The manual of the alpha test of the upcoming PS4 exclusive Bloodborne didn't just reveal quite a lot of info about its co-op gameplay, but it also includes an extensive list of third party tech, middleware and tools used by the game, giving us interesting insight on how From Software and Sony's Japan Studio are creating their unforgiving title.

Havok

One of the most widespread physics middlewares in the industry. It's especially popular for its cloth, destruction and physics suites.

Yebis 2

Silicon Studio's optics middleware, known for its depth of field, camera and lighting effects. You can check out a trailer of its features below:

//www.youtube.com/embed/nBO-tI_mCks?rel=0

Separable Subsurface Scattering

A tech for rendering realistic skin in just two post-processing passes. You can watch an impressive demo by its authors Jorge Jimenez and Diego Gutierrez in the video below.

//player.vimeo.com/video/36048029

FMOD Sound System

A set of audio tools by Firelight Technologies, used in many games like Tomb Raider, Starcraft II, Diablo III, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and more.

Simplygon

A middleware for automatic 3D optimization, that automatically created simplified LOD models for distant visualization.

Shader X5 and Shader X6

Advanced rendering techniques manuals by Wolfgang Engel.

Nulstein

Engine by Intel to add multi-threading to games, performing tasks in paralel. Explained in the video below.

Loki Library

A C++ library of designs, containing flexible implementations of common design patterns.

LUA

A very widespread scripting language used in almost every game in the industry.

Mersenne twister

The most widely used pseudorandom number generator in the industry by by Makoto Matsumoto and Takuji Nishimura.

SHA-2

A set of of cryptographic hash functions by the NSA, used for security purposes.

Bloodborne is definitely impressive graphics-wise, and part of that beauty is due to some of the technologies mentioned above. Many lucky gamers are going to get a taste of that today, and we can only hope to see access granted to even more before the game's release on February 6th.