Their eye fell on the Gamebryo engine by Numerical Design Limited, which had been developed as early as 1991 and had been used by competitor Bethesda for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind the last time. To reach this goal, Piranha Bytes looked for a new engine. The ambitious plans of Gothic 3 intended a fully open game world with three continents. Even as the team under leadership of Björn Pankratz had worked on Night of the Raven, the main team under Mike Hoge had already begun with the development of a true successor, Gothic 3. The addon improved the graphics only slightly, for example with a shine effects for metallic objects like cannons.Ĭut. NotR brought players to Jahrkendar, a previously unreachable part of Khorinis, in which the valley of makers and a desert canyon can be found and pirates wreak havoc. Ten months later the addon Night of the Raven followed, which is considered to be one of the best RPG addons of all time and transformed Gothic 2 into an immortal classic. Gothic 2 had problems with bugs at release as well, but they were mostly fixed and so the game became a hit pretty fast. Especially impressive was the densively populated harbour town Khorinis with it's many critizens and traders, which could bring the processor to it's knees pretty easily though. There was a dynamic day and night cycle again and the game world could be explored without any loading screens, except when switching to one of the other two regions. The game used DirectX 8 for better lighting and the water was prettier as well. The number of objects had been increased and the vegetation got better, which impressed with trees weighing in the wind. The models had a higher polycount, the textures were more detailed and the draw distance was higher. Gothic 2 was released after only 11 months of development, but the graphics got visibly improved. It continued the story of the nameless hero, let the player return to the valley of mines and fight against dragons. Piranha Bytes began with the development of an action game, which was suspended in favor of an addon to Gothic, which itself was later replaced by Gothic 2. Gothic might didn't became a success over night, maybe also because of the high hardware requirements, the bugs and the strange controls, but developed into a secret tip. Furthermore the game impressed with natural looking environments, DirectX 7 integration with hardware transform and lighting and with a beautiful vegetation, which all contributed to immersion. Characters were spending the day realistically, they slept, got up, ate, washed themselves, ran around and talked with each other. The game world wasn't simply big, but also unbelievable lively: A dynamic day and night cycle and weather with realistic thunderstorms breathed life into the world, shooting stars were visible at the night sky and from time to time the magic barrier, which separated the valley from the outside world, was rumbling above the heads of the prisoners. Besides openness and view distance the vertical dimension also impressed, which hadn't existed in other games like this before. Players who gazed upon the valley with the old camp in the middle and sharp mountains in the background for the first time let their jaw drop, because an RPG in 3D still was something new back in the day. The view range in this open game world was gigantic and brought many computers to their knees. The valley of mines of Gothic could be explored completely without loading screens, only when entering the four big dungeons loading was necessary. Until then, the three programmers might have left Piranha Bytes, but the engine stayed and powers the impressive RPG. At some point, the engine gets the name ZenGin and is being improved throughout the development of Gothic, until the game is released in 2001.
#Is the gamebryo engine weak license
They license the engine of the three students to realize their vision of a roleplaying game and hire the three students, who later are called "mad scientists" internally. Later the four employees leave and found Piranha Bytes. One day three students of the university in Oldenburg show up - Ulf Wohlers, Dieter Hildebrandt and Bert Speckels - and present their engine. Alex Brüggemann, Stefan Nyul, Tom Putzki and Michael Hoge are working at Greenwood Entertainment and dream of developing their own game. But which technology was responsible for the great experience in Gothic and how did the story continue?įlashback, 1997. The result of all this effort was released in march 2001 under the title Gothic and was revolutionary in many ways: Never before there had been a roleplaying game with such an impressive game world. Everything startet in the year 1997, when some collegues banded together, founded Piranha Bytes and planned to develop the world's best game.
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