Climax Unveils Next-Gen Tomcat Toolset

Los Angeles-headquartered independent developer the Climax Group has officially unveiled its proprietary next-gen game toolset, designed specifically for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 2, especially capable of 'enabling the quick creation of dynamic shading effects', and named Tomcat. Developed by Climax's Core Technology Group (CTG) and already in use in Climax’s upcoming next-gen title Avalon, Tomcat is based around high-level shading-languages, concatenating small fragments of shader code to create effects swiftly. The Tomcat suite also includes normal mapping, bloom and ViViD Rendering, online and networking capabilities, a real-time game tweaker, and DYNE physics. Climax's Tony Beckwith indicated that the company may be considering offering Tomcat as a middleware solution to other developers and publishers, commenting that the announcement "...could mean that in the future a wide range of... games built on the Tomcat technology could be filling the shop shelves, not just those developed by Climax." However, Climax has not yet officially announced any licensing opportunities for the Tomcat engine, and are still negotiating with publishers over multi-vehicle shooter title Avalon, the first game prototype to use the Tomcat engine.