Genesis Device is the name for a recently-released game engine

Game engine

A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. There are many game engines that are designed to work on video game consoles and personal computers...

 created by Luuk van Venrooij, based in the Netherlands. The Genesis Device engine was created in aspiration of games such as Oblivion

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a single-player action role-playing video game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks and the Take-Two Interactive subsidiary 2K Games...

, Crysis

Crysis

Crysis is a science fiction first-person shooter video game developed by Crytek , published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, and released in November 2007. It is the first game of a trilogy. A separate game entitled Crysis Warhead was released on September 12, 2008, and follows similar...

, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is a first-person shooter video game, and is the follow-up to the 2005 title Quake 4. It is also the first game in the series to be rated T by the ESRB...

, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R., with a purpose of allowing developers to use it in creating their first-person shooter

First-person shooter

First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...

 games in large environments. The engine has been out for little time, but has seen much attention from program development groups, including the Pascal Game Development site, many hobby sites, and even the OpenGL home page.

General

• Uses OpenGL
  OpenGL
  OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
  
  
• Supports the full OpenGL 2.1 specifications
• Anti-aliasing
  Anti-aliasing
  In digital signal processing, spatial anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion artifacts known as aliasing when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution...
  
   (up to 8x)
• Bilinear
  Bilinear filtering
  Bilinear filtering is a texture filtering method used to smooth textures when displayed larger or smaller than they actually are.Most of the time, when drawing a textured shape on the screen, the texture is not displayed exactly as it is stored, without any distortion...
  
   and trilinear
  Trilinear filtering
  Trilinear filtering is an extension of the bilinear texture filtering method, which also performs linear interpolation between mipmaps.Bilinear filtering has several weaknesses that make it an unattractive choice in many cases: using it on a full-detail texture when scaling to a very small size...
  
   filtration
• Anisotropic filtration
  Anisotropic filtering
  In 3D computer graphics, anisotropic filtering is a method of enhancing the image quality of textures on surfaces that are at oblique viewing angles with respect to the camera where the projection of the texture appears to be non-orthogonal In 3D computer graphics, anisotropic filtering...
  
   (up to 16x)
• Widescreen
  Widescreen
  Widescreen images are a variety of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35mm film....
  
   support
• Arbitrary resolution support
• Vertical synchronization control
• Auto detection of video card capabilities
• Supported video cards:
  • NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 - 5900 (NV3x)
  • NVIDIA GeForce 6600 - 6800 (NV4x)
  • NVIDIA GeForce 7600 - 7950 (G7x)
  • NVIDIA GeForce 8600 - 8800 (G8x)
  • ATI Radeon 9500 - 9800 (R3xx)
  • ATI Radeon X300 - X850 (R3xx - R4xx)
  • ATI Radeon X1300 - X1950 (R5xx)
  • ATI Radeon X2900 (R6xx)

Post-processing

• Post-processing system with custom shader support using GLSL
  GLSL
  OpenGL Shading Language , is a high-level shading language based on the syntax of the C programming language...
  
  
• Grayscale filter

Base objects

• Mesh (static geometry)
• Terrain (heightmap-based)
• Foliage (particle-based)
• Water (grid-based)

Scene Management

• Dynamic Octree-based subdivision
• Software occlusion culling
• Hardware occlusion culling

Physics

• Uses Newton Physics Engine
• FPS Character controller
• Rigid body
  Rigid body
  In physics, a rigid body is an idealization of a solid body of finite size in which deformation is neglected. In other words, the distance between any two given points of a rigid body remains constant in time regardless of external forces exerted on it...
  
   physics
• Comprehensive set of geometric primitives:
  • Convex hull for map and mesh collision
  • Sphere
  • Capsule
  • Box
  • Mesh
  • Cylinder
• Fluid buoyancy

System

• Supports x86
  X86 architecture
  The term x86 refers to a family of instruction set architectures based on the Intel 8086 CPU. The 8086 was launched in 1978 as a fully 16-bit extension of Intel's 8-bit based 8080 microprocessor and also introduced segmentation to overcome the 16-bit addressing barrier of such designs...
  
   CPU architecture
• Multicore CPU support
• Support for Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista
• Supports the Deled Map Files 3D object format
• Supported image formats:
  • DDS
    DirectDraw Surface
    The DirectDraw Surface file format , from Microsoft, is a standard for storing data compressed with the lossy S3 Texture Compression algorithm, which can be decompressed in hardware by GPUs and consoles like the Playstation Portable, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360...
    
     (DXT1, DXT3, DXT5)
  • TGA
    Truevision TGA
    Truevision TGA, often referred to as TARGA, is a raster graphics file format created by Truevision Inc. . It was the native format of TARGA and VISTA boards, which were the first graphic cards for IBM-compatible PCs to support Highcolor/truecolor display...
    
    
  • JPEG
    JPEG
    In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
    
    
  • PNG
• Supported sound formats:
  • WAV
    WAV
    Waveform Audio File Format , is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs...
    
    
  • MP3
    MP3
    MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
    
    
  • Ogg
    Ogg
    Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The creators of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high quality digital multimedia.The Ogg container format can multiplex...
    
    

Known Issues and Problems

FIXED: For a while, the engine had problems with water showing right on ATI cards

However, at the moment, ATI cards are not supported due to NV specific OpenGL extensions used.

External links

• http://genesisdevice.net/
• http://www.opengl.org/news/permalink/luuk_van_venrooij_announces_the_genesis_device_engine/
• http://pascalgamedevelopment.com/viewtopic.php?t=5047
• http://www.devmaster.net/news/index.php?storyid=1934