Lionhead chooses MathEngine for console Black & White games

While the console versions of Black & White were revealed at ECTS 2001, Lionhead Studios has revealed new details on the physics system for the games. According to the announcement, Lionhead Studios has licensed MathEngine's Karma physics engine for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions of Black & White. The adoption of Karma marks Lionhead's first use of middleware, as the studio has previously written all its own game development tools and code in-house. The development team evaluated several physics engines and then chose Karma in the end.

"It was a difficult decision for us to use middleware on the console versions of Black & White, but the tight development schedule and steep learning curve that we would have had to master to bring the game to two new platforms eventually gave us little option," said Peter Molyneux, managing director of Lionhead Studios. "Once we had made the decision to go down the middleware route, however, Karma was the only logical choice, as it was the only solution that produced results that were comparable to those which we would have achieved through our own efforts."

The original version of Black & White was released on the PC in April 2001 and has sold more than 2 million copies worldwide to date. Lionhead has not announced a specific release schedule for the console versions of Black & White to date.