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Crytek Plans Free Version of CryENGINE 3
Develop reports that Crytek, makers of the Far Cry series, the Crysis series, and the game engines behind them, have plans to release a free-to-use version of CryENGINE 3, the software's latest iteration. Quoting:
"Unreal vendor Epic Games and Unity have both seen their user-bases mushroom overnight since launching versions of their own engines that, while tied to different royalty rates, are completely free to download and operate. Now the CryEngine 3 group has revealed it wants to tap into this thriving market. The firm's CEO Cevat Yerli told Develop that Crytek already gives away a CryEngine 2 editor to the mod community, but explained that Crytek's expansion strategy stretches beyond. 'We have a very vivid community of users and modders and content creators, and usually that's a great way of unlocking the engine,' he said. ... 'So far that's what we've been offering for free, and it's easy entry into the production environment. [But] we do want to make a standalone free platform that people can run independent of CryEngine that will also be up to speed with the latest engine.'"
Wonder how long would it take to develop OpenSource engines of this complexity? Why are there none? Ogre and Irrlitch are far, far away...
Now I'm just a simple country hyperchicken, but it seems to me that 3d engines tend to age relatively quickly and FOSS tends to be less than cutting edge.
We are talking about Crytek of yes-but-does-it-run-crysis fame.
On the other hand, the top state of the art real-time fully dynamic global illumination is implemented _only_ in an open source engine. Paper & free code for the GI solution: http://graphics.cs.williams.edu/papers/PhotonHPG09/ The engine it's implemented in: http://g3d.sourceforge.net/ One cannot say that closed-source leads the pack across the scape of graphical features. Another example besides this level of RT GI is spherical-blend skinning, which was in open source first as well. I'm sure others can point out other advances that come from the open source world.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Being able to use it for free during development is definitely an advantage. If you only have to pay when you publish a game, that makes the development of games a lot more accessible.
Making a graphics engine is hard and costs a lot of man hours (thus lots of $$$). There's not many people who can just start contributing to them (compared to other OS projects). The Open Source engines will always be at least a generation behind, simply because they're always going to be slowly implementing what's already been done in the commercial engines, while companies like Crytek are busy working on their next-gen stuff.
On the plus side, the Open Source engines (Ogre and CrystalSpace anyway) are good enough for people to make decent looking games if they wish to do so. Gameplay is what counts right? I'll take TES: Oblivion quality graphics (hell, Morrowind even) if the game play is great. Unfortunately making games is as hard as making the engines that they run on...
Ogre I believe is strictly graphics (maybe stretching out a bit more than that, but definitely far from a complete engine)
There is a difference between game engines and graphics engines. Ogre is definitely not a complete game engine, but it does not aspire to be one. In my opinion it is a complete graphics engine. Why wouldn't it be?
As an active member of the indie game development community, let me be the first to inform you that indie "original game design" consists largely of "Team Fortress, with Boba Fett", or if you're in the Far East, "Team Fortress, with furries".
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Yes, that means you, Mr. Indie Game Developer, can make your own Running Through Well-Rendered Trees simulators, and even skip the monotonous shooting parts that Crytek seems to stick in between your times of admiring the trees!
First one to open-source an older version wins!
Carmack's been winning for a long time, then.
Circumcision is child abuse.
what's the major difference between a game and a graphics engine?
A game engine has one or more of the following: physics, AI, a tool chain for content generation, a scripting language or similar for game rules, etc.
A graphics engine only displays the graphics.
You're misunderstanding that phrase. Whether something ran crysis was a potshot at how badly crysis was coded, not how advanced it was.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Explain to me, which corporation is going to fund the development of a leading database?
Explain to me, which corporation is going to fund the development of a leading web server?
Explain to me, which corporation is going to fund the development of a leading programing language?
Explain to me, which corporation is going to fund the development of a leading OS?
Explain to me, which corporation is going to fund the development of a leading application framework? ...
Um, coproration in business of making money?
They will always win:
Small fry doing few projects and not paying? Their developers are later going to be employed by someone who will pay for extended support.
Big company? Someone will want their asses covered and pay for support to make sure engine problems do not land on their head, and developers will demand suport for bugfixes/new features/training.
Noone is going to fork their project, as long as they work on it and new kids on job market will have skills in their engine because they were able to mess with it.
And there are always some patches from random basement guys that imporve stuff or fix bugs.
Just because they are gonna give out source for free does not mean they can not make money.
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
Far Cry used the same engine [as Crysis]
No it didn't. Crysis was Cryengine 2.
Thank you. It's ridiculous when several years after its release, a brand new high-end system will still not run this game at 60fps consistently.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
Actually, it feels like I'm seeing far more games running on the Unreal engine these days than I am on anything id have put out. Gears of War games, Mass Effect games, Bioshock games, loads of stuff from Square-Enix, god knows how many others... they're all on the Unreal 3 engine. By contrast, the only vaguely recent game I can remember on an id engine was Wolfenstein. And frankly, that looked pretty mediocre compared to the competition.
In fact, yes, looking at the "list of games that use this engine" on wikipedia, it's fairly clear that the Unreal Engine 3 is being used for a huge number of commercial games, while id's engines are starting to look distinctly niche and only seem to be used by developers with strong historic links to id.
Half Life was built upon a modified Quake engine, still one of the best games (second to Unreal)
Second t... to "Unreal?"
Sir, this indignity will not stand. I demand satisfaction. Headcrabs at 20 paces. Harrumph!