GDC08: Insomniac opens up to dev community with Nocturnal

by Andrew Yoon { Feb 21st 2008 at 4:44PM }

At a GDC press conference, Insomniac Games (responsible for Ratchet & Clank and Resistance: Fall of Man on PS3) has announced a ground breaking initiative to open up their technologies for the development community at large. Through the "Nocturnal Initiative," Insomniac Games is attempting to break the common development practice of keeping technological advances a close-guarded secret. As they noted, "developers spend resources solving problems that have already been solved."

A public site (nocturnal.insomniacgames.com) will give developers access to various parts of Insomniac source code. Libraries have already been made available, with more on the way. Through a Wiki-style interface, Insomniac hopes that they will allow everyone to "make better games."

The tools available will obviously work on PS3, but because it is a PC-based environment, should work on Xbox 360 as well. Joystiq will be chatting with Insomniac shortly. Stay tuned.

[Update: The press release just went out over the wires, if you're into that sorta thing.]

Tags: breakingnews, gdc08, insomniac, insomniac-games, nocturnal, nocturnal-initiative

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

FidliousWong @ Feb 21st 2008 4:52PM

Hot shit!

...that is all

NATO_Duke @ Feb 21st 2008 4:55PM

nocturnal.insomniacgames.com

NATO_Duke @ Feb 21st 2008 4:56PM

oops, I was trying to show you posted wrong site name. Should be http://nocturnal.insomniacgames.com.

Sounds pretty cool.

PSN: KillaKornbread @ Feb 21st 2008 5:21PM

that explains why i couldnt get to the site when i copied it to the address bar from the story. thanks NATO_Duke.

Negativecool @ Feb 21st 2008 4:59PM

God damn son!

Insomniac for the COMPLETE win!

ninjacat11 @ Feb 21st 2008 5:11PM

Things like this are why I love Insomniac.

bAssackwards @ Feb 21st 2008 5:15PM

Love the team! Having only one Insomniac podcast this month sucks. =o(

Kujel @ Feb 21st 2008 5:13PM

So Sony is trying to convince people to develop for their shit but if the article is correct it could back fire on them.

bAssackwards @ Feb 21st 2008 5:18PM

... what?

Where in the article does it say Nocturnal could backfire on them?

FidliousWong @ Feb 21st 2008 5:19PM

Insomniac doesn't have a stake in Sony per se. They are just releasing code which solve common problems to make development easier. Actually, this year had a huge opening up all around.

Previously, the industry kept their code as closely guarded secrets and used it to sue or shut down competitors. But with coding, there are only so many ways you can solve the same problem to eventually you're running into a state where people are rewriting the same code over and over. So why not make common solutions public? Web Design has had this mentality for a while, it's refreshing to see the industry, as a community, start acting as a community.

Kujel @ Feb 21st 2008 5:21PM

Let me clarify; it said "The tools available will obviously work on PS3, but because it is a PC-based environment, should work on Xbox 360 as well" Meaning this could make it even easier for 360 developers and so only make 360 games better, thus backfire on Sony, not Insomniac.

B3astofthe3ast @ Feb 21st 2008 5:27PM

Yea, but I dont think Insomniac makes 360 games, so how could they put up a solution to a problem on a console they don't even work on?

Noshino @ Feb 21st 2008 5:33PM

Kujel,

"The tools available will obviously work on PS3, but because it is a PC-based environment, should work on Xbox 360 as well"

They have only worked for the PS3, hell, they haven't even worked on the PSP just so they could focus all of their resources to the PS3, so I would bet that these tools more than likely are best suited for PS3, not the 360...

"Meaning this could make it even easier for 360 developers and so only make 360 games better, thus backfire on Sony, not Insomniac"

Not really, they would have to tweak them to be able to work for the 360, although I don't think it would be as hard, I don't think many will put resources onto that...

Instead, most developers that were working just for the 360 will now find it cheaper and less stressful to work (at least get used to) on the PS3...

And also remember that this complements the engine announced by Sony...

Hyams @ Feb 21st 2008 5:33PM

Who said anything about this making it even/easier to devolop for 360 than PS3? That is an assumption on your part.

It simply says that the tools will work on the 360 as well as on the PS3.

PSN: KillaKornbread @ Feb 21st 2008 5:29PM

Insomniac is made of awesomeness. not only do they make great games, they want to help everybody else make great games too. i hope other developers jump in to this initiative cause if they are spending less money and time writing code to solve common problems then they can focus those resources on other parts of their games. games are very complex now days so im sure any help will be appreciated.

Noshino @ Feb 21st 2008 5:37PM

there were a few interviews some time ago with the guys from Insomniac and Naughty Dog in which they state that they have been sharing codes on the PS developer network.

Also, I think Jaffe once mentioned about a borrowed code for Calling All Cars

blahblahbloo @ Feb 21st 2008 5:32PM

After a quick look at the site, they're not giving away any sort of crown jewels (for example, either the 3D engine or code to stream everything from BD from R&CF), but more basic sorts of libraries and tools. Debugging tools, profiling tools, some basic libraries like IPC, etc.

blahblahbloo @ Feb 21st 2008 6:53PM

Basically, the article is misleading in that Insomniac is still keeping anything that can be reasonably referred to as a "technological advancement" a closely-guarded secret. Still nice news, though.

Andir3.0 @ Feb 21st 2008 9:43PM

I'm sure the 3D engine and such probably use some "exclusive" things that _might_ expose workarounds to the hypervisor. I'm sure Sony wouldn't like that much.

Neptune @ Feb 21st 2008 5:36PM

All I can come up with is.. nice, bloody nice.

Roger @ Feb 21st 2008 5:50PM

HEY YOU GOTTA PAY TO USE MY NAME!

Trev @ Feb 21st 2008 6:03PM

Hopefully other good developers follow suit in sharing info. The more available, the more the content of games will be in competition instead of the technical aspects.

AmishPhysicist @ Feb 21st 2008 6:55PM

Wow. Tea,m this up with the Phyre engine from sony and you've got yourself quite a step in the right direction!

Clutch_beast @ Feb 21st 2008 8:09PM

I've got a guy at Insomniac who works coding pipelining tools. Some of the stuff they're offering is pretty hot shit. No, its not like they're releasing the full source for Future's engine, but it will at the very least raise the playing field for a lot of indie developers.

Curmeo @ Feb 22nd 2008 2:52AM

go Insomniac! Rachet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction > Super Mario Galaxy. but dont take it from me, take it from one of the gods of game development, the man David Jaffe himself:

"I have a Wii, I barely play it -- not because I don't like it or appreciate it, I just, you know, it's not my cup of tea at the moment. Mario Galaxy, I thought was pretty cool.

I've got to be honest: I didn't think that it was as good as Ratchet. I didn't get the huge big deal over it; I thought it was a really good Mario game, but I wasn't like, "Oh my God, it's Mario 64!" I'm totally in the minority in that." http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17120

RFOM is an amazing game considering it was a launch game for a system thats not easy to program for. RFOM2 will no doubt own all competing FPS games.

Trev @ Feb 22nd 2008 9:24AM

You should have stopped after the first two words.

Abscissa @ Feb 22nd 2008 11:37AM

Curmeo: I've never been much of a Ratchet and Clank fan (found the demo of the first one downright boring, personally), but I'm kinda with you on Mario Galaxy being overrated: the camera is total garbage and it has occasional control problems. Two things Ratchet and Clank never seemed to have a problem with.