Project Offset nabs publisher, looks for 360 programmer

by Ross Miller on Aug 12th 2006 11:25PM

Offset software, makers of Project Offset and the Offset Engine, has announced that it is now "backed by a major publisher but will not be disclosing the details just yet." Oh, don't be so coy ...

Another tidbit that has eyebrows raised is a new listing in their job section for an Xbox 360 programmer. While they might be looking toward the future, the longevity of the company depends upon Project Offset right now, so the fantasy first-person title might show up on the Xbox 360. Nothing has been officially announced, though, so consider it speculation at best.

The Offset Engine, as demonstrated through gameplay footage of Project Offset, is an impressive graphics engine with some nice touches like self-shadowing (very pretty, indeed). Check out their GDC footage or their latest sneak peak video here.

Source

Tags: Xbox-360

Reader Comments (41)

I've been following project offset since I saw them on G4...Their game will decide which platform I play on.

Should I pick up my 360 now, or wait until after the inevitable Sony fanboy rebuttal to the article titled:

"New PS3 Doom & Gloom: Project Offset developers ask "Sony Who?"."

I can't believe this is happening. I've really wanted this project to come together *badly*

Fantastic to hear they've made some headway. I tip my hat to them!

I don't mean to sound like a lunatic, or accuse anyone at Joystiq of anything, but this post looks very similar to a post I made. Even the freakin picture is similar to my picture. I'm just curious as to how the crap this happened. Maybe Joystiq contributors and myself go to the same sources.

Here is my post @

[Edit: The only similarities are the subject matter, really -- it's probably the same source, since mine is the primary source (i.e. the developer's own web site). I agree with the other commentors, and therefore moved the link to your author name. Thanks for getting our back, Vazel et al. -- Ross]

You are spamming. The pictures are not the same and neither is the blog entry. God forbid bloggers and journalists report on the same thing.

I don't mean to sound like a lunatic, or accuse anyone at Grim Gamer of anything, but this post dosen't look that similar to this post. Sure, their both about Project Offset, but yours goes into detail on publishers and what happens if microsoft picks up the game. It's very likely you both jsut picked the same picture to. Of course their going to be similar, your both posting about the same topic. Look at these:

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/08/12/its-only-a-ps3-model/

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/playstation-3/xbox-360-in-the-shadow-of-the-colossal-ps3-193826.php

I suppose someone here is copying since they both use the same picture and talk about the same stuff.

Try a different way to get people to look at your website, inside of accusing people.

#2

Wtf are you pulling out of your ass trying to generate traffic to your blog you asshole guess what it dosent really say much so go to all the news sites and it says the god damn same exact shit ok go put your blog on google if you want traffic asshole

The pictures look similar because that was the only exciting object in PO's GDC tech demo.

The pictures look similar because they're stock pictures from a popular demo (beaten to it. dang).

You didn't create the universe in six days. get over yourself.

Yeah Grim, I gotta say, other than the subject, there's not a whole lot in common between your post and Joystiq's. And considering Team XBox had the story up much earlier today, it's not like this was some big secret or anything.

If Project Offset comes to the Xbox 360, it will completely bump Oblivion off of my "To Buy When I Purchase a 360" list. This game looks freakin' amazing. I've been following for what... 2 years maybe?

Oblivion is the kind of thing that makes me think, "I'd probably pick that up for the 360."

Project Offset is the kind of thing that makes me think, "I would probably upgrade my PC for that. But I'd buy it the day it came out if it came to 360."

PLEASE let this be true.

i can't wait for this game myself. i did notice that EB has it listed under the 360 games...

http://www.ebgames.com/product.asp?product%5Fid=t000419

i'm extremely hopeful that this will make it to the 360.

I doubt Project Offset will look the way it does in those videos if/when it's released for xbox 360. The system is powerful, but not THAT powerful!

That said, I'm sure it'll end up being the best looking game on xbox 360.

dude, my computer couldn't even PLAY the 1920x1080 trailer, and it's pretty powerful, I seriously doubt the 360 will be able to pull of those kind of grapics, but I may be wrong..

Those graphics are T3h 0wnage, so I doubt 360 could run them, hell I even doubt the PS3 could run those graphics. Those graphics are better than CG.

"Those graphics are better than CG."

What are they then, the real thing?

^ Haha. Hyperbole doesn't have to make sense. :P

So if those graphics are better than CG than the group of developers who are making Project Offset obviously have genetically altered a lizard and a bat to make a UNGODLY DRAGON THAT WILL DESTROY THE EARTH!

Wheres homeland security when you need them?! These people are not game developers but devious terrorists!!!

All you people saying that the 360 won't be able to run the graphics, when this game runs off engines you've never seen used on a system not even a year into its life?

I wonder how all these people become experts...

“All you people saying that the 360 won't be able to run the graphics, when this game runs off engines you've never seen used on a system not even a year into its life?

I wonder how all these people become experts...”

logic kiddo, logic. It may seem hard to you to understand it becouse of your fanboy nature, never the lees im going to give it a try. Pay attention and try not to hurt yourself. The hard truth. 360 cant even run at steady 30fps the doom 3 engine, Unreal engine 3, Gamebryo engine, GRAW engine. Do you honestly believe it has a chance?

"The hard truth. 360 cant even run at steady 30fps the doom 3 engine, Unreal engine 3, Gamebryo engine, GRAW engine. Do you honestly believe it has a chance?"

That is an issue of optimization not hardware capability. What do you mean by Unreal Engine 3? No game has come out using that yet.

I love the comments by the 10 year old fanboy know it all #18. So with your logic the 360 can only produce games as good as the 8month old machine has produced so far. Wow... You know what happens when you ASSUME dontcha smart ass? LOL!

Silicon Knights has abandoned the Unreal Engine 3 (Too Human dev) face it, the xbox 360 its not a the monster you think

http://360.advancedmn.com/article.php?artid=7954&preview=1579

and sory but no. ts not the devs fault. They are a lot of talented devs out there, the best teams money can buy, and nonetheless the systems has widespread framerate problems.
My cheap pc has no problems running 360 ports like condemned, hitman BM, quake 4, Prey. NFSMW, GRAW, oblivion, etc at more than 30FPS.

They were all developed for the 360 and horribly optimized for the pc, and yet the poor 360 chokes not because it’s a bad system per se, the limiting factor here is the aged / crippled power pc architecture the xbox 360 has.

The xenos gpu has a lot of potential for nextgen graphics,all they have to do is lower the resolution to 800 x 600 and thew would be able to achive decent performance with enough eye candy applied, but no that’s not HD enougt this is the HD generation, MS says that. sorry

Ok thanks for responding. The ONLY reason I posted that comment was because similar instances have occured. But once again, those are most likely purely coincidence in the timing of the post and similar sources. I didn't mean for that post to be self promotion. Hell, I had no idea it was on Team Xbox. But it's not like I forced you to click that link or anything. I also went ahead and read all the comments that were geared towards me. But I guess if I can make an outrageous claim, then I guess you have the right to say those negative comments.

@21:

Gears of War is using the Unreal Engine at a good FPS. And if it can so can other games.

Halo 3 is running at realtime on the 360, and it has a great FPS(at least in the realtime trailer).

Most of the developers now aren't even using all 3 CPU's the 360 has.

2 more years till it release(according to the dev.

what will xbox 360 project offset be like compare to the pc version..

This will be on the 360, and it probably will be just as good looking at the videos suggest. The game was meant to play on hardware that's out now, and the programmers have said they're engine is programmed to use as little horsepower as possible. I don't know a damn about programming, but what they said about the engine and it running on mid-level PCs, I can buy it. I'm sure they've developed the technology to do it (or I'm just really gullible and an idiot for believing that a pretty game can be played with this generation's technology).

"My cheap pc has no problems running 360 ports like condemned, hitman BM, quake 4, Prey. NFSMW, GRAW, oblivion, etc at more than 30FPS.

They were all developed for the 360 and horribly optimized for the pc, and yet the poor 360 chokes"

I can't comment on NFSMW, or Hitman, but every other game you mentioned was NOT a port from the 360. All of those games were created either originally for the PC, or simulaneously for the PC and 360.

If your "cheap pc" can run GRAW for PC at over 30 fps, then you must have a $1000+ cheap pc. Of course something that can run GRAW at 30 fps is going to run the other games you mentioned at more than 30fps. GRAW is one of the most demanding games for PC.

I've never had framerate issues with GRAW on my 360. When you get a $400 PC to run GRAW at 30fps, then I think you'll have an argument.

The 360 is an amazing deal, and I don't think it'll have any problems at all running PO at a descent framerate/detail level.

@21:

The Xbox 360 is very capable of using Unreal Engine 3 games. the launch games never really took advantage of the 360's power either. Most of the games you've listed were actually PC games ported(apart from condemned) over to 360 as well. Most of them only use a single core and don't really take advantage of the 360's hardware. they haven't really been optimised well for 360. Perhaps because of rushing the game out to meet deadlines or maybe not really having enough experience with the 360 hardware.

Silicon Knights didn't abandon the Unreal Engine because of the lack of power either. They canceled it cus they found the engine hard to work with and a little buggy.

Epic however, are now using a multithreaded engine with Gears of War, and are reporting considerably better and smoother framerates from the game now. As I said before, most games on the 360 so far are using only 1 core. ;)

http://www.joystiq.com/2005/10/27/first-gen-xbox-360-games-all-single-threaded/

Even Mark Rein of Epic admitted that the Gears of War presentations they were doing were running on only one thread of one processor (the 360 has 2 threads per processor) last year at Zero Hour. In a recent interview Cliffy B explained (like leadbelly mentioned) that they are now spreading the load much better.

Maybe before you guys decide that the 360 can't run this, you should do some research into the engine and how it works.

http://www.projectoffset.com/game.html

It will look beautiful.

kthxbi

hey 21, you fucking moron, why odnt you read the rest of the article.

"This is not the first we have heard in regards to developers having trouble developing software using the Unreal Engine 3. For months now, we have heard stories that the engine is not
easy to work with and is very buggy"

second. project offset from what we have seen now has been running completly on DX9, and on a 7800GTX, and the 360 iss WELL MORE POWERFUL than that.

http://www.projectoffset.com/downloads.html

watch the AOTS video.

once again i say. your a fucking moron.

by the way if the 360 cant handle the UE3 engine, which its enough power to handle it with ease given the right developpers, than your POS 3, dual screen 1080p 120 fps console cant do it either.

so in other words, this game will run the way it has been shown, and better given a system more powerful than what it has been curently running on, aswell because its a closed box system.

and it is NOT a DX10 game.

oh ALSO just shove my foot deeper into your fanboy ass, GRAW on the 360 utterly destroys the PC version, in framerate, textures, HDR lighting which it actually has, and graphics in general.

Yea all right, this sloppy engine has only been in development for like what, only four, five years at a cost of more than $40 million, so naturaly it’s a little buggy

LOL. Denial.

what do you whant? No dev is going to tell you, you know what? This xbox is just a steaming pile of dog shit, just look at the games, GRAW has the worst anisotropic filtering in history!, you cannot see shit past a distance, that’s a fact. quake4, prey, they where both clearly downgraded / developed for the xbox, the pc version even at max settings has low horrible textures, even the original doom3 visualy rapes that consolisated crap. Don’t get me started about oblivion

oh you truly are stupid. no a dev wont say it. because itsn ot true. and anything you say will not change that. and if graw has shit draw distance, (which is doesnt at all) then what does that make the PC version? unplayable? and the rest of the games are because of optimization. not the hardware. if you actually had a clue you would know the reality. horrible textures? you totally fucked kid? its a fact that PC games always have higher res textures. but do you see the difference? NO. or almost never.

oh and its ok you CAN get started on oblivion because that is a great example of poor optimization when textures a few meters down are crap. hey much liek all your opinions and points.

How did this turn into "Xbox 360 sucks lol"

Just stop arguing and look how sexy that dragon is.. :)

OMG! It's Attack of the Console Bigots!

to #18 AKA 'shove that start up your ass' (ooh, sounds like someone's a little bitter).

"logic kiddo, logic. It may seem hard to you to understand it becouse of your fanboy nature, never the lees im going to give it a try. Pay attention and try not to hurt yourself. The hard truth. 360 cant even run at steady 30fps the doom 3 engine, Unreal engine 3, Gamebryo engine, GRAW engine. Do you honestly believe it has a chance? "

Calling me a fanboy of the Xbox 360 is like calling yourself informed.

I'm simply a realist, and I'm not naive enough to assume that I know the full graphical capabilites of a system that hasn't been out a year. You can go on thinking that the PlayStation 3 is going to be the absolute god of consoles (and believe me, I wish it were), but I'm telling you now that you'll be dissapointed.

Is it just me or is there a greater amount of fantasy FPS's floating around than usual?

"Is it just me or is there a greater amount of fantasy FPS's floating around than usual?"

It appears to be the new fad, but I don't mind. You notice how there was a big "futuristic FPS" trend during this past generation? Well, I guess the fantasy FPS is developers' attempts to bring something fresh to the table.

It'll get old soon enough, but for now I say we enjoy it :D.

This is outstandin news. I really cant wait for New content. I may be going out to the offices for visit. Take some pics and video interviews. BTW I host the only fansite for this game at www.EpicEmpire.net . Join our forums or just look around idc. We will have exclusive content and official blog from the developers, so if you are interested please check it out! :)

Project Offset nabs publisher, looks for 360 programmer

Reader Comments (41)

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