Interview with Josiah Pisciotta of Chronic Logic NVIDIA: Chronic Logic has been involved in the production of several bridge-building games. Could you tell us how these bridge-building games have evolved?

JP: In 2000, Alex Austin took the physics engine that he was developed for a vehicle combat game, and created a game called Bridge Builder*. After he released the 15 level demo on the Internet, the server that was hosting the game soon became inundated with downloads. This was the first indicator that a bridge-building game had mass-market possibilities. What followed were numerous dedicated fan sites, an appearance in a German television show, and various mentions in magazines, including PC Gamer and Der Spiegel. Seeing the response from the Bridge Builder* demo, Chronic Logic decided to make a full bridge building game. Pontifex was released in October of 2001. It improved on the graphics of its predecessor, as well as adding new building materials such as cables. Pontifex was met with a very positive reaction from fans around the world. Chronic Logic and community web sites ran contests to see who could build the cheapest bridges, and the built-in level editor allowed fans to create bridge-building challenges. Chronic Logic, with lots of feedback from bridge building fans, soon began working on a sequel to Pontifex named Pontifex II. In Oct 2002 Pontifex II was released featuring much-improved graphics and variety of bridges that could be constructed, including suspension bridges and drawbridges. Pontifex II was later renamed to Bridge Construction Set, a name that people would relate to a bridge-building game. In 2003, Chronic Logic teamed up with NVIDIA to create Bridge It, the newest bridge-building game.

* Bridge Builder is a trademark of Pre-Engineering Software Corporation.

NVIDIA: What prompted the creation of Bridge It, your newest puzzle title?

JP: Throughout the history of our bridge-building games, we have been looking for ways to improve them. When nVidia offered to enhance the graphics of our Bridge Construction Set, we felt this would be another great improvement to our game. We also hoped that by enhancing the graphics, we would be able to reach a larger audience and get new people to try their hands at bridge building.

NVIDIA: How is Bridge It different from its predecessor, Bridge Construction Set?

JP: Bridge It is a graphically superior version of Bridge Construction Set. The user interface has been improved and it contains a few new levels as well. It also includes levels with earthquakes and different vehicles.

NVIDIA: Is Bridge It solely targeted at physics enthusiasts? Can casual gamers appreciate building bridges as well?

JP: Anyone can enjoy building bridges. We feel that with the beautiful graphics and addicting gameplay of Bridge It, almost anyone should be able to enjoy playing. The physics are transparent to the player, so you don't have use math and civil engineering to build bridges.

NVIDIA: What's the latest word on a release date for Bridge It? Do you have any plans to port it to the home consoles?

JP: Bridge It will be released in late September. We do not have any plans to port Bridge It to consoles, but are open to any opportunity for other game markets.

Interview with Andrew Edelsten of Auran NVIDIA: What is your relationship with Chronic Logic? What compelled both companies to join forces and create Bridge It?

AE: Well, it was actually NVIDIA's idea to combine Chronic Logic's great game with Auran's 3D technology (the Auran Jet engine). I mean, everyone here had played either Bridge Builder or Pontifex II, but we hadn't worked with the Chronic Logic guys before. So, NVIDIA contacted us saying they wanted to make a really fun but beautiful game to stress their new hardware. NVIDIA thought, with our solid technology and games experience, Auran would be the perfect developer to pull this off. We set off from there. It certainly has been an adventure and a great test for our graphics engine, which has performed very well.

NVIDIA: What special graphical effects does the Auran Jet rendering engine add to Bridge It?

AE: We built Bridge It using as many features of the engine as we could. This obviously covers some of the new high-end rendering features, but we also used Jet's sound system to get true 3D and ambient sound effects into the game quickly. On the graphics front, as we were only targeting high spec NVIDIA cards, so we really went to town. The graphics get immediate benefit from high polygon counts and high resolution textures, but also from shaders. Given the GeForce FX's shader processing power, we were able to enhance the game using GPU-hungry effects such as real-time shadows, specular highlighting, real-time reflection and refraction (the river is my personal favorite) as well as less demanding features like bump-mapping, sun effects, grass and forced anisotropic filtering on certain textures (e.g. the roads).

NVIDIA: Do any of the new graphical features impact gameplay?

AE: The graphical features in Bridge It don't impact the physics directly mainly because the game is hard enough as it stands! :) Weather effects that impact the structural integrity of the bridge components (for instance, the temperature) were something that we considered but given the short development cycle, we could not include. It would have been nice, but I think Bridge It is pretty feature-packed and will be a real challenge; the reproducible earthquakes and scoring should appeal to fans of the original Pontifex II.

NVIDIA: What PC system specs will give the player an optimal Bridge It experience?

AE: Bridge It really was designed for high-spec machines--especially high-end graphics cards like the GeForce FX series. In essence, the more hardware you have, the more the engine will use. Having said that, while a fast CPU and system will certainly help the game along--for instance, there are literally hundreds of megabytes of textures and meshes to load--the main speed increase once you are in the game will come from a fast graphics card. A GeForce 4 Ti will run Bridge It quite nicely, but without all the graphical features, and it will obviously be slower than the targeted GeForce FX hardware.

NVIDIA: What graphics cards will support Bridge It?

AE: Bridge It was designed for and will only run on NVIDIA hardware (GeForce 4 Ti or better). Many of the shaders are using GeForce FX specific features and our team and the NVIDIA demo team worked together to add effects that would really push the limits of the FX. I think the Jet engine and the GeForce FX really show their power by handling all the shaders we throwing at them. I guess, when you look at each effect on its own you think, "yeah, not bad," but the thing is, they are all in the scene together. That's impressive.