Remember Oxide’s impressive Star Swarm tech demo from last year? 10,000 spaceships duked it out in a complex dance in space, with detailed explosions going off in every direction. The tech demo showed off the 64-bit Nitrous Engine and AMD’s Mantle API.
At GDC, the developer finally showed off the game that they’ve been using the tech for: Ashes of the Singularity. And gosh, does it look stunning. Thousands of units attempting to destroy each other, hundreds of explosions with their own light sources, a bewildering level of complexity.
The Ashes of the Singularity demo, which was of one titanic battle between robots amid rolling, green hills, is something that wouldn’t be possible without DX12 or APIs like Mantle or Vulkan, especially at the 4K resolution it was being displayed at.
“We’re going to see completely new classes of games, that we can’t even imagine yet,” said publisher Stardock’s CEO Brad Wardell.
Ashes of the Singularity will move into beta this summer, with a final release planned for next winter.