Real Time Worlds licenses Kynogon's A.I. middleware technology

Dundee-based Real Time Worlds has signed a licensing agreement with Kynogon, to use its proprietary Kynapse Artificial Intelligence middleware tools for the development of Xbox 360 exclusive, Crackdown.

Billed as an evolution of the GTA inspired free-roaming universe, Crackdown features a massively interactive city, filled with countless civilians and non-playable characters, vehicles, towering skyscrapers and destructible environments. The scale of the project has caused a number of technical issues, which RTW asserts can be overcome using Kynogon's Kynapse technology.

Real Time Worlds' Stig Petersen commented: "Kynapse made our job a lot easier. It brought us out-of-the-box solutions to the complex path finding issues we were facing. Kynapse 3D dynamic topology analysis also allowed us to implement smart enemy behaviours."

"Kynapse automatic data generation was a big relief for our production process and the game would not be the same without it. We saved several months of work on the underlying AI system, so that we could focus on developing custom high-level behaviours and, above all, on making the game fun," Petersen added.

Kynapse is the successor to Kynogon's RenderWare AI platform, which has been utilised in countless top selling videogames from publishers including Majesco, Atari and Electronic Arts. The technology and tools provided enable developers to implement complex AI routines for a vast number of non-playable characters, enabling them to move around in any 3D dynamic world, understand their environment, hide, communicate, cooperate, drive vehicles and more.

Pierre Pontevia, Kynogon's CEO added: "Crackdown is delivering what is going to be the future of free-roaming titles. We are proud to be part of their effort in putting emphasis on revolutionary gameplay. Crackdown has an incredible potential to offer new experiences to gamers."

Currently in the relatively early stages of development, Crackdown is scheduled for release exclusively on Microsoft's next-generation Xbox 360 console in the autumn of 2006.