GDC 2015: Oxide Games and Stardock Discuss Mantle, DirectX 12, and Vulkan [VIDEO]

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

Take a peek at the first game using Oxide's Nitrous engine

The future of AMD's Mantle is up in the air since AMD recently told developers to focus on DirectX 12 instead. However, it doesn't appear as though AMD is ready to completely dismantle its API, which will have a future in Vulkan, the next version of the OpenGL API. You may recall that Oxide Games was a big proponent of Mantle -- check out our interview from a year ago. How does Oxide feel today? To find out, we headed to Oxide's booth at GDC and talked about a number of things.
The first thing Oxide showed us was a forthcoming game called Ashes of the Singularity. It's a massively large RTS game developed with Stardock and the first to use Oxide's Nitrous engine, which the company claims can render 10,000 individual units at the same time. The goal with Ashes of the Singularity (other than to make money, of course) is to bring "an unprecedented scale" to the RTS category.
Oxide tells us the Nitrous engine has been ported to DX12. The company is also working with Vulkan to make sure it emerges as a top class API. Unfortunately, Oxide wasn't willing to divulge much about Vulkan at this early stage.
One thing gamers with high-end rigs will be happy to know is that Oxide developed Ashes of the Singularity to take advantage of top-shelf hardware, if you have it. The beefier your rig, the more settings you can crank up. On the flipside, owners of lower end hardware can dial things down for a playable experience.
Early Access will be available this summer, and if all goes well, the game will release this winter. Here's more.



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