Allegorithmic, an emerging 3D technology company developing advanced texturing tools for real-time 3D content creation, has announced that Substance Air is now in its final stage of beta and is scheduled to launch April 2009. A new texturing middleware for the development and distribution of online and downloadable games (MMOs, Free2Play, and XBLA/PSN), Substance Air allows game developers to dramatically reduce the size of downloadable applications while providing the ultimate solution for advanced user-generated content. For more information or to apply for Substance Air's beta program, please visit www.allegorithmic.com.
"In today's economy it's crucial that game developers deliver games faster, better and more cost-effective than ever before," said Dr. Sebastien Deguy, founder and CEO of Allegorithmic. "Substance Air will significantly improve the online game development and delivery process. Not only will it create entirely new opportunities for artists in regards to user-generated content and in-game asset customization, it will save developers a substantial amount of time and budget."
"The current economic climate is playing havoc with game developers and budgets," said Wanda Meloni, principal analyst at M2 Research. "Middleware is by far one of the most cost-effective ways for development teams to alleviate production cost redundancies. With games moving online and digital distribution becoming an increasingly important business strategy for publishers, Allegorithmic's texturing middleware tackles an extremely timely issue."
Substance Air was developed in partnership with a multitude of premium developers that have contributed to its framework, creating a new generation of texturing tools. "Procedural texturing offers many potential technological and artistic benefits, yet the process of translating a precise texture from an artist's mind into a procedure is difficult to formulate," said Andrea Pessino, co-founder and VPof Ready at Dawn Studios. "The greatest strength of Allegorithmic's technology is that it has made fully procedural texturing a viable alternative to hand-painting, by means of a visual language appealing to artists as well as engineers."
Substance Air is part of Allegorithmic's new generation of middleware for authoring and generating textures that feature unprecedented visual quality and graphical detail. It is poised to redefine the development and distribution of rich content for online, downloadable and retail games.
Key features in Substance Air include:
-- The ability to generate detailed graphics that fit in a few KB; increasing the amount of high-quality content without overweighting the game's client size-- Unique user-generated content features-- A brand new runtime engine optimized for generating textures at high speed even on low spec devices-- A flexible authoring tool to improve ease-of-use with unique features designed to help artists optimize their production pipeline-- A procedural base that allows developers the creation of an infinite number of variations within a given game-- A complete range of training and support solutions
Visit www.allegorithmic.com to learn more about Substance Air and the Substance Beta program.
Substance Air pricing models vary based on the type of game and gaming platform and is scheduled to ship in April 2009. For more information, contact the company's headquarters in Clermont-Ferrand, France at +33 4 73 34 70 80, or visit www.allegorithmic.com.
