Euphoria was a game animation middleware created by

NaturalMotion NaturalMotion is a British video game development company with development offices in London, Brighton and Birmingham. Founded in November 2001 as a spin-out company from Oxford University, NaturalMotion specialises in creating animation techn ...

based on Dynamic Motion Synthesis, NaturalMotion's proprietary technology for animating 3D characters on-the-fly "based on a full simulation of the 3D character, including body, muscles and motor

nervous system In biology, the nervous system is the highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its actions and sensory information by transmitting signals to and from different parts of its body. The nervous system detects environmental changes ...

". Instead of using predefined animations, the characters' actions and reactions are synthesized in real-time; they are different every time, even when replaying the same scene. While it is common for current video games to use limp "ragdolls" for animations generated on the fly, Euphoria employed a more complex method to animate the entirety of physically bound objects within the game environment. The engine was to be used in an '' Indiana Jones'' game that was later cancelled. According to its web site, Euphoria ran on the Microsoft Windows, OS X,

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on November 11, 2006, in Japan, November ...

, PlayStation 4,

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generati ...

Xbox One The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third base console in the Xbox series of video game consoles. It was first released in North America, parts of ...

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

and Android platforms and was compatible with all commercial

physics engine A physics engine is computer software that provides an approximate simulation of certain physical systems, such as rigid body dynamics (including collision detection), soft body dynamics, and fluid dynamics, of use in the domains of computer gr ...

s. A press release that was enclosed with the second trailer eventually confirmed that ''

Grand Theft Auto IV ''Grand Theft Auto IV'' is a 2008 action-adventure game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is the sixth main entry in the ''Grand Theft Auto'' series, following 2004's '' Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas'', and the e ...

'' is the first of

Rockstar Rock Star or Rockstar may refer to: Films * ''Rock Star'' (2001 film), an American film starring Mark Wahlberg * ''Rockstar'' (2011 film), an Indian Hindi-language film by Imtiaz Ali * ''Rockstar'' (2015 film), an Indian Malayalam-language fi ...

's games to feature Euphoria. ''

Red Dead Redemption ''Red Dead Redemption'' is a 2010 action-adventure game developed by Rockstar San Diego and published by Rockstar Games. A spiritual successor to 2004's '' Red Dead Revolver'', it is the second game in the '' Red Dead'' series. ''Red Dead Rede ...

'' is their second game to use this engine. The Star Wars titles, '' Star Wars: The Force Unleashed'' and '' The Force Unleashed II'' use Euphoria, as do games based on the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) including '' Grand Theft Auto V'' and ''

Red Dead Redemption 2 ''Red Dead Redemption 2'' is a 2018 action-adventure game developed and published by Rockstar Games. The game is the third entry in the ''Red Dead'' series and a prequel to the 2010 game ''Red Dead Redemption''. The story is set in 1899 and f ...

''. Euphoria is integrated into the source code of RAGE. In 2017, NaturalMotion announced it would end licensing of Euphoria, along with its other technologies, to concentrate on mobile games.

Software using Euphoria

*In February 2007,

and

Rockstar Games Rockstar Games, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in New York City. The company was established in December 1998 as a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive, using the assets Take-Two had previously acquired from BMG Interactive. Foun ...

announced that Euphoria would be used in future Rockstar titles. *In August 2007, NaturalMotion announced ''

Backbreaker Backbreaker refers to a kind of professional wrestling move which sees a wrestler dropping an opponent so that the opponent's back impacts or is bent backwards against a part of the wrestler's body, usually the knee. The standard version of the ...

'', an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

game for next-generation consoles that employs Euphoria to generate tackles in real-time, as opposed to playback animation. *The July 2009 issue of ''

Game Informer ''Game Informer'' (''GI'', most often stylized ''gameinformer'' from the 2010s onward) is an American monthly video game magazine featuring articles, news, strategy, and reviews of video games and associated consoles. It debuted in August 1991 w ...

'' confirmed that ''

Max Payne 3 ''Max Payne 3'' is a 2012 third-person shooter video game developed and published by Rockstar Games. It was released on May 15, 2012 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360; a Microsoft Windows port was released on May 29, 2012, followed by an OS X ...

'' would include Euphoria along with Rockstar's RAGE. *NaturalMotion's iOS title ''

Clumsy Ninja ''Clumsy Ninja'' is an action-adventure video game for iOS and Android, developed and published by NaturalMotion in 2013. In the game the player trains a ninja by having them complete tasks in order to gain experience points. Within its first we ...

'' uses Euphoria, and is the first mobile game to do so.

References

External links

* (Archived fro
the original
on 2018-04-04.) {{Take-Two Interactive 2008 software Anatomical simulation Animation software Computer physics engines Middleware for video games