Cryptic new engine emerges from the Synaptic Soup

Soon after Computer Artworks completed work on "Evolva", a third person action game in which you controlled a squad of four "genohunters" capable of evolving into bizarre new forms, three members of the core team behind the game split away to form their own development studio, Synaptic Soup. The company is currently hard at work on their debut game, but in the meantime they have just revealed the first details of their new game engine, known as "Cipher".

Cipher is designed to work on Mac, Linux and next generation console systems as well as PCs, and is being described as an entire "game creation kit" rather than simply a graphics engine. "The Cipher Engine deals with rendering your artwork, playing music and sound effects, and managing multiplayer games over the Internet", according to Synaptic Soup. "Cipher also has extensive support for localizing your game, making it easy to support multiple languages (including Japanese and Chinese). It even deals with the more mundane aspects of creating games, like scripting, virtualized compressed file systems and input device management."

It's certainly looking promising at this early stage, and with the engine already in the hands of some outside developers and due for a full roll-out early in 2001, we should know more soon. In the meantime, to find out more about Cipher (complete with additional screenshots of the engine in action), read the press release!