Serious Game Engine Shootout
Ready, Aim, SHOOT! The five engines I chose to focus on were built specifically for serious games and deliver, to varying degrees, the kinds of enhanced functionality described above. These include Breakaway’s mōsbē, Numedeon’s NICE, Forterra’s OLIVE, Muzzy Lane’s SIGMA, and Virtual Heroes’ Unreal3 Advanced Learning Technology. Of course some pretty serious games like Global Conflicts: Palestine and the UN’s Food Force are being built with “non-serious” tools, and there are a number of other engines and development environments to consider, so I included information about them at the end of this article. “We began as a commercial game developer of titles like Civilization,” according to Doug Whatley, president of Breakaway, “but as we took on more work for military clients we saw that our customers wanted to own their original content, and really needed the ability to customize gameplay on the fly to meet changing doctrine and mission variables. So the engine and tools we built for commercial games became the foundation for mōsbē as a platform for serious games.” He added: “Now we’re now spinning off mōsbē as a separate product and going forward Breakaway will become a game platform company, more than a game development or contracted services business. That’s where we see the largest opportunity in the serious games space.”
Breakaway’s director of strategic partnerships, Jennifer McNamara, describes mōsbē as “a platform for users to create their own simulations.” ”Our vision is that it will be usable out of the box and that the level of user involvement will be up to the customer,” note McNamara. “By that I mean that someone can just use the tools to create scenarios; or edit the .csv files to add new vehicles; or if they are a little more advanced they can use 3d Studio to customize vehicles or introduce their own; or they can do scripting or programming to link their own code into the platform.” She continues: “Of course, each level requires more programming and technical skill, so mōsbē is useful to both non-technical people and to people who have a bunch of programmers available.” mōsbē supports 2D and 3D views, from one to 16 players over a LAN, and comes with an inventory of objects that can be modified to simulate real-time logistics, supply management, 4C (command, control, computers and communications) and ISR (intelligence, surveillance and recon) situations. The mōsbē package includes a world builder, scenario editor and asset libraries.
|
