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Jury Rig Software is the new middleware company behind memory manager platform Elephant.
Formed in May 2010, the young tool provider says its team are all seasoned professionals and they have experience of working on almost every gaming platform over the last 15 years.
Company director Darren Vine says the company was established to fill a gap in the memory allocator market, after it found that other tools in the space were lacking in many areas, particularly in bug tracking solutions.
“Memory issues are some of the hardest to track down and we aim to make that easier,” explains Vine.
“Our goal is to provide middleware that fits in seamlessly with the developer’s game to let them focus on the areas that matter to them.”
He adds that Jury Rig’s ambition is to help devs get the most out of the memory available to them.
“By providing superior tools we aim to reduce the time they spend debugging memory issues, allowing them to produce better games.”
The tool provider’s Elephant memory manager, available for all major platforms, has been created to match these aims, and the needs of the industry it serves.
Designed specifically for games, Vine says it comes with features not usually provided by current memory software, including heaps and pools and advanced debugging aids to track down leaks and errors.
It also comes packaged with visual tool Goldfish, which makes it easier to track a game’s memory usage in real time and trace errors quickly.
Vine believes middleware is becoming increasingly more important as games grow and the costs of developing them increase, and that Elephant is able to meet industry demands. He also reveals that Jury Rig Software is willing to adapt to satisfy the needs of its customers.
“By providing small, high quality middleware we can adapt to the needs of our clients quickly,” he says.
“Our software can be integrated and running within minutes across multiple platforms. Elephant is flexible to the needs of the developer and the hardware.
"If a feature is requested, we can normally have it implemented for the customer in a matter of hours.”
He adds Jury Rig’s ambition is to help developers get the most out of the memory available to them.
“By providing superior tools we aim to reduce the time they spend debugging memory issues, allowing them to produce better games,” he says.
Elephant has been used on games such as Egosoft’s PC bound space trading and combat simulator X Rebirth, along with many other titles being readied for ‘a wide range of platforms’ all due for release in 2012.
The next step for the middleware provider is to bring the tools to Android and iOS, which Vine says will be available shortly for trial directly from the company’s website.
He added that Jury Rig will also soon be updating to a new version that that will include: “many new features to help with debugging and data gathering.”
Indie developers can purchase the software from $413, whilst larger commercial studios can license the tool from $1,650. Two per cent of all purchases go to UK charity SpecialEffect.
