SE: How much performance is gained by the use of these instructions?

Franck Sauer: Voxels using MMX are at least 2 times faster than they would have been without. Another 20 percent in speed is gained with the SSE.

SE: Will there be more games based off the voxel/polygon software based engine?

Franck Sauer: I don't think we will use voxels again, until hardware manufacturers come up with hardware voxel solutions. Polygon accelerators will soon provide enough complexity to compete with software voxel engines, while retaining their hi-res images. We don't think that manufacturers will move toward hardware voxels for at least another 5 years.

SE Bonus Question: Who is responsible for all the funny wisecracks throughout the game?

Franck Sauer: It was Doug Freese.

Thanks to Franck Sauer and the whole team at Appeal for taking the time to answer our questions. The US version of Outcast has gone gold and is currently being manufactured. It should be out around August 30th, though the date has changed several times. There is a countdown timer at www.outcast-thegame.com telling the official release time. Outcast is an awesome and original game that took four years to make. Outcast should take the market by storm.

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First Glimpse: Outcast