LithTech

Lithtech

Developer(s)	Touchdown Entertainment
Stable release	Jupiter Extended / 2005
Type	Game Engine
Website	Official Lithtech Jupiter Engine website

Lithtech is a game engine which was initially developed by Monolith Productions in collaboration with Microsoft. Monolith later formed a separate company, LithTech Inc., to deal with further advancements of the engine technology and currently, after a change of its corporate identity, LithTech Inc. is known as Touchdown Entertainment. A number of different video game developers, including Monolith itself, has been using Lithtech to power their first-person shooter games, thus contributing to the success of the engine, establishing it as an alternative to other products, such as the Quake and Unreal engines. The Lithtech engine is continually being developed, and as of 2005, its latest incarnation has been codenamed Jupiter Extended or Jupiter EX for short.

Development history

Originally the Lithtech engine was supposed to be called DirectEngine, as Monolith was developing it for Microsoft to be included as a 3D engine for use with Microsoft's DirectX technology, but that deal fell through. Nevertheless Monolith continued development on their own and were able to license the engine, officially renamed to Lithtech, to other companies. Later, after a corporate reorganization, the Lithtech team was split off into a separate company, LithTech Inc., which is now known as Touchdown Entertainment.

Upon its first release, Lithtech 1.0 did not compare favorably to the more powerful Quake and Unreal engines, lacking advanced graphical features found in its competitors' products. It was however, lauded for its ease of programming: this was a direct result of its development history, being originally planned as part of DirectX and a programming system originally conceived as a way to simplify game development.

Starting with Lithtech 2.0, Lithtech Inc. began a strange notion of creating many different versions of the engine. Monolith released their game No One Lives Forever (NOLF) featuring this version of the engine, however it was later revised to Lithtech 2.2 whose fixes were included in the latest NOLF patch. The LithTech team then continued to improve version 2.2 for its licensees, creating first Lithtech 2.3 and eventually Lithtech 2.4.

Lithtech had a brief stint with Real Networks, developing a custom version of Lithtech which was partially based-off Lithtech 2.2. The new engine was called RealArcade Lithtech (aka Lithtech ESD) and, among its features, it supported streaming media for in-game billboards/ads, and could be used with RealNetworks' gaming site. At one time, RealArcade Lithtech could be licensed by developers if they signed an agreement with Real Networks. This engine was used on an internally-developed title, Tex Atomic's Big Bot Battles.

However, for use of Monolith, LithTech Inc. developed a different engine to be used specifically for the company's newest title, Aliens versus Predator 2. This release was called Lithtech Talon and was based-off Lithtech 2.2, rather than Lithtech 2.4. Because of this choice, Lithtech 2.4, RealArcade Lithtech, and Lithtech Talon resulted to be largely incompatible with each other. The Talon version of the engine had many newer features, including advanced animations (facial animations) and some vehicle support, finally allowing Lithtech to better rival its competitors of that time, the Quake 3 engine and the Unreal Tournament version of the Unreal engine. Lithtech Talon's biggest selling point lay in its reasonably good multiplayer support, more efficient when compared to prior versions of Lithtech multiplayer that featured poor networking code. Despite its good achievements, Talon was intended as only a partial step towards the true next-generation version of the Lithtech engine.

Lithtech 3.0 was being developed concurrently with Talon, but, along with its revisions, Lithtech 3.0 would largely be considered an internal version of the engine. While it was sent to licensees, no games were finished on it. Lithtech 3.x was merely a "stop-gap" version only used as a demonstration of the (now vaporware) Monolith game, Shogo II. The primary feature of Lithtech 3.x was the Distributed Object System, a revolutionary system for MMORPGs and multiplayer. Unfortunately, Lithtech 3.x was also plagued by a significant number of bugs and problems and all games developed with Lithtech 3.x would eventually convert to the newer Lithtech Jupiter or to Talon.

With the demise of the 3.x release, Lithtech Discovery was created as the true MMORPG version of Lithtech. Discovery improved upon the working technology from Lithtech 2.2, but also included the Distributed Object System which was the centerpiece of Lithtech 3.x. The only game title to be powered by Lithtech Discovery has been The Matrix Online, but it should be noticed that this version of the engine was never licensed to any other developer besides Monolith.

Lithtech Jupiter was developed as an alternative to 3.x, but was not branched off of it, the engine instead being completely overhauled with the release of Jupiter. With this version, Lithtech became a worthy competitor to the Unreal and Quake engines: in some ways, the original version of Jupiter was even more technologically advanced than its competitors, since it supported Shader Model 1.x and included a visualization tool, whereas at the time Unreal and Quake only supported CPU-based shaders. However, without the Distributed Object System of Lithtech 3.x, Jupiter started its life with virtually unusable multiplayer support. A custom version of Jupiter was made especially for Monolith, for use with their Tron 2.0 game; this release was codenamed Lithtech Triton. Eventually, Lithtech Triton's new features were merged back into Lithtech Jupiter for licensees.

As of 2005 the latest incarnation of the Lithtech engine is Jupiter Extended (or Jupiter EX for short), which was featured in the highly rated games F.E.A.R. and Condemned: Criminal Origins, both developed by Monolith. Compared to its precursor Jupiter, the Extended version is driven by an all-new DirectX 9 renderer and has seen some other major advancements, including the addition of Havok physics to simulate realistic physics. Along with Havok's character dynamics, Jupiter EX includes also the "Havok Vehicle Kit", which adds support for common vehicle behavior. Further features present in Jupiter EX are normal mapping, parallax mapping, vertex/pixel and high-level shaders, volumetric lighting and lightmapping with the addition of a per-pixel lighting model to allow complex lighting effects to be developed.

Lithtech implementations

The following is a partial list of computer games built with the Lithtech engine. If not otherwise stated the game was/is developed by Monolith Productions.

Lithtech 1.0

• Shogo: Mobile Armor Division (1998)
• Blood II: The Chosen (1998)

Lithtech 2.0/2.2

• No One Lives Forever (2000)
• Sanity: Aiken's Artifact (2000)
• KISS: Psycho Circus by Third Law Interactive (2000)
• Legends of Might and Magic (2001)
• Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza (2002)

RealArcade Lithtech / Lithtech ESD

• Tex Atomic's Big Bot Battles (2001)
• Super Bubble Pop by Zombie Studios (2001)

Lithtech 2.4

• MTH Railking Model Railroad Simulator by Incagold (2001)
• Global Operations by Barking Dog Studios (now known as Rockstar Vancouver) (2002)

Lithtech Talon

• Aliens versus Predator 2 (2001)
• Purge by Tri-Synergy (2002)
• Might and Magic IX (a.k.a Might and Magic IX: Writ of Fate) by New World Computing (2002)
• Western Outlaw: Wanted Dead or Alive by Groove Games (2002)

Lithtech Jupiter

• No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy In H.A.R.M.'s Way (2002)
• Rubies of Eventide by Cyberwar (now known as Mnemosyne) (2002)
• Sniper: Path of Vengeance by Xicat (2002)
• Contract J.A.C.K. (2003)
• Gods and Generals by Anivision (2003)
• Tron 2.0 (Lithtech Triton) (2003)
• Mob Enforcer by Valusoft (2004)
• Face of Mankind by Duplex Systems (2006)
• TerraWars: New York Invasion by Ladyluck Digital Media (2006)

Lithtech Discovery

• The Matrix Online (2005)

Jupiter Extended (EX)

• F.E.A.R. (2005)
• Condemned: Criminal Origins (2005)

External links

• Official Touchdown Entertainment website for the Lithtech Jupiter engine