Messiah to be Unveiled at CGDC

On May 6, at the Computer Game Developers' Conference in Long Beach, Calif., Shiny president Dave Perry and lead programmer Michael "Saxs" Persson will unveil the controversial Messiah engine during a discussion session called: "Messiah: What You May or May Not Believe."

The discussion will focus on running a company from a "programmer hiring other programmers" perspective and will conclude by discussing the Messiah engine in detail and the controversy surrounding it regarding Real Time Deformation and Tessellation.

"The Messiah engine uses RT-DAT technology," states Persson. "I will discuss this technology and how it will effect future games and save developers time, money, and frustration in great detail."

Perry explains, "This engine heralds the beginning of a new era for graphics where scalability and adaptability makes cross-platform development easier and allows games to ride the technology curve instead of being left to obsolescence only months after release."

Tessellation is the mathematical process of taking a series of shapes and fitting them together to cover a surface without overlapping the shapes or leaving gaps. Using this process will let developers create more realistic body parts without coming up with ways of covering over the parts where seams overlap.

Shiny claims that with tessellation, it can scale a figure down from hundreds of polygons to around a hundred. This is significant because it will mean that more characters can populate a screen and that users with less powerful computers will be able to play since the program will scale down scenes and characters to the speed of the player's PC.

Think of it this way: if Eidos used a tessellation process with Lara Croft, her clothing would probably be more form fitting. In fact, some of the early shots from the game of the same name (Messiah) show off a scantily-clad character wearing a Victoria's Secret-like outfit. This is to show off what tessellation can do.

The controversy surrounding Messiah stems from the fact that many game developers say that at this stage of the game programming and coding, this type of intensive mathematical computation can't be done.

Shiny will get to put its money where its mouth is during this event - and it should be a sight to see.