- Name
- ZenGin engine
- Aliases
ZenGin engine
1997, The three were working at Greenwood Entertainment and dream of their own game. One day three students of the university in Oldenburg present their engine. Later the four employees leave and found Piranha Bytes. They license the engine of the three students to realize their vision of a RPG and hire the three students, who later are called "mad scientists" internally. At some point, the engine gets the name ZenGin and is being improved throughout the development of Gothic, until game released in 2001.
Concept Images Related Pages
The Engine - Written and translated by Ravenhearth
Flashback, 1997. Alex Brüggemann, Stefan Nyul, Tom Putzki and Michael Hoge are working at Greenwood Entertainment and dream of developing their own game. One day three students of the university in Oldenburg show up - Ulf Wohlers, Dieter Hildebrandt and Bert Speckels - and present their engine. Later the four employees leave and found Piranha Bytes. They license the engine of the three students to realize their vision of a roleplaying game and hire the three students, who later are called "mad scientists" internally. At some point, the engine gets the name ZenGin and is being improved throughout the development of Gothic, until the game is released in 2001. Until then, the three programmers might have left Piranha Bytes, but the engine stayed and powers the impressive RPG. The valley of mines of Gothic could be explored completely without loading screens, only when entering the four big dungeons loading was necessary. The view range in this open game world was gigantic and brought many computers to their knees. Players who gazed upon the valley with the old camp in the middle and sharp mountains in the background for the first time let their jaw drop, because an RPG in 3D still was something new back in the day. Besides openness and view distance the vertical dimension also impressed, which hadn't existed in other games like this before. The game world wasn't simply big, but also unbelievable lively: A dynamic day and night cycle and weather with realistic thunderstorms breathed life into the world, shooting stars were visible at the night sky and from time to time the magic barrier, which separated the valley from the outside world, was rumbling above the heads of the prisoners. Characters were spending the day realistically, they slept, got up, ate, washed themselves, ran around and talked with each other. Furthermore the game impressed with natural looking environments, DirectX 7 integration with hardware transform and lighting and with a beautiful vegetation, which all contributed to immersion. Gothic might didn't became a success over night, maybe also because of the high hardware requirements, the bugs and the strange controls, but developed into a secret tip. Piranha Bytes began with the development of an action game, which was suspended in favor of an addon to Gothic, which itself was later replaced by Gothic 2. It continued the story of the nameless hero, let the player return to the valley of mines and fight against dragons. Gothic 2 was released after only 11 months of development, but the graphics got visibly improved. The models had a higher polycount, the textures were more detailed and the draw distance was higher. The number of objects had been increased and the vegetation got better, which impressed with trees weighing in the wind. The game used DirectX 8 for better lighting and the water was prettier as well. There was a dynamic day and night cycle again and the game world could be explored without any loading screens, except when switching to one of the other two regions. Especially impressive was the densively populated harbour town Khorinis with it's many critizens and traders, which could bring the processor to it's knees pretty easily though. Gothic 2 had problems with bugs at release as well, but they were mostly fixed and so the game became a hit pretty fast. Ten months later the addon Night of the Raven followed, which is considered to be one of the best RPG addons of all time and transformed Gothic 2 into an immortal classic. NotR brought players to Jahrkendar, a previously unreachable part of Khorinis, in which the valley of makers and a desert canyon can be found and pirates wreak havoc. The addon improved the graphics only slightly, for example with a shine effects for metallic objects like cannons.