Having opened a new studio in Montreal earlier this year and released the Diablo-clone Loki, French developer Cyanide has what we call 'a lot of irons in the fire.' The studio also announced today that it has waded waist-deep into the murky waters of middleware development, creating its own "dynamic 3D animation engine," which Cyanide interestingly describes as a tool that "integrates physical and biomechanical laws under the control of a powerful artificial intelligence system." Skynet, can you hear us?

While the company hopes to license the engine to other "small and medium sized" game developers, Cyanide is not above eating its own dog food, and will utilize the technology in its own projects, the first of which will be a title based on Games Workshop's fantasy tabletop game Blood Bowl. First announced briefly last year, the real news here is that the game, which is an unofficial follow up to the unlicensed PC title Chaos League, has been confirmed as in development for the Xbox 360, PSP, and Nintendo DS, as well as the PC. Few details are known at present beyond that the studio calls the project a "faithful representation" of the tabletop game, and adds that Blood Bowl should be released sometime in late 2008. In the absence of a new Mutant League Football, we will take what we can get.