Archive notice: This article was originally published on November 22, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
AGEIA Technologies, Inc., the pioneer of hardware-accelerated physics for PC games, announced the Unreal Tournament 3 PhysX Mod Kit. It enables developers and modders to integrate entirely new experiences into Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3), or to optimise and adapt existing game levels to expand gameplay and interactivity. AGEIA PhysX serves as the engine for the underlying physical interactions in UT3, enabling dynamic gameplay on all systems—with additional benefits for systems equipped with a PhysX processor.
The AGEIA PhysX Mod Kit contains everything modders need to integrate PhysX-enabled content into the UT3 world quickly. This includes PhysX-enabled UE3 (Unreal Engine 3) tools, manuals, tutorials and documentation, as well as wizards and examples. The PhysX Mod Kit was to be available for download from AGEIA and its partners from mid-December.
To demonstrate the capabilities of the PhysX Mod Kit and the PhysX processor, AGEIA Technologies is making a series of Extreme PhysX Mod Levels for UT3 available to download free of charge immediately. The first PhysX Mod Kit includes the “Tornado” and “Lighthouse” levels. First presented at this year’s Games Convention, the AGEIA Tornado PhysX Mod features remarkable physical realism and revolutionary new environmental effects. This entirely new CTF map was designed around the PhysX-enabled tornado, which devastates the battlefield during play. The tornado also draws rockets and projectiles into its vortex when fired too close, creating both dynamic risks and rewards for daring players. Alongside Tornado is the new PhysX Mod Lighthouse, which leads into a dungeon-like structure with a vast number of levels and hidden passages, containing countless destructible walls, corridors, ceilings and other objects. Additional maps and mods with further PhysX implementations and level changes were to become available soon as part of the AGEIA Mod Kit programme. The mods would continue to provide impressive game scenarios and examples of AGEIA PhysX’s potential, encouraging modders to develop their own PhysX-enabled scenarios.
Warmonger: Operation Downtown Destruction by NetDevil is also based on Unreal Engine 3. The online multiplayer game is an episodic shooter that takes full advantage of AGEIA’s PhysX processor. Its release was planned for November 28, 2007. Warmonger offers environments in which almost everything can be broken down to the last brick. Because the resulting destruction follows physical laws and is therefore recalculated each time, every game unfolds differently. With the AGEIA PhysX processor, the course of battles on the maps always depends on what has just been destroyed. Players can no longer hide behind a brick wall from whizzing bullets if an armed teammate can simply destroy that wall. New strategies are required to handle this unpredictable environment. The first episode, comprising five levels, also contains cloth that either flutters when hit or tears apart completely, along with metal surfaces that can be deformed or destroyed with a hammer or a rocket.
Together with the recently announced AGEIA APEX development platform (AGEIA Adaptive Physics EXtensions™), the PhysX Mod Kit offers a comprehensive technology suite for adapting UT3- and UE3-based games. The coming Christmas season and related offers for PhysX cards provide an ideal opportunity to expand existing Unreal capabilities.
“We are very pleased to be part of the future of the Unreal universe. Integrating AGEIA PhysX has never been easier than it is now,” said Manju Hegde, CEO of AGEIA Technologies. “Developers and modders can use our powerful UT3 PhysX Mod Kit, and UE3 developers can build on the AGEIA APEX™ platform (Adaptive Physics EXtensions™) to create physically realistic and interactive worlds for next-generation games—that is the future of modding and game development.”
Further links:
- Ageia
