Sproing Interactive Media GmbH, Viena, anunció hoy que actualmente está desarrollando el juego “survival horror” Cursed Mountain junto con Deep Silver para el Nintendo Wii. El jugador toma el papel de un valiente alpinista mientras sube las Himalayas en búsqueda de su hermano perdido. A medida que sube la montaña, se encuentra una antigua maldición: las almas de las personas que murieron en esa región están atrapadas en el limbo, atrapadas en la Mundo de las Sombras.

El equipo de Sproing se basa en su motor de juego “Athena”, para una representación del Himalaya a una calidad nunca antes vista en el Wii. Algunos de los puntos más destacados de “Athena” son HDR-Rendering,  simulaciones de shader desarrolladas especialmente para Wii con el fin de mostrar el hielo, el calor y el agua (reflexiones realistas y refracciones), un ultra-rápido sistema de partículas para representar tormentas de nieve, suaves partículas realísticas para la niebla y el humo, la profundidad de campo, motion blur, suaves sombras dinámicas, armónicos esféricos de iluminación, así como un alto nivel de rendimiento de detalle con el fin de proporcionar larga distancia de visualización de toda el área.

Sproing Announces First Details Behind The Technology Driving Deep Silver’s Cursed Mountain for Wii

VIENNA, Austria – August 11, 2008 – Sproing Interactive Media GmbH, Vienna, today announced that is currently developing the Wii™ Survival Horror game Cursed Mountain for, and together with, Deep Silver. The player takes on the role of a fearless mountaineer as he climbs into the Himalayas on a quest to find his lost brother. As he ascends the mountain, he encounters an ancient curse: the souls of the people who died in that region are stuck in limbo, caught in the Shadow World. Deep Silver announced the first details of the upcoming Wii hit title Cursed Mountain on July 31st.

“Aside from the challenge to develop an innovative title with spectacular levels and new controls, the focus in Cursed Mountain is the overwhelming environment of the Himalayas,” said Harald Riegler, CEO of Sproing. “It is really important to us that the player experiences nature’s powers as realistically as possible, and that the game’s viewing distance allows the player to see the monumental landscapes at all times. We are also going to great lengths to make the dead souls look as convincing as possible in order to deliver the level of immersion necessary for really effective and believable survival horror.”

To deliver on these goals, the Sproing team relies on its proprietary “Athena” game engine, which is rendering the Himalayas on Wii at a quality never seen before. The engine highlights of “Athena” include amongst others, HDR-Rendering, shader simulations developed especially for Wii in order to display ice, heat and water (realistic reflections and refractions), an ultra-fast particle system for amazing snow storms, soft particles for realistic fog and smoke, depth of field, motion blur, dynamic soft shadows, spherical harmonics lighting, as well as a high performance level-of-detail and streaming system in order to provide long viewing distance of the entire surrounding. In order to create an exciting atmosphere when battling the ghosts, the game employs a number of custom-created special effects such as the shader simulations as well as a newly developed post-processing framework. “Our engine technology really takes the Wii hardware to its limits and Wii gamers can really look forward to a heart-stopping, and breath-taking world that comes alive with this title,” said Gerhard Seiler, Technical Director of Sproing.

Cursed Mountain will be released worldwide for Wii in 2009. More information is available at: http://cursedmountain.deepsilver.com