We haven’t yet explained what we are doing behind the scenes, so here’s a summary of what we have in the works. Basically, we’re building the stuff that makes games tick. As an example, many of the larger companies use in-house technology to develop multiple games. The cost to develop the first game is significantly more than the second. Why is this? The answer is re-usability. Unfortunately, because TidalWare is a latecomer, we have to start from scratch. That means we need to develop the technology that mainstream development studios have worked on for the past decade.

The good news is that today, there exists more resources, software and knowledge than ever before. We are taking full advantage of this. Now, instead of reinventing the wheel, we can use existing open source libraries such as Ogre 3D. In doing so, we have saved a tremendous amount of time and cost, which means we can concentrate on developing what is important: games.

At the same time, however, we are also developing our own in-house technology from the ground-up, advancing as we grow. TIDE (TidalEngine) is our game engine in development. TIDE is currently a wrapper for multiple libraries (graphics, audio, physics, networking etc.). However, over time we plan to remove each library consecutively and replace it with our own implementations. Tide::Graphics is our first hurdle, and will eventually replace Ogre.

Tide::Graphics is a pure OpenGL engine. We plan to have no (or few) fixed-functions, making it entirely shader-based. We have abstracted OpenGL 2.0 in preparation for a version 3.0 replacement. Our ultimate aim is to develop a cross-platform equivalent to DirectX 10 ‘power-engines’ (e.g. CryEngine – yeah, in our dreams), and show off the real power of OpenGL 3.0. More info on this to follow.

Other projects include a game editor (TidalEd). This allows us to easily build levels, modify object properties with our component-based system, edit materials, create animations, paint terrain, design game logic and so on. This will also be cross-platform.

We are still a long way off from achieving our goals, but as long as we work hard and keep at it, we could indeed catch up with the current game industry in a fraction of the time and cost.