Pandora Studios, was formed in January of 2005 as a PC game development company. Originally just known as "Team Frag.Ops," the mod team behind the creation of the UT2004 Frag.Ops mod, after repeated success in the MSU contest the decision was made: an LLC would be created and Pandora Studios would pursue future projects in game design. The promise made? A lot less feature consolidation, and a lot more depth.
The fledgeling company has announced that it has licensed Artificial Studios' Reality Engine for production of a next-generation game, to be made available through retail sometime in 2006. Following in the spirit of its origins, this currently unannounced game will be fully user-moddable. A level editor and C# scripting SDK will ship alongside the title for mod-maker use out of the box.
Paired with these tools will be an intuitive mod management framework. This system will handle everything from content management to providing a launching platform for mods, to automatic mod installation via http/ftp, even version synchronization. See a packed mod server in the browser and want to play? Pandora's mod system will download and install the required files without ever having to exit the program. Bandwidth-conscious background transfers are possible, allowing you to play while mods download. The framework also provides other solutions for various aspects of mod development including security and user-friendly SQL database interaction.
A 2006 ship date is estimated at this time. Further details will be made available through press release in Q2 2005.
