New technology to make games up to 70% smaller

Their new programs, that they hope development artists will soon be using as an industry standard, are called ProFX and MaP Zone 2. Their ambition is to keep the graphical quality of game textures at the same standards as current games, whilst dramatically reducing the amount of data required for the game to work.

The implications of such a technology would be far reaching. As the current trend of digital distribution gains momentum a huge emphasis is being placed on games being made smaller and thus downloadable quicker. Their claim is that the current tool of choice for most games artists, Adobe Photoshop, is not ideally suited to making textures for games.

I was doubtful of this technology; however the company ran a demo that persuaded me otherwise. In the demo they had a bathroom full of beautiful textures, then with the flick of a button the bathroom took a more hellish look – all the while the textures looked the equal of Half Life 2.