Bionic Commando: Multithreading and "much higher visual quality on the PC"

Latest information says that Bionic Commando will come out on PC in Q1 2009. But we already got some details about the technology behind the Diesel Engine. PCGH interviewed Ben Judd and his colleague Tobias, one of the engine programmers.

PCGH: Did you develop your own engine for Bionic Commando or did you license a technology? What were the reasons for developing your own technology/using middleware? What are the advantages when utilizing your own technology/a commercial product?

Ben: All projects currently in development here at GRIN is based on our proprietary engine called the Diesel Engine. We have been working with this engine for many years and new features are implemented daily so that the production teams can always access cutting edge technology.

The reasons why we choose to develop the Diesel Engine were to assure that we have total control over the tech pipeline. We like to take fate in our own hands. Having our own engine lets us decide exactly what features we want to add and when, instead of relying on a licensed engine that might miss lack some functionality. Since our engine team works very close to the production teams the support pipeline is also very fast.

One of the biggest advantages of using the Diesel Engine is that all our games are scripted in LUA by our gameplay programmers. This is very effective since gameplay programmers never have to compile their code, they can modify and reload it without having to restart the game; this indeed saves a lot of time.

PCGH: Bionic Commando will be released on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Will the title, like in a regular Cross Platform Development, be developed simultaneously for Console and PC or will you once again finalize the console development before you started porting Bionic Commando the PC by adding special features?

Ben: In general the gameplay programmers never have to script for a specific hardware platform, as the Diesel Engine takes care of this. If the LUA script works on the PC, it will work on Xbox360 and Playstation 3 as well. Of course there are some platform specific technologies that require custom code, like the support for achievements on Xbox360 for instance, but most of the time gameplay programmers can focus on just creating a great game. This allows us to develop the game simultaneously for all target platforms, even though we optimize the game for each platform both during the development phase.