September 18, 2000 - Paris, France

Microïds™ uses Virtools™ Products to create Fort Boyard: The Quest in a record ten months.

Microïds, a veteran video game company with 14 years of experience, chose Virtools' Creation™ and Dev™ for their first foray into real-time 3D games. Fort Boyard: The Quest is the third game in the series, but the first to be in real-time 3D. The games are all based on the cult TV game show that is celebrating it's 10th year with ever increasing market share.

When Microïds decided to branch out into 3D production, they went looking for the best technology to get their production up, running and out the door in record time. Virtools allowed them to streamline their production process.

The Virtools product line, Creation and Dev, provided the flexibility they needed. Dev permitted the programmers to code the new building blocks and create the specific functionalities of the game quickly and easily. Creation allows these building blocks to be reused for the repetitive portions of the interactivity and programming as well as giving designers and other non-programmers the ability to quickly check animations, integration and other graphical elements. The graphic designers applied the lighting themselves directly in Creation.

Creation and Dev were part of the entire production process. Microïds began the prototyping in May, moving into full production in August, and on the shelves in May. The stellar ten month time to market (including two months for testing and localization) was simplified by the quick learning curve facilitating the training of new staff on the product.

About Virtools
Headquartered in Paris, Virtools produces a suite of interactive 3D development tools and is swiftly earning a strong reputation for itself. Creation permits non-programmers to create rich interactivity through graphs and behavior building blocks, and Dev gives cutting edge game developers access to the underlying code for the power, flexibility and control they need to bring creative ideas to realization. The tools are used extensively by industry leaders to create games, entertainment and web 3D. Both products streamline the production process, are well adapted to episodic content, and are used by industry leaders including Havas Interactive, Microids, Hypnotix, Babel@stal, Appeal and TerraTools GmbH.

For more information, please contact:

Virtools
+33 (0) 1 42 71 86 90
info@virtools.com