Vicious Cycle Announces New Next Gen Console Engine

D3 Publisher subsidiary Vicious Cycle Software (Dead Head Fred) has announced a new version of its Vicious Engine for game development, adding support for next-gen consoles. Vicious Engine 2 will offer new features for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, with an updated toolset that includes an updated lighting engine, an animation blending component, and pixel shader technology that the company says is optimized for next-gen platforms. The company says its texture and shader production interface is designed to help developers and artists control the visual aspects of in-game objects with a node-based graphical interface. Vicious Cycle president and CEO Eric Peterson commented, "As both game and engine developer, Vicious Cycle is committed to making our customers' lives easier in any way we can. Whether that means finding new and intuitive ways to change elements within the game, creating tools that are accessible to all members of a software development team – from artists, to designers, to engineers, or going above and beyond to offer obsessive customer support, we're there."