Com­pri­sed of indus­try veterans from Fira­xis and Micro­soft, new stu­dio Oxi­de reve­als next-gene­ra­ti­on 3D engi­ne for con­so­le and PC gaming

Octo­ber 23, 2013 – Timo­ni­um, MD – Top indus­try engi­nee­ring talent span­ning deca­des of expe­ri­ence with com­pa­nies such as Fira­xis and Micro­soft have for­med a new inde­pen­dent com­pa­ny, Oxi­de Games. In addi­ti­on to making cut­ting-edge games, Oxi­de is dedi­ca­ted to making the defi­ni­ti­ve 3D engi­ne for next-gene­ra­ti­on stra­tegy games for con­so­le and PC. The engi­ne, Nitrous, is a nati­ve 64-bit mul­ti­co­re game engi­ne desi­gned spe­ci­fi­cal­ly for the hard­ware now com­mon in PCs as well as the Sony Play­Sta­ti­on® 4™ and Microsoft’s Xbox® One™.

What makes Nitrous uni­que is its sup­port for Simul­ta­neous Work and Ren­de­ring Model (SWARM). Spe­ci­fi­cal­ly, the engi­ne ren­ders calls auto­ma­ti­cal­ly from wha­te­ver CPU core is most available. This allows for a vast­ly lar­ger num­ber of high-fide­li­ty 3D objects to be ren­de­red to the screen at the same time.

Tim Kipp, co-foun­der of Oxi­de Games said, “In most modern games, play­ers may see a handful of uni­que, high-fide­li­ty 3D models on the screen at the same time. That’s becau­se cur­rent 3D engi­nes are 32-bit and rely on a ‘main thread’ to talk to the GPU. Nitrous, by con­trast, was desi­gned from scratch to be a 64-bit, mul­ti­co­re engi­ne. Nitrous will ren­der epic num­bers of units and light sources on a screen at any given time.”

The foun­ders, which include Dan Bak­er, Tim Kipp, Marc Mey­er, Bri­an Wade, and Brad War­dell, have deca­des of indus­try expe­ri­ence bet­ween them have work­ed clo­se­ly with AMD, Intel and Nvi­dia for the past seve­ral months to ensu­re Nitrous is able to take full advan­ta­ge of the latest hardware.

“As the sole indus­try pro­vi­der of tech­no­lo­gies powe­ring both PCs and major next-gene­ra­ti­on con­so­les, AMD is a natu­ral fit for Oxide’s Nitrous engi­ne, an evo­lu­tio­na­ry leap in PC and con­so­le gam­ing deve­lo­p­ment,” said Rit­che Cor­pus, direc­tor of ISV gam­ing and alli­ances, AMD. “Oxide’s Nitrous engi­ne sup­ports thou­sands of high-detail ani­ma­ted models on screen simul­ta­neous­ly. Nitrous makes tomorrow’s designs come to life on today’s top hard­ware like AMD’s new AMD Rade­on™ R9 Series GPUs, unri­va­led APUs and powerful CPUs.”

In addi­ti­on, with its unpre­ce­den­ted uti­liza­ti­on of mul­ti­ple cores, Nitrous is able to rea­li­ze the poten­ti­al of new archi­tec­tures such as Intel’s Has­well CPU.

“The Nitrous engi­ne has made gre­at pro­gress on the fun­da­men­tal sub­stra­te for par­al­lel com­pu­te in PC games. Their tas­king sys­tem shows near-line­ar sca­ling across Intel’s high-end desk­top PCs, which trans­la­tes into play­ers being able to con­trol an unpre­ce­den­ted 10,000 inter­ac­ti­ve units in their engi­ne,” said Mike Bur­rows, prin­ci­pal engi­neer and tech­ni­cal direc­tor for visu­al com­pu­ting engi­nee­ring at Intel® Corporation.

By natively sup­port­ing 64-bit com­pu­ting, Nitrous is able to sup­port very high reso­lu­ti­on tex­tu­re models while its mul­ti­co­re capa­bi­li­ty enables vast num­bers of light sources on screen simultaneously.

“Our exis­ting and upco­ming GPU archi­tec­tures, such as Max­well, ful­ly levera­ge the memo­ry capa­bi­li­ties of today’s PCs,” said Ashut­o­sh Rege, vice pre­si­dent, game con­tent & tech­no­lo­gy at Nvi­dia. “Nitrous, having been desi­gned with 64-bit gam­ing in mind from the start, should be able to deli­ver games with an ama­zing level of detail across enti­re sce­nes of incre­di­ble scale.”

A num­ber of deve­lo­pers have alre­a­dy com­mit­ted to using Nitrous for upco­ming titles. Deve­lo­per and publisher Star­dock Enter­tain­ment, known for PC games such as Sins of a Solar Empire, Galac­tic Civi­liza­ti­ons and Fal­len Ench­an­tress, pro­vi­ded the seed capi­tal for Oxi­de Games as part of the Star­dock Stra­te­gic Invest­ment Fund.

“We see an enorm­ous oppor­tu­ni­ty for deve­lo­pers with a 64-bit mul­ti­co­re engi­ne. The chall­enge in deve­lo­ping next-gene­ra­ti­on stra­tegy games is that play­ers expect the world to have visu­als com­pa­ra­ble to high-end first per­son shoo­ters while still expec­ting hundreds or thou­sands of units, buil­dings, and other ele­ments on screen at the same time,” said Derek Pax­t­on, vice pre­si­dent of Star­dock Enter­tain­ment. “With Nitrous, we’ll be able to have visu­als and per­for­mance with a fide­li­ty never seen befo­re in a stra­tegy game.”

Oxi­de Games is based in Timo­ni­um, Maryland.

Learn more at www.oxidegames.com.

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About The Oxide Team

Dan Bak­er, Part­ner. Dan star­ted at Micro­soft whe­re he hel­ped design the DirectX 9 stan­dard while working as a key mem­ber of the High Level Shad­ing Lan­guage Team. He led the tech­ni­cal deve­lo­p­ment of HLSL for DirectX10. While at Fira­xis, Dan deve­lo­ped the first mul­ti­th­rea­ded DirectX 11 3D engi­ne for Civi­liza­ti­on V.

Tim Kipp, Part­ner. Tim has been a tech­no­lo­gy lead in the game indus­try for over a deca­de and has ship­ped over 15 titles. His expe­ri­ence in archi­tec­ting mul­ti-core pro­ces­sing was cri­ti­cal in desig­ning and imple­men­ting the Nitrous SWARM technology.

Marc Mey­er, Part­ner. Marc is a vete­ran of the game indus­try who­se exper­ti­se in UI design ensu­res that Nitrous pro­vi­des a robust user inter­face fea­ture set for deve­lo­pers. Buil­ding on his expe­ri­ence of having built the Civi­liza­ti­on V user-inter­face sys­tem from the ground up, Marc is deve­lo­ping tools and sys­tems to enable easy third-par­ty mod­ding and user inter­face sup­port into Nitrous.

Bri­an Wade, Part­ner. Bri­an has been in the game indus­try for near­ly three deca­des. As the lead deve­lo­per of Civi­liza­ti­on V, Com­mand and Con­quer 3: Kane’s Wrath, The Lord of the Rings: The Batt­le for Midd­le-earth II: Rise of the Witch-king, Bri­an is no stran­ger to the chal­lenges of brin­ging diver­se tech­no­lo­gies together.

Brad War­dell, Part­ner. Brad has two deca­des of expe­ri­ence in the game indus­try and is also the CEO of Star­dock Corp. Brad pro­grammed the first com­mer­cial mul­ti­th­rea­ded 32-bit PC games in the 1990s. At Oxi­de, he pro­vi­des busi­ness and manage­ment logi­stics for the company.

Nathan Heaz­lett, Art Direc­tor. Nathan has more than 15 years of soft­ware and game deve­lo­p­ment expe­ri­ence as a lead and tech­ni­cal artist for a varie­ty of AAA titles. Nathan’s expe­ri­ence in deve­lo­ping shaders and tools is cri­ti­cal in ensu­ring that Nitrous pro­vi­des intui­ti­ve sup­port for art asset integration.