“Ultimately we landed at Intel,” reveals Green. “Intel needed a team to create a project that would show off a new graphics card they were developing.” The graphics card was part of the the ill-fated “Larabee” project, which Intel essentially canned in 2009 after its performance proved disappointing. “After a couple of years at Intel, it was clear Offset wasn’t going to make it out. I can’t say too much about why, but we were in full development mode and Intel decided to shelve the hardware and therefore our project.”
From the outside, the games industry can appear mythical. Aspiring designers, artists and programmers look upon those employed by the likes of Blizzard, BioWare and Valve as the lucky ones, the chosen few given a chance to embed themselves in some of the most creative organisations in the world. What, then, compels one of these blessed souls to venture beyond the triple-A names, to let go of a career among the game makers living on the very edge of their art and embark on an indie adventure all their own?
For years developers from computing giant Intel had been working on a game called Project Offset. Note the use of past tense in that sentence.
Whhooaahh, Project Offset! Been a while. The fantasy epic, which may we remind you has been in development for a long time, reared its head this week and let us know it’s still kicking.
Even though his presence in the industry has declined somewhat since the release of Doom 3, and his passions have shifted from polygons and frame buffers to mobile phones and space rockets, it’s always pure win reading interviews with id’s John Carmack. Mention any topic and the man has something compelling to say.
PC Perspective managed to get a hold of the programming guru and quiz him on the latest happenings in the industry, including the recent purchase of AGEIA by NVIDIA and Intel’s consuming of Offset Software and its luscious graphics engine and physics middleware vendor Havok.
Early on in the piece Carmack gives ray tracing a tongue lashing and fortifies his opinion on rasterisation, the dominant form of 3D rendering. According to Carmack, the argument that the former scales better than the latter is “ridiculous”. He even throws in a chunk of info on voxels, which our good friend Ken Silverman loves to bits.
I totally didn’t see this one coming. At all. By the looks of things, Intel has just swept in and plucked the company from the realms of independent development.
From the site:
Today we have some major news to announce. Intel has acquired Offset Software. Yes, you read it correctly! Project Offset is going strong and we are excited about things to come. Stay tuned.
Offset Software has been quietly working away on its unnamed, yet visually scrumptious fantasy multiplayer title for a few years now. The team isn’t that large, so progress has been (understandably) slow. With Intel in the mix, I’m sure Offset will get all the resources it needs.
The main dude in charge of art, Rod Green, is originally from Australia. He was unbelievably helpful when I was putting together an article on the developer’s tech back on Atomic. In fact, Rod is probably the most accommodating developer I’ve worked with in my career.
I’ve pinged Rod an email, hopefully he’ll be able to share a few details about the acquisition.
Project Offset [Official site, via Blue's News]
If you haven’t been following Offset Software’s “Project Offset”, now is a good time to start. The developer has released some new screenshots for its team-based fantasy FPS/RPG, and the game is looking as stunning as ever. Hit the jump for the rest of the shots
As an aside, Offset’s technical art director, Rod Green, hails from Australia. Doing excellent work there, Rod!
Project Offset [Official Site]
