GDC 09: Attention Future Developers, Insomniac’s Got Your Back

Hello from GDC 09! My name is Mike Acton and I’m the Engine Director at Insomniac Games. Last year at GDC we announced our Nocturnal Initiative and how we were going to use that to share some of the source code and research that happens here at Insomniac Games with the industry as a whole. I’m really pleased to say that over the last year we’ve seen a lot of good responses to that initiative. From individual students, to large studios and publishers, and even companies outside the industry, we’ve seen that people are interested in using what we have offered and contributing back ideas and changes.

Nocturnal is really about giving back to the industry. We know that we’re here because we learned from those that came before us and we have a responsibility to give back in turn. We take that responsibility very seriously and so we’ve worked hard to make sure we’ve added regularly to both our research documentation and source code over the last year. Just about every two weeks we release something new with the hope that we can help someone out there. Even when studios decide not to use our code or research directly, we know that we’ve at least been able to inspire conversation and discussion about our approaches within other studios. And getting people communicating and debating ideas is always a good thing!

Today, we’re adding something that I think is very neat to the Nocturnal code base. We’re very proud of the research we did and the final effect of the water system used in Resistance 2 and as of today both that code and documentation that describes the techniques in detail is available on nocturnal.insomniacgames.com – free to use for any purpose. I can only hope that one of you out there will take that and improve on it! (And you know if you want to share those improvements back with the community in turn, that would be awesome!)

Thanks to everyone in the community that’s checked out the source code on Nocturnal or read our R&D papers and given us feedback. Keep it up!