AK – When will the engine be released to market?
DG The engine is just coming out of it’s R&D phase, starting with a blank page mid Sept last year – and these screenshots are the first public airing of the engine. A fully unified real-time per-pixel lighting and shadowing engine targeted at PC and Xbox. The core is up and running, and even more pleasing than the asethetics it’s capable of producing, is its performance -it runs well even on mediocre DX8 cards. There’s quite a lot of work to tie in around the edges, but we’re aiming at GDC next year for its launch.
Obviously in it’s current form it’s being represented as screenshots, so the focus tends to be on the graphical side, but we’ve some other unique features in the engine, most notably the way entities are being handled that means that not only is it powerful, but relatively easy to use as well (partly driven by our close association with some colleges).
AK What colleges are you working with at present?
DG The technical colleges in Derry and Letterkenny as well as Ballyfermot as of now – but our plan is to take it far and wide.
AK Have you shown the work at any shows or conferences to date?
DG In its current early form, we’ve only been showing it to a few key individuals, but it did make a semi-public well received appearance at the recent GPDC in Liverpool.
AK What are your plans for the immediate future?
DG Our main focus right now is in finding a publisher. We’ve a few game concepts at various stages of development that we’re looking to pitch around November. Early responses have been very encouraging, and we’re in the process of forming our strategy to leverage the best deal for us.
Note:
1. Catch some of the Torc people at the shindigs…another reason to have them on Fridays!
2. We will be adding further screenshots from Torc to the Gallery in the Community section of gamedevelopers.ie
Further Information www.torcinteractive.com/