine provides a highly flexible stock solution that supports all current suitable formats including active and passive glasses as well as newer auto-stereoscopic displays not only on PC but uniquely also on high definition console - an industry first.
- Motion Blur
Although motion blur originates as a side effect of camera exposure in film, it is an effect that is frequently recreated in graphics, to give an impression of speed or realistic filmic quality. Two principle classes of post-process effect are supported - full screen blur and localized blurring based on the velocity of individual objects in the scene.
