Develop Awards 2014 – The Finalists: Tools – Production

HANSOFT 7.5

Hansoft is an agile tool helping industry leaders get the most out of their teams, facilitating innovation and enabling executive decision making.

One of the most widely used tools for game development projects of all types and sizes around the world, Hansoft 7.5 released in January 2014, focusing on improvements for large and complex agile projects. Additions include flexible release tagging, allowing the targeting of several releases in one sprint and letting developers do release planning in the product backlog.

With Hansoft 8 already announced and set to introduce even more new features, Hansoft small team edition gaining in popularity and Hansoft educational edition being used in more than 50 schools worldwide, Hansoft looks set to remain at the forefront of team collaboration and management tools.

MARMALADE JUICE

Marmalade Juice gives developers the ability to recompile their iOS projects natively for Android, quickly and easily delivering games to a platform expected to exceed one billion users in 2014.

Allowing development teams to use a single code base and a single set of tools, Marmalade Juice lets users retain the workflow they’re familiar with, without having to learn the Android SDK and rewrite the application from scratch.

Providing desktop emulation of any device, as well as a rich library of third-party extensions, Marmalade Juice has been used for a wide variety of projects across numerous genres and styles. 

Not just an iOS porting platform, Marmalade Juice is an integrated part of the Marmalade SDK, promising to allow the use of both Objective C and C++ to target a wide range of platforms very easily.

PERFORCE

Perforce has been providing users with market-leading version management systems for almost 20 years, allowing users to get their products and services to market more quickly. For games studios that encompasses source code and asset management for graphics, video, audio and marketing documents.

Perforce has been used by 18 of the world’s top 20 games studios, encompassing companies both large and small including Ubisoft, Rebellion, Crytek, Epic Games and Jagex. Across all industries, Perforce has over 400,000 customers in over 10,500 organisations.

Perforce regularly pushes new boundaries with its tools, ensuring that development keeps functioning smoothly and efficiently with the most demanding real-time games and animations.

SHOTGUN

Shotgun Software’s trusted system for secure, efficient production management and review, is now optimised for integration into game-specific workflows.

Primed to tackle increasing challenges in the game industry, Shotgun provides a production feedback loop that is web-based and seamless, making project work easier, even when it’s managed across multiple facilities with teams distributed around the globe. 

Developed in collaboration with over thirty top studios including Avalanche, Microsoft Games Studios and EA, Shotgun is being used to manage art assets and creative teams by numerous studios including Ubisoft Sweden, Criterion Games, DICE, Avalanche Studios and OKTA.

With the recent addition of Perforce to speed game development by streamlining team collaboration, Shotgun is being used by some of the largest teams to make the largest games on the market.

SIMPLYGON

One of the few successful independent middleware companies in the game industry, Simplygon is also the leading tool for automating 3D optimisation, helping game developers across the world to save millions of dollars.

Simplygon offers game developers get all the benefits of optimisation techniques including level of detail, draw-call reduction, scene optimisation and more, without the usual drawbacks.

The fifth iteration of Simplygon 5 launched in 2013, introducing a slew of improvements and new features. The Simplygon Cloud service in Unity went into beta also, offering indie teams a freemium alternative to Simplygon’s AAA tool.

In fact, Simplygon is so good that several employees have been spontaneously hugged by clients. So the bosses claim, anyway.

PS4 DEVELOPER ENVIRONMENT

SN Systems has created the programming tools used on every PlayStation home console and handheld since the platform emerged in 1991. The company’s work on the PlayStation 4 development environment is the result of all that experience.

Representing five years of work following a postmortem of the PlayStation 3, SCE teams were determined to learn lessons and set themselves a goal of providing game developers with a development environment focussed on ease of use.

As such, the PS4 development environment is the most advanced to date, comprising tools for programmers, artists, designers and testers, designed to be easy to use by all experience levels. Repeatedly praised by developers lauding the environment for its accessibility, it’s fair to say SN Systems’ work has been a tremendous success.

About The Develop Awards 

The 2014 Develop Awards will take place on Wednesday, July 9th at the Hilton Metropole Hotel in Brighton, and recognises the best innovators and development talent in the UK and Europe.

If you want to attend, you can book single seats and standard or gold tables by contacting Kathryn.Humphrey@intentmedia.co.uk or calling 01992 535646.

There are multiple new awards this year, with a total of 24 prizes up for grabs, while PlayStation 4 lead architect Mark Cerny is 2014’s Development Legend.

There is a host of big names backing this year’s Develop Awards, including Crytek and Deep Silver as Platinum Partners, a slew of Gold Partners in King, UKIE, Amiqus, Keywords International, Codemasters, Perforce, Cubic Motion and Unity, Event Partners Wales Interactive, InnoGames and Tandem Events and Table Gift Partner OPM. Epic Games is Drinks Reception Partner.

For more information on the sponsorship and partnership opportunities still available, contact Alex.Boucher@intentmedia.co.uk or call 01992 535647.

You can find out more about the Develop Awards at the official Develop Awards website.