evolution-engine posts

More details of The Darkness II are coming out following the game's official announcement last week. Big Download first reported that the first person shooter sequel will use developer Digital Extremes' in-house Evolution Engine. Now Hell Descent reports that Mike Patton will indeed return to voice the title role of the demon in The Darkness II.

Patton, best known as the lead singer in the rock band Faith No More, started his voice acting work with the original game back in 2007. Since then he has provided voices for other games such as Portal, both Left 4 Dead games and as the lead role in the 2009 Bionic Commando revival. The Darkness II is scheduled to be released via publisher 2K Games this fall.

[Via VG247.com]

Big Download has learned that the just announced first person shooter sequel The Darkness II, developed by Digital Extremes, will be using the next version of the developer's own in-house Evolution Engine for its graphics base. This bit of news was confirmed by Digital Extremes' PR rep via an email.

While most of Digital Extremes' previous game projects have used various versions of Epic Games' Unreal Engine it created the Evolution Engine for its 2008 third person action game Dark Sector. There's no word on what new features will be added to the new verison of the engine for use in The Darkness II, which is due out this fall for the PC and other platforms. The developer does offer third party developers a way to license the Evolution Engine for games made outside of Digital Extremes.

There's a ton of different third party game engines to license these days: The Unreal Engine, the Source Engine, Gamebryo and others. Now developers Digital Extremes have quietly revealed on their web site that they are providing their own in-house technology, the Evolution Engine, to third party developers.

Digital Extremes, which used Epic's Unreal Engine for most of their previous projects, created their own Evolution Engine for their last major stand alone project, the 2008 third person action game Dark Sector (which was ported to the PC a few months ago). The company's Evolution Engine web site goes into detail about the various features of the technology which can be used for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 platforms. The page does not include a price point for licensing the engine; presumably that info comes after prospective buyers sign an NDA. It should be interesting to see how many clients use Digital Extremes' technology, especially in such a competitive market with tons of other middleware choices.