Insomniac Games Announces 'Nocturnal Initiative'

Independent console games developer Insomniac Games, creators of the multimillion-selling Ratchet & Clank(R) and Resistance(TM) franchises, today unveiled a tech-sharing initiative dubbed 'Nocturnal' in which it will share elements of its technology source code and presentations free of charge with the worldwide development community.

"The Nocturnal initiative is designed to encourage greater communication and information sharing among the development community because it will ultimately enable us all to create better games at a lower development cost," said Mike Acton, engine director, Insomniac Games. "And, in the end, it's all about making great games."

Nocturnal is being deployed in separate phases. The first phase, Insomniac's "R&D" site (http://www.insomniacgames.com/tech/techpage.php), launched in August 2007, and has been updated every Wednesday with new presentations, research and articles since. Phase two will be launched shortly, and will open some of Insomniac's source code under a liberal open-source license. Source code will be documented and downloadable from a wiki at (http://nocturnal.insomniacgames.com). Insomniac will further support Nocturnal by releasing additional source code, research and presentations in the future.

"We feel that the time has come to share what we have learned, and learn from others to improve our solutions to the common problems that present themselves when making a game," said Geoff Evans, an Insomniac senior tools programmer who helped develop and launch Nocturnal.