Synaptic Announces Cipher

Synaptic Soup has announced its latest multiplatform game development engine called Cipher. The game engine lets developers work on a mutliplatform basis on next-generation consoles, PCs, Macs, and Linux platforms. Cipher offers audio, animation, localization, customization, debugging and server-based technologies, rendering, and multiplayer-support solutions to developers. Synaptic Soup itself is developing a game using the Cipher engine for multiple next-generation consoles.

"With constantly spiraling development costs and confusion as to who will win the next console war, we want to offer a low-risk solution to developers for creating the next generation of software," said Rik Heywood, technical director for Synaptic Soup. "With Cipher, developers not only get access to powerful technology, but they dramatically reduce their development times. With our multiformat support, any game written using Cipher will automatically work on any platform we port it to. Difficult platform decisions can be left to the last moment when one or all of the platforms can be targeted."

The Cipher engine will be officially released in Q1 2001, but it is already being made available to a select few developers and publishers.