Re: Bye Bye, Monolith

On Wed, 26 Feb 2025 14:40:40 -0600, Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com>
wrote:

They the ones behind the LithTech engine. That was pretty cool at the
time.
I'm not sure they've done much more than that though. You change or you
die, I guess.

The Lithtech engine was used in all their games. 2017's "Middle Earth:
Shadow of War" was v7 of the engine (aka, Lithtech Firebird).

For a while Lithtech was doing pretty well, licensing their engine to
other developers. It was never /really/ competitive with the likes of
IdTech or Unreal (much less Renderware, which seemed to power half of
any game made in the early 2000s) but it was still in the running.

While it is best remembered for its use in Monolith's own games (every
game they developed except for "Gruntz", "Claw" and the original
"Blood" used one version or another of Lithtech), the engine was well
regarded enough that EA even used it for "Medal of Honor: Pacific
Assault" (albeit only for one of the ports). It also got used in games
like "Kiss: Psycho Circus", "Might & Magic IX", "Marine Sharpshooter"
and --oddly enough-- the adventure game "Mysterious Journey 2". But
the Unity engine pretty much killed any hope of Lithtech (and
Monolith) remaining a dominant force in the third-party game engine
market; Unity was as capable, easier to use and far, far cheaper.

    [Although I'll always most remember Lithtech for games like
     "Terrawars: New York Invasion"... a game which did not do
     the engine any justice at all. It was a game so bad it
     wrapped around back to good; the Ed Wood of video-games.
     It's unfair that I associate the game with Lithtech, because
     its failures are all to do with the developers and not
     the engine, but that's just how it goes sometimes.]

It was really the purchase of the company by Warner Brothers that
killed the company. Rather than be allowed to create whatever they
want (which was where the company's strength lay; their games were
unpolished but imaginative), Warner Bros put them to work creating
either sequels to existing IPs, or working on licensed products. The
quality of the games definitely improved, but the spark of imagination
was lost.

But the Lithtech engine wasn't too bad, even to the end. It might not
have been anything anyone wanted to license, but as an in-house engine
it was quite capable, if not top-end.