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Edge of Chaos

The Heavy Corvette lets loose with an assault cannon.

One hundred years have passed since the end of the first Independence War, and far from the riches of the core worlds, trouble is brewing.

Join the oppressed citizens of the Badlands Cluster as they strike back at their corporate masters. Fight off marauder attacks, loot illegal arms shipments, and struggle to keep humanity from the brink of a deadly civil war.

Edge of Chaos was developed by Particle Systems for Infogrames Entertainment. It is a freeform space combat simulation coupling open ended space combat and piracy with a dramatic storyline and scripted missions. It broke new ground in presenting a rich, complex space simulation through a simplified, more accessible interface.

Gallery

Using an LDSI missile to stop a fleeing tug

A patrol combatant maneuvers in the glare of a blue dwarf star

Using a mining laser to force a freighter to release its cargo

Navigating the cluster using the starmap

Cal tries to keep his sluggish tug away from incoming missiles

The HUD display breaks up under heavy fire

About Edge of Chaos

Will was Lead Programmer for Edge of Chaos. He designed the game engine and scripting language, wrote the script compiler, linker and virtual machine, and developed the highly regarded DirectX 7 renderer responsible for the game’s fantastic visuals. He also developed the physics model, most of the internal ship simulation software, the HUD, and many of the visual effects. His favourite contribution was probably finding new and exciting ways to blow things up.

Edge of Chaos was released on the PC by Infogrames (now Atari) in 2001, and received very positive reviews from press and gamers.

More information

Our key contributions

Design of an object-oriented game engine from the ground up, and supervision of its implementation.
Introduction and maintenance of company coding standards and C++ best practices guidelines.
Design of a scripting language for game logic, grammar development, and implementation of a compiler, dynamic linker and virtual machine.
Production of a high-quality real-time renderer using DirectX 7, supporting advanced shading techniques for more realistic models even on older, less capable graphics cards.
Development of a Newtonian physics simulator for non-uniform rigid bodies.
Production of many of the visual effects for the project, such as cascading dramatic explosions, shield impacts, engine effects, weapons fire, trails, damage
effects, sun lighting simulation and so on. This involved designing the effect, writing and optimising custom rendering code, and in many cases producing art assets such as texture maps and scene files.
Designed and implementation of the heads-up display. This involved presenting a large amount of ever-changing information efficiently, comprehensibly and stylishly, and included the production of the art assets and iconography.
Production of the game installer and upgrade system using Wise Installbuilder, including the development of an automated build process for the different game SKUs.