Last week I talked about the upcoming launch of SunBurn – Synapse Gaming's latest lighting and rendering technology.  We received a lot of emails asking about SunBurn, the community, and pricing.  So in this blog I'm going to answer some of those questions and talk a little about the SunBurn beta, the types of projects using SunBurn, the community, and pricing and licensing.

SunBurn Beta a Huge Success

It's been almost a year since we announced the SunBurn beta, and looking back it was a huge success.  The response to our announcement was staggering.  We received far more interest than we imagined possible, from both individuals and teams working on some really amazing projects.





Even more exciting was the response from people doing work on products other than games – organizations working on automotive and infrastructure visualizations, groups developing simulations, and educators alike – all interested in using SunBurn.

The wide range of interest and our diverse beta group really helped us build a very flexible architecture, friendly and easy-to-use editor suite, and a solid content pipeline.

Already Making an Impact in the XNA Scene

Even though it's not yet released SunBurn is already making an impact in the XNA scene.  With several SunBurn games already under development (many for release on Xbox LIVE Community Games) SunBurn is already accelerating game development in the XNA community.





One of the best examples is the Elemental development team – a small student team that developed its first title, IceDome, for the 2008 Imagine Cup.  Using a beta version of SunBurn the team developed IceDome in only a few months and with incredible results.  Not only does the game look fantastic, but they also landed in the Imagine Cup top 20 finalists (awesome work guys!).

SunBurn Community

Part of SunBurn's success is our community, which offers a friendly development environment to find help, swap ideas, learn tips and tricks, or just talk about your project with us and other community members.  The community is also full of examples, resources, and documentation that we are continually working on to help people get the most out of both SunBurn and XNA.

Accessible Prices

We've worked hard to make SunBurn's licensing flexible for studios and development teams, while keeping it affordable to indies and hobbyists.  SunBurn's Indie Edition offers a simplified version of SunBurn's tools and technology – at under $80 it's an excellent way to get started.  SunBurn's Pro, Community, and Studio editions are full-featured, offer development on Xbox 360, and come with access to bonus development examples and resources.

How Do I Learn More?

The best way to learn more about SunBurn is at our website: Synapse Gaming.  Please feel free to ask any questions you have in our forums.

Also stay tuned for the follow up SunBurn launch announcement!

-John Kabus
Synapse Gaming
Bleeding Edge Indie