Turbulenz was a

video game development Video game development (sometimes shortened to gamedev) is the process of creating a video game. It is a multidisciplinary practice, involving programming, design, art, audio, user interface, and writing. Each of those may be made up of more speci ...

company based in the United Kingdom, and was focused on

HTML5 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...

game development. They created a HTML5

game engine A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games which generally includes relevant libraries and support programs such as a level editor. The "engine" terminology is akin to the term " software engine" u ...

also named Turbulenz. The company published third party video games as well as developing their own.

History

Turbulenz was founded in 2009 in

Guildford Guildford () is a town in west Surrey, England, around south-west of central London. As of the 2011 census, the town has a population of about 77,000 and is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford, which had around inhabitants in . The nam ...

, United Kingdom, by several former industry veteran from

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by former Apple Inc., Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry ...

and Criterion, after raising $5 million in funding. Some of the funds raised were set aside to help developers work on browser game. Gavin Shields is the

chief operating officer A chief operating officer (COO), also called chief operations officer, is an executive in charge of the daily operations of an organization (i.e. personnel, resources, and logistics). COOs are usually second-in-command immediately after the C ...

, and David Galeano is the chief technology officer (CTO). The company's goal is to create an end-to-end platform for creating, publishing and monetizing web games. In 2012, several game industry veterans from

Lionhead Studios Lionhead Studios Limited was a British video game developer founded in July 1997 by Peter Molyneux, Mark Webley, Tim Rance, and Steve Jackson (British game designer), Steve Jackson. The company is best known for the ''Black & White (series), Bl ...

joined the company to create a new game. Shields stated that the ability to recruit industry veterans validated the company's direction in promoting HTML5 gaming.

Turbulenz engine

Turbulenz's primary product is an

. It supports

3D graphics 3D computer graphics, sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics, are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for the purposes of perfor ...

, dynamic lighting,

shadow map Shadow mapping or shadowing projection is a process by which shadows are added to 3D computer graphics. This concept was introduced by Lance Williams (graphics researcher), Lance Williams in 1978, in a paper entitled "Casting curved shadows on c ...

s, physics, 2D animations, and audio. It relies on

WebGL WebGL (short for Web Graphics Library) is a JavaScript Application programming interface, API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-in (computing), plug-ins. WebGL is fully integra ...

Web Audio HTML audio is a subject of the HTML specification, incorporating audio, including speech to text, all in the browser. <audio> element The element represents a sound, or an audio stream. It is commonly used to play back a single audio fil ...

and

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

, and is intended to support the development of web browser based games. The engine is supported by a development community hub site and a consumer store site. In 2013, the engine was made

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

under the

MIT license The MIT License is a permissive software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts very few restrictions on reuse and therefore has high license compatibility. Unl ...

. It was the first 3D JavaScript engine to be made open source. At the time, there were over 3000 developers working with the engine, and the company was working towards mobile and tablet support. The engine has been used for third party games such as Denki's '' Save the Day'' and Xona Games' '' Score Rush''. In 2015, it was announced that Turbulenz's game Boundless, which uses the

engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ge ...

, would be released on

PlayStation 4 The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013, in ...

. In 2021, it was bought by Larian Studios and integrated

Games

Turbulenz has also developed and released games using its engine. The games are released under their first party team, Wonderstruck Games.

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://biz.turbulenz.com/ 2009 establishments in the United Kingdom Companies based in Guildford Defunct video game companies of the United Kingdom Video game development companies Free game engines