GDC: Insomniac Announces Tech-Sharing 'Nocturnal Initiative'

Resistance and Ratchet & Clank developer Insomniac Games has announced the 'Nocturnal Initiative,' a tech-sharing program in which it plans to share elements of its source code and presentations to worldwide developers free of charge. The company says Nocturnal will be deployed in separate phases, the first of which was the previously reported launch of its R&D site in August 2007, which is still updated every Wednesday with new presentations, research and articles since. The second phase, says Insomniac, will be the release of source code under a liberal open-source license, which will be documented and downloadable from an Insomniac wiki, and updated at a later date with further source code, research and presentations in the future. Said engineer Mike Acton, "The Nocturnal initiative is designed to encourage greater communication and information sharing among the development community because it will ultimately enable us all to create better games at a lower development cost. And, in the end, it's all about making great games."