Incentive Software

"Ian Andrew" redirects here. Not to be confused with Ian Andrews.

Incentive Software
IndustryVideo games
Founded1983
FounderIan Andrew
SuccessorSuperscape
Headquarters
Reading, Berkshire
,
United Kingdom

Incentive Software Ltd. was a British video game developer and publisher founded by Ian Andrew in 1983.[1] Programmers included Sean Ellis, Stephen Northcott and Ian's brother Chris Andrew.

Later games were based on the company's Freescape rendering engine. Developed in-house, Freescape is considered to be one of the first proprietary 3D engines to be used in video games, although the engine was not used commercially outside of Incentive's own titles.[2] The project was originally thought to be so ambitious that according to Ian Andrew, the company struggled to recruit programmers for the project, with many believing that it could not be achieved.

According to Paul Gregory (graphics artist for Major Developments, Incentive's in-house design team),[3] Freescape was developed by Chris Andrew starting in September 1986 on an Amstrad CPC, as it was the most suitable development system with 128K memory and had adequate power to run 3D environments. Due to the engine's success, it was later ported to all the dominant systems of the era: ZX Spectrum, IBM PC, Commodore 64, Amiga, and Atari ST. Freescape development ended in 1992 with the release 3D Construction Kit II.

The company was renamed Dimension International as it moved into the VR field in 1995 with its next-generation Superscape VRT engine,[4][5][6] then later changed name again to Superscape.[7]

  1. ^ Incentive Software's first game Splat was released in 1983, and reviewed in Crash Magazine Issue 1, 1984, page 89-90.
  2. ^ "Exploring the Freescape". IGN. 22 October 2008. Retrieved 4 July 2009.
  3. ^ Retro Gamer 22, Incentive article, page 26
  4. ^ "Virtual Reality (1995 Archive) - "VR - Virtually Here" - by Linda Von Schweber & Erick Von Schweber - Infomaniacs". www.infomaniacs.com.
  5. ^ "A Star-Studded Site | Computer Graphics World". www.cgw.com.
  6. ^ "PC Mag". Ziff Davis, Inc. 14 March 1995 – via Google Books.
  7. ^ "The Westin Tokyo's Web Site Traffic Increases by 45% With Interactive 3D From Superscape(R) / March 1999".