Inside Civilisation: Revolution

Like building a civilisation, the foundations for Revolution had to be placed first before Firaxis could even begin thinking about launching an assault on the console generation. To prepare, the developer enlisted the aid of Emergent Game Technology’s Gamebryo middleware. If the name sounds familiar, it should - it’s the same engine used by Bethesda for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and the upcoming Fallout 3. Seeing just how glorious Oblivion was, it’s not hard to argue that Gamebryo was a good choice.

“We’ve been using this engine since Pirates! and it just made sense to keep all of our previous efforts as we moved forward into the next generation,” says Caudill. “We’ve built the gameplay engine from scratch. We have a very talented team of programmers working on the game and once we’re finished we’ll have a strong engine on which to build future games.”



One of the advantages of Gamebryo is that it’s designed to work on all platforms. That doesn’t necessarily mean all platforms are created equally, however. Caudill admits that the developer has found the Xbox 360 more comfortable to work on, but he attributes this to the company’s previous experience with the console while creating Pirates!.

“The PS3 has probably been the most challenging, since it’s completely new to us and the DS seemed to just flow pretty naturally. It’s been a great learning experience for our teams and we’re excited to have this new depth of development knowledge as we move forward.”