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Crytek Giving Away CryEngine To UK Universities

Posted by Soulskill on from the nibbles-doesn't-cut-it-anymore dept.

GamesIndustry reports that German game developer Crytek will be making CryEngine, the game engine behind Far Cry and Aion, available to universities in the UK for free. They're doing so because they want new college grads to get hands-on experience with the technology that runs real games. Crytek's Karl Hilton said, "Universities are looking to foster creativity and send people out into the industry who have lots of ideas, but it's also about that practical hands-on training so that they know what the limitations are. It's very easy for students to come out of the academic world and not have a grasp on the realities of making a videogame. The more we can get involved with them and give them feedback and access to the tools involved, the more accurate the course will become in training people up."

54 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Makes business sense too by Kentaree · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As they're used to the engine they'll be more likely to use it commercial if they have the choice. It's the same thing Microsoft, Adobe and a multitude of other companies do when providing educational licenses

    1. Re:Makes business sense too by WarJolt · · Score: 1

      It's a fishing exercise. They give it to college students. When one of the students makes a viable game they'll buy it from them or charge them a substantial license fee. They may even be trying to get rid of that pesky learning curve on new hires. Plenty of ways to spin this. I agree...Good business sense. Market exposure is key.

    2. Re:Makes business sense too by am+2k · · Score: 2, Informative

      Note that Emergent has been doing the same for their engine Gamebryo for a few years now: Emergent Academic Partners.

    3. Re:Makes business sense too by Canazza · · Score: 4, Informative

      Except this is the CryEngine 1, not CryEngine 2 which is their main engine. While programming is undoubtably similar for both engines, going back to Far Cry it's already begining to look dated, and game made with it would probably make a decent Indie release, but wouldn't do as a commercial release graphics wise.

      It would however, as you suggested, float the better programmers on these courses to the surface.

      --
      It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
    4. Re:Makes business sense too by MeatBag+PussRocket · · Score: 1

      naaah, FarCry still looks good and it has a broad system support spec. i think a large chunk of the industry is still at that stage. its not bleeding edge but good gameplay doesnt require that. lets face it, a good game written on CryEngine1 would probably do just as well as one written for CryEngine2.

      --
      i wage a holy war against the apostrophe.
    5. Re:Makes business sense too by bmatt17 · · Score: 1

      It wouldn't? Then how is Aion, which is built off CryEngine 1 being released today in NA. Guess according to you it's doomed to failure because of it's crappy graphics.

  2. Gives them a good excuse by Goodl · · Score: 1

    to geta kickass uber gaming system and pass it off as research :-D

    --
    I've got some photographs, I'd like to show them to you. Though you don't know the girls You'll recognise the view..
  3. Nice move by Crytek... by anomnomnomymous · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Nice move by them, but I can see how it's in their own advantage to do so, as it would be more feasible for the students to use it later on.

    I'd rather have universities focus on using a -real- open engine though, such as id's Tech3 (Quake 3) GPL'ed engine: More documentation, bigger community, and an, imo, better engine overall.

    Nonetheless, nice move by Crytek.

    --
    When you shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?
    1. Re:Nice move by Crytek... by wild_quinine · · Score: 1

      I'd rather have universities focus on using a -real- open engine though, such as id's Tech3 (Quake 3) GPL'ed engine: More documentation, bigger community, and an, imo, better engine overall.

      I've always wondered if the fact that most Computer Science classes I've come across use source materials fifteen or twenty years old is a hindrance to students going out into the world. Sure, many of the basic principles don't change, but even so... how do you get your head around writing multi-threaded code for a modern game, when the last thing you learned was Hello World in Fortran?

    2. Re:Nice move by Crytek... by drsmithy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Sure, many of the basic principles don't change, but even so... how do you get your head around writing multi-threaded code for a modern game, when the last thing you learned was Hello World in Fortran?

      Completing the last 3 years of your degree would probably be a good place to start.

    3. Re:Nice move by Crytek... by xaxa · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What Computer Science courses are these?

      Languages used in mine were Java, Haskell, C, C++, and Prolog. All are up-to-date modern languages, and it was similar for all the students I've met from other universities.

      (Having said that, we weren't really taught languages after first year. We were taught principles, told what languages used them, then told to go implement something in one of them.)

    4. Re:Nice move by Crytek... by PhilHibbs · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'd rather that universities had access to multiple engines so they can study the different approaches to different problems. Tech3 is an enclosed-spaces engine, you don't get that many Quake levels that are open, rolling hills. If you do, it's a hack and you are actually in a cave with a sky-texture flag on the ceiling. CryEngine and Halo are ground-folding engines, so they can do the big open spaces thing but have to use hacks to have cliffs and caves and overhangs.

    5. Re:Nice move by Crytek... by geminidomino · · Score: 2, Insightful

      how do you get your head around writing multi-threaded code for a modern game, when the last thing you learned was Hello World in Fortran?

      Studying programming instead of Computer Science would probably be a better start
       

    6. Re:Nice move by Crytek... by your_neighbor · · Score: 1

      wrong moderation due mouse scroll

    7. Re:Nice move by Crytek... by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      What Computer Science courses are these?

      Languages used in mine were Java, Haskell, C, C++, and Prolog. All are up-to-date modern languages, and it was similar for all the students I've met from other universities.

      AOL, except for Haskell. We used LISP for our functional programming component.

    8. Re:Nice move by Crytek... by lolocaust · · Score: 1

      Have you got any information on ground-folding engines and how they work? I've worked with bsp engines thanks to mapping for Source, but I've never been able to find anything on how alternative engines manage to work well with wide open spaces. A Google search for "ground-folding engine" and similar terms returned nothing relevant.

      --
      Why does my post history abruptly stop? I want to laugh at the stupid things I posted as a kid.
    9. Re:Nice move by Crytek... by PhilHibbs · · Score: 1

      Well, to be honest, I'm not sure about the technical term, I might be mis-remembering a drunken conversation at a convention in Germany a few years ago. It's basically that the ground is a 2d surface deformed in the vertical dimension, rather than being a fully 3d object.

    10. Re:Nice move by Crytek... by unfunk · · Score: 1

      get yourself a copy of Far Cry or Crysis. They both come with world editors so you can see what it's like. Basically, it's a bit like that Terragen program, where you draw a greyscale map and it then generates a 3D world from it.

      ...only a bit more complicated...

  4. Re:Not Open Source by Cheesetrap · · Score: 2, Funny

    Okay, maybe you have a point, but can you really complain?

    I mean after all, if it wasn't for the CryEngine how would you power your WAAHmbulance?

  5. Repeat after me... by PeterBrett · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Universities are not intended to provide vocational training."

    Why do so many people seem to have forgotten this?

    --
    Pirate Party UK
    1. Re:Repeat after me... by tomhudson · · Score: 1

      "Universities are not intended to provide vocational training."

      Why do so many people seem to have forgotten this?

      Sure they are. If your vocation is being an MD, wtf else are you supposed to go? If your vocation is being an engineer, wtf else are you supposed to go? If your vocation is being a molecular biologist, or an archaeologist, or a physicist, or a rocket scientist, where the fuck else are you supposed to go? The International Correspondence School of Rocket Science?

    2. Re:Repeat after me... by lordandmaker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Universities provide academic training that is in line with your prospective vocation.

      Universities do not teach you how to be an Engineer or an archaeologist, they teach you engineering or archeology.

      They teach you the academic side of the above, and then release you into the real world to make it your vocation.

    3. Re:Repeat after me... by dkf · · Score: 1

      "Universities are not intended to provide vocational training."

      Why do so many people seem to have forgotten this?

      On the other hand, CryEngine can be used as an exemplar case-study of the class of 3D world models, allowing study of the capabilities and trade-offs involved in their design and use. That is academically meaningful.

      --
      "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
    4. Re:Repeat after me... by PhilHibbs · · Score: 1

      CryEngine me a river?

    5. Re:Repeat after me... by Caue · · Score: 2, Insightful
      semantics. any university that doesn't offer the link between academic knowledge and practical use is a poor choice.

      release you into the real world to make it your vocation.

      I would feel like a fucking dove if I understood universities like you do.

    6. Re:Repeat after me... by lordandmaker · · Score: 1

      semantics. any university that doesn't offer the link between academic knowledge and practical use is a poor choice.

      Yes, they offer a link. But the primary purpose is an academic treatment of the material, not training in a particular job.
      Here in the UK, we have 'vocational training' which is basically training in how to do a particular job. Universities, while getting less purely academic, are still nowhere near as specifically job-training as the vocational courses are. Universities still exist basically to research stuff and play with the abstract and theoretical ends of things.
      We also have a small problem in that we have vast numbers of graduates leaving university expecting to be able to just walk into a job, and a slightly smaller number of companies bemoaning the fact that all these applicants have degrees but no experience.

    7. Re:Repeat after me... by TheVelvetFlamebait · · Score: 1

      Uhh, because despite original intentions, a little vocational training doesn't go far astray?

      --
      You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
    8. Re:Repeat after me... by Sgt.+B · · Score: 1

      I understand your view but don't agree because this is a special case. University level training in chemical studies provide a lab in which to experiment. The lab is filled with universal tools so your point stands.

      What about astrophysicists? Universities don't have more than a standard telescope so they borrow time on other organization's hardware like a radio telescope, orbiting satellite or ground based telescope across the world. Many of these are designed to work in a specific way. Those tools are proprietary.

      Such is the case with game design and special effects software. Most of these companies understand this and provide their proprietary software engines for personal and educational use either free or at greatly reduced prices, Maya included.

      It is necessary. Currently, students are receiving 2 of 4 years of useless conceptual education from their schooling and have to rely on the hope of an internship with a company that happens to use the one software package they played with in school. That's why so many game designers are self taught. Why waste the money on a university to teach you something you will then spend 2 more years unlearning.

    9. Re:Repeat after me... by clickety6 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      In the UK, Polytechnics used to give a more practical, hands-on training vocational training but after the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 they all became called Universities, although in many respects they are the same institutes offering the same courses...

      --
      ----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
    10. Re:Repeat after me... by NickFortune · · Score: 1

      semantics. any university that doesn't offer the link between academic knowledge and practical use is a poor choice.

      It's not so much a question of practicality vs. impracticality. It's a question of how we're training people to function. The old idea of a university was to give someone a good set of background data and techniques, and then to teach them to to solve problems, and how to express themselves with clarity and precision. The idea being that if your graduates have that much, then they can learn what else they need from there on. It's an approach that's worked fairly well, historically.

      The new vision of universities is that you train a person, really very narrowly to do a specific job, using a specific toolset. This has the possible advantage that you have a deeper understanding of Ubersoft Visual Fubar at graduation time. The downside is that, particularly in the software industry, things change so fast that Ubersoft Visual Fubar may be obsolete tech three years after you graduate, and you then have precious little grounding to start learning something else.

      The new vision of what a university should be is very popular with industry, since it lets them push training costs onto the employee, and allows software houses to prevent students getting the more than most cursory exposure to competing products and techniques.

      From the viewpoint of the student, it seems to me to be a uniformly bad deal.

      I would feel like a fucking dove if I understood universities like you do.

      What you do in your free time is entirely your own business, sir.

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
    11. Re:Repeat after me... by Caue · · Score: 1
      Popular with the industry or not, the fact is that you have to adress to this points:

      first: there is no time - education doesn't pay the bills, jobs do. most of us need to work in order to survive; I can't spend a semester learning about something I could use but probably won't.

      second: innovation is, as oddly as it may seem, speeding up; anyone trying to stay updated about machining and tooling like me should know this by now (I don't program for a living, i'm an engineer - a brazilian one, so don't mind the poor english) and I guess this is happening everywhere, with most technologies.

      third: finally, it's the alumn obligation to look up for extentions and new toolsets if one feels that his/hers education was driven towards something not so useful or is becoming obsolete. Education for education is great, but as long as you live in your parents basement or have a large trustfund. I say this because i've seen people strive in narrow classes flying solo and looking for alternatives outside the range of the course, simply because was interesting or useful in a certain enviroment (usually a job-driven interest, outside the university).

      I understand that with the new ground-level knowledge available, one would require at least 10 years studying solo just to get a larger glimpse of how things got to where they are. That's why, i reckon, universities are changing. Solving academical problems is neat, necessary for the development of new/innovative technologies, but to expect that every gradute will become a scientist/academic/professor/researcher is counter-productive.

    12. Re:Repeat after me... by Desler · · Score: 1

      From the viewpoint of the student, it seems to me to be a uniformly bad deal.

      Yes, practical knowledge that will actually help you get a job after you graduate is clearly a bad deal!

    13. Re:Repeat after me... by NickFortune · · Score: 1

      first: there is no time - education doesn't pay the bills, jobs do

      I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't produce graduates with the necessary knowledge to get a job in industry. I'm just saying that it is entirely possible to achieve this without concentrating almost entirely on vendor specific software packages.

      I am also suggesting that it's somewhat unwise to let industry dictate the packages we teach at university, since the demands of the private sector have more to do with keeping their competition at bay then they do with producing good software engineers.

      second: innovation is, as oddly as it may seem, speeding up

      That doesn't seem odd at all. I've heard it said that there are more researchers alive today than in all of history put together. Added to that we have communications frameworks that could only have been dreamt of 50 years ago. If innovation was not speeding up, I would be horrified.#

      However, I think you have some work to do to demonstrate that this speed up is due to universities increasingly teaching their courses entirely in terms of Microsoft This, and Cisco That. I would say that this is occurring despite this trend.

      third: finally, it's the alumn obligation to look up for extentions and new toolsets if one feels that his/hers education was driven towards something not so useful or is becoming obsolete

      Which still doesn't make it a good idea to teach fragile skillsets that depend upon packages that maybe obsolete in the near future.

      I understand that with the new ground-level knowledge available, one would require at least 10 years studying solo just to get a larger glimpse of how things got to where they are.

      Right. I'm not proposing that we start with the theory of agriculture and Iron Ore smelting, and work up to electricity, valve driven computers, and finally modern a IT infrastructure. I am saying however that a graduate who understand algorithms and design patterns and has experience of three or four programming languages and two or three operating systems is going to be able to adapt much faster to changing circumstances than one trained entirely with what industry thought they wanted 12 months before the student started his degree.

      Solving academical problems is neat, necessary for the development of new/innovative technologies, but to expect that every gradute will become a scientist/academic/professor/researcher is counter-productive.

      On the other hand, if all they want is to be a MSCE, then they'd do much better to go on a course to train MSCEs and leave the universities to address the broader picture.

      Universities should be more than drunken, residential training courses for technology leaders.

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
    14. Re:Repeat after me... by NickFortune · · Score: 1

      From the viewpoint of the student, it seems to me to be a uniformly bad deal.

      Yes, practical knowledge that will actually help you get a job after you graduate is clearly a bad deal!

      Well, of course. If you're not teaching the specifics of MS Visual Studio 2009, then all you can possibly do is spend all day discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. I mean, it's not like there's a middle ground or anything, is it?

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
  6. Resource hog proliferation, yay! by yourtallness · · Score: 1

    Now the next generation of game programmers can also practice creating FPSs that no current PC hardware can handle! Kidding aside, it's a cool gesture, kudos to CryTek

    1. Re:Resource hog proliferation, yay! by yourtallness · · Score: 1

      Whoops, I stand corrected. The difference a missing '2' makes :-P

  7. minix by Atreide · · Score: 1

    reminds me Tanenbaum's minix which was created as a response to closed Unixes systems.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MINIX

    "MINIX is a Unix-like computer operating system based on a microkernel architecture. Andrew S. Tanenbaum wrote the operating system to be used for educational purposes; MINIX also inspired the creation of the Linux kernel. Its name is a portmanteau of the words minimal and Unix."

    --
    The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then :-(
    1. Re:minix by Burnhard · · Score: 1

      Indeed, as a University assignment I replaced the memory manager in Minix from First Fit to Best Fit ;).

  8. Re:Not Open Source by lordandmaker · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Presumably it would have been fine, though, if they'd not done this.

    This is how you're encouraging business to not open source. While it's 'normally' licensed, no-one complains. If you only open it a little bit, you become a bad guy. If I was in the business of producing commercial software, it's sentiment like yours that'd put me off.

  9. wait...wait... by nimbius · · Score: 2, Insightful

    s/the technology that runs real games./the technology that runs our games./

    fixed that for ya.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
    1. Re:wait...wait... by Desler · · Score: 1

      Yeah, and?

  10. Re:It's a shame... by PhilHibbs · · Score: 1

    The students, however, will have blown their loans on quad-core Xeon laptops with dual Radeon 9900 graphics cards.

  11. Unreal Engine by deusmetallum · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think it's important to remember that the Unreal Engine has been free for educational use for a very long time. No doubt that there will be a similar number of restrictions on the CryEngine, mostly along the lines of not being able to reuse any code or assets for any future release. I imagine, however, that the unreal engine is probably a lot more useful to students as it is used in a much larger number of games or varying genres.

  12. Re:Not Open Source by mdwh2 · · Score: 1

    I'm not saying I agree with the OP's response, but I don't think your reasoning makes sense. What they've done here isn't "open sourcing a little bit". This isn't open source at all. If a company does action A, and then someone whines that they didn't do B, I don't see how that might put them off doing B. Sure, it might make them less likely to bother with A, but why should the OP or anyone else wanting open source care, since that wasn't what they want anyway?

  13. Figures... by 16K+Ram+Pack · · Score: 1

    Universities have the sort of supercomputers capable of running Far Cry.

    1. Re:Figures... by Bicx · · Score: 1

      Far Cry is actually old and easy to run. Crysis (Far Cry's sequel) is the game that requires a powerful computer, and it runs on the CryEngine 2. What this article refers to is CryEngine 1.

    2. Re:Figures... by Desler · · Score: 1

      I didn't realize that a computer with an Athlon/Pentium 4 running at 1 ghz was now a "supercomputer"? Or maybe you're another idiot that doesn't realize that CryEngine 2 is the game engine you were thinking of?

  14. Re:It's a shame... by Desler · · Score: 1

    It's a shame that you're an idiot. The engine you were thinking of is CryEngine 2. This is the original CryEngine.

  15. I'll send them an email... by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 1

    And see if I can get a copy here in Canada. Then, I'll have Cry Source, Unreal Source, Source Source engine code and I'll combine them to make... some kinda super engine...

    Like you know, the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts.

    If Cry engine is the one behind Aion, which is an MMO I believe, then implementing MMO kind of network architecture into a Physics Engine like the source will not only LAG my system to crap, but will totally make a cutting edge game that will be popular when we invent computers that can run it.

    Think Gary's Mod on a millions time scale...

    1. Re:I'll send them an email... by Sockatume · · Score: 1

      Then, I'll have Cry Source, Unreal Source, Source Source... ...red source, brown source, barbecue source, hot source...

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    2. Re:I'll send them an email... by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 1

      Honey mustard source. Delish.

    3. Re:I'll send them an email... by Sockatume · · Score: 1

      will totally make a cutting edge game that will be popular when we invent computers that can run it.

      More seriously, this is how the industry works already. People develop to the specs of the machines expected at launch time, not the machines that are available now. This requires that the developer produce "target footage" and do pre-rendering for early previews, and generally spend a bucket on the most powerful machines available for testing. It has marketing upsides because the previews blow existing games out of the water. However you can't reach too far ahead, because "computer power" isn't fungible on a long timescale. Entirely new approaches are developed and old approaches are abandoned. Image that a PSone dev wrote a game that ran at one 300th of a frame per second on the PSone. No machine has arisen in the past 15 years which would run that game at full speed, because games consoles have shifted to a different architecture. You'd have to write a virtual machine for it.

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    4. Re:I'll send them an email... by Turiko · · Score: 1

      actually, the cry engine has good physics too. It originally came from FPS titles, the MMORPG part is only an add-on to the actual engine.

    5. Re:I'll send them an email... by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 1

      Yes. I do a bit of development at home, with my Beast Rig thats required to run VS2008 while debugging a game in run-time. I figure if I can get something running decently on top of the line stuff now, by the time its released it'll be in the right alignment for the teeming masses.

      In the event I fall behind (I can't imagine them releasing ANOTHER direct X after 11 here anytime soon) I'll just have to make things flashier and more graphics intensive.