Lizard Game Engine

Bram

Founder & Administrator
Staff
Premium
(www.simbin.com)

lizwork3.gif


LIZARD™, THE ”GAME ENGINE”
For all “next generation” (Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC) products SimBin will have its own game engine that is called Lizard. Lizard is entirely self developed and owned by the SimBin group of companies.

The Lizard-engine contains all basic components that are required in order to develop game products: simulation, physics, rendering, networks, animation, sound, user interface, data pipeline, editor and tools. It is mainly written in the portable C++ programming language.

Lizard is a reusable engine, written with stability, performance and developing efficiency in focus. In the present situation, it is tailored to handle racing games, but due to its module structure it is prepared to constitute the basis for any type of game. This gives SimBin the possibility too quickly broaden the product portfolio with other genres for example a "First Person Shooter".

To use an in-house developed, reusable, game engine is a very cost effective solution that gives SimBin a lot of flexibility to handle new projects, both its own IP’s or assigned productions. The concept is the same that has been used the last decades within the car manufacturing industry, In order to create cost efficient and competitive new cars, several car models from the same group is built on the same platform. The basic architecture is the same, but the experience is totally different since the interior and exterior is unique.

Reusable game engines (sometimes referred to as “middleware”) are no news in the game sector. However, there are a number of companies that offer their middleware to game companies. Lizards big advantage is that it is to 100% developed and owned by SimBin, which means that SimBin has all necessary knowledge and can use it to pursue products that are desired without having to pay external parties.

SimBin works continuously with the development of Lizard focusing mainly on X-Box 360 and PC but will be adapting it to other consoles such as the PlayStation3.

Simulation & Physics
* Reality-based simulation of racing cars.
* Takes aerodynamics, propulsion, tires, traction, wheels, brakes and suspension into account.
* It simulates even the minute details such as weather conditions, tire wear and temperature, fuel consumption and a long list of realistic mechanical failures.
* Included are also driving aids, such as traction control, antilock braking system, steer and stability help.
* The AI supports different driving personalities and behaviors.

Rendering Engine
* Support for both HDR and LDR rendering.
* Full use of hardware shaders.
* DX9 and Xbox 360 compatible.
* Cascaded shadow maps with smooth edges utilizing percentage closer filtering (PCF).
* Advanced per-pixel lighting model with support for dynamic time of day and fully dynamic shadows.
* Real-time reflections.
* Dynamic ambient occlusion.
* Advanced post processing pipeline (for example; full screen motion blur and bloom).
* Static PVS.
* Animation with skinning.
* Deformable meshes.
* Undergrowth system.
* Weather effects.

Network Engine
* Advanced client side prediction.
* Bandwidth-throttling.
* Replay functionality, i.e. the recording, synchronisation, and playback of data streams and input.
* True delta compression of data to minimize network traffic.
* Accurate automatic time synchronization.
* Peer to Peer as well as Client / Server connectivity.
* Stats reporting.
* Match-making and LAN host discovery.
* Voice-support.
* Only uses a single UDP port to easily pass through firewalls.

Sound Engine
* Written in C++ and intrinsics (SSE). All sound is generated by software running in its own thread, the hardware is only needed to playback the already fully processed 2 or 6 channels (5.1).
* The sounds are created using custom made graphs with each node acting as a (multi-) sample player, panner, low-, high-pass filter or volume envelope etc.
* Has complete doppler support and makes use of spatial information.

Menu System
* Layout is stored in XML files, which makes editing easy.
* Support for Lua 5.1, a very efficient scripting language. The Lua support makes it easy to expose game functionality to the GUI system. It also makes it possible to embed Lua scripts in the XML files, in order to control the game or the GUI system itself.
* Efficient rendering, which makes the system suitable for both in-game and front-end GUI.
* Highly portable, only the rendering part is platform-specific and that is already abstracted by Rendering Engine.
 
If RACE 07 is developed with Lizard engine it will be full price product...imho.

What improvements I would like to see in RACE 07:
-Online setup sharing like GTR 2
-Moddable
-Should be able to ban player from server with voting(serialnumber/user or something like that), player would get his ban lifted only by server admin
-Game should be still simulator so fully adjustable but if wanted fixed setups could be used
-Added classes/cars would nice (ETCC, BTCC) because in reality there are too few cars in 2007 WTCC at the moment.
 
Can you imagine that all (nearly) 500 RPM forum members will be able to get Race'07 as soon as it is released?
I'd like to see an option where Race'06 users could still race on WTCC'06 servers with people who are using Race'07.
Although it was a third party addon, this has been done in the Microsoft Flightsimulator series...where people using FS2002/2004/FSX can fly together on the same server, so you don't lose touch with old friends who haven't upgraded yet or whose PCs can't cope with the updated graphics in the newer versions.
Here's the program for FS http://www.chocolatesoftware.com/fshost/
...maybe someone will come up with a similar addon, or even better - Simbin will incorporate this technology in to Race'07
 
yes you are right Sander... Screens from RACE 07 have been released some time ago and they show a heavily updated current engine, but not Lizard.

Nomatter what, it shows something I want to drive :D
 
Sander H said:
Stiggy, where did you find that info? I can't see it anywhere on their site 8-[

Edit: the screenshot is NOT from Race 07, 07 will still make use of the 'old' engine.

i thought so
i don't think simbim is going to use that new engine for Race07....because
1. if they use Race07 as an addon they need to use the old engine (maybe a bit update/polishing on old engine)
2. it will take to much time & money to convert into new engine (if they still plan for this year release)

i think the new engine will be used in next Race or so....or if they get some big sponsorship....then maybe they can publish a patch to convert to the new engine :) (hey a man can dream now can he :) )
 
Ok but knowing this technology is available makes me very happy wether its in race 07 or not!

But this car is defenitly from RACE WTCC, so is there another game coming up we dont know of?
 
  • Richard Johansson

Deslug[RPM said:
]owjeah this is really a good gaming year!

race 07 halo 2 on pc halo 3 on xbox 360 fable on xbox360 wuhuuu

ur so right... race 07 and halo3 bigtime!
 

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