RenderWare
Cross-platform 3D middleware
RenderWare began in 1994 as Criterion Software's software-only 3D library for 386 and 486 PCs, was rewritten from scratch as RenderWare3 for the PlayStation 2 generation, powered Grand Theft Auto III after DMA Design lost most of its staff, and went to Electronic Arts with Criterion in 2004.
RenderWare was Criterion Software’s 3D graphics library. It launched in 1994 as a software-only renderer for 386 and 486 PCs, was thrown away and rewritten as RenderWare3 for the PlayStation 2 generation, and by 2004 sat inside Grand Theft Auto, Tony Hawk’s and Pro Evolution Soccer. That year Electronic Arts bought Criterion, and the rest of the industry found its biggest franchises depended on a rival’s property.
Fast facts
- Developer: Criterion Software, Guildford — a subsidiary of Canon at launch.
- Announced: early 1994, for Mac, PC and Sun; 40,000 polygons a second on a 486.
- RenderWare3: 2000, “doesn’t share a single line of code with the previous versions”; in use at more than 170 studios.
- Named users: Konami’s Japanese studios (except the Metal Gear Solid 2 team), DMA Design for Grand Theft Auto III, Midway, THQ, Interplay, UbiSoft.
- EA acquisition: 2004; EA put RenderWare in “roughly 25 per cent of all games in development”.
The 1994 launch
Edge reported the announcement in April 1994: “Criterion Software, subsidiary of the multi-billion Canon Inc, have just announced, to general disbelief, a software solution to the problem of realtime 3D modelling.” Journalists at the launch “couldn’t believe that what they were seeing was being generated in realtime on a 486 portable PC”. The figures were 40,000 polygons a second on an unenhanced 486, a 386SX with 4 MB under Windows 3.1 as the minimum, and 100,000 polygons a second predicted for a Pentium.
The product was defined by what it was not. “RenderWare is not an application; it’s a component, designed to exist within applications. It doesn’t take over the machine; in effect it coexists with 2D graphics as a service module, on which the application developer draws.” It had launched on Mac, PC and Sun, with ports promised to be “easy”, and Criterion would take “a royalty on every software unit with RenderWare graphics” — “less than a dollar or two” on a mass-market game. The first shipping application was a Mathematica visualiser, not a game.
RenderWare3
By October 2000 Criterion’s technical director Adam Billyard was telling Edge that RenderWare3 was “currently being used to create games in more than 170 studios worldwide”, and that it “doesn’t share a single line of code with the previous versions… We threw the whole thing away and started again.” The first RenderWare PlayStation 2 titles were shipping in Japan from ASCII and Jaleco; Interplay and UbiSoft had signed; and Konami had adopted it “in all its Japanese studios, with the notable exception of Hideo Kojima and his Metal Gear Solid 2 team”.
Billyard was careful about what cross-platform meant: “It absolutely isn’t just press a button and out pops a Dreamcast version.” Developers, he said, should still play to each platform’s strengths.
Grand Theft Auto III
Edge’s Christmas 2001 middleware feature gives the reason DMA Design used RenderWare for Grand Theft Auto III. DMA had 3D experience from Body Harvest and Wild Metal Country, “but when most of the staff left, following Take Two’s relocation of the studio from Dundee to Edinburgh, middleware was required to bring the team up to speed”. Billyard’s view of that situation: “if a studio’s engine team goes walkies, that’s great for us.”
The platform
The library grew into a suite. In 2002 Edge reported RenderWare Audio joining what Criterion called RenderWare Platform; in 2003 Criterion bought the rights to MathEngine’s Karma and shipped it as RenderWare Physics; RenderWare Studio was the development framework around them.
EA
When Electronic Arts bought Criterion in 2004, Edge argued the deal “boils down to RenderWare”. With the library “locked into the development pipeline of some hugely profitable franchises such as Rockstar’s GTA, Activision’s Tony Hawk’s skating games and Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer, the problem for publishers is that these titles are now dependent on intellectual property owned by their biggest rival.” Criterion’s CEO David Lau-Kee said the company would “provide precisely the same technology internally as we provide externally”; EA’s Bruce McMillan put RenderWare in “roughly 25 per cent of all games in development”. The same issue was looking forward to RenderWare 4 on the next generation of consoles, and to Burnout 3, Criterion’s own game on its own library.