Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

CryTek For Free: CryEngine 3 SDK and Editor

Posted by Soulskill on from the cryin'-non-shame dept.

Samfer writes with this excerpt from Operation Reality Gaming: "[...] sometime this summer, likely around August, we will see the appearance online of both a Crysis 2 editor and a CryEngine 3 SDK (software development kit). This not only means that people will be able to make full blown new levels for Crysis 2 but that the CryEngine 3 will also be made publicly available for the development of non-commercial projects to the community at large. To quote, 'This will be a complete version of our engine, including C++ code access, our content exporters (including our LiveCreate real-time pipeline), shader code, game sample code from Crysis 2, script samples, new improved Flowgraph and a whole host of great asset examples, which will allow teams to build complete games from scratch for PC.'"

121 comments

  1. Bravo by Nihn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Giving the engine for free is a massive swing to what I believe is the future of gaming. Gamers are too far gone now to be "enchanted" by games and want to know how it all works, and how they can change it to suit them better. Fallout 3 is the first game I came across that was fully supported by the community with mods, skins, and improved game play with patches to fix bugs. Having 12 people working on a game and patches is weak compared to having hundreds of intelligent and willing contributors all working for a common goal. Let the players have the keys to the car, you will be amazed at the way we can drive.

    1. Re:Bravo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Keep in mind though that this is purely a business decision. They are trying to compete with UDK.

    2. Re:Bravo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I suspect it's more than that, it makes commercial sense. Getting tools to developers at low or no cost is likely to get them using your tools, which later may become a commercial product. If you are a developer you can pick their engine to use for development, only when you've a semi-complete project do you have to worry about licensing for commercial access. This has been happening in the non-game world for quite some time e.g. developer access to Oracle database products which are expensive to license, as a small developer though your barrier to using it has been reduced to zero and the potential for oracle to have end user sales increased.

    3. Re:Bravo by Nihn · · Score: 2

      i know its business but compared to the attitude sony has twords customers its nice to see a company who knows what people want, they are are going to profit from it by giving customers control of their own entertainment.

    4. Re:Bravo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So were you asleep during the 90s, or did you just not own a computer?

    5. Re:Bravo by daid303 · · Score: 1

      UnrealTournament was the first game with official MOD support. But people where modding quake long before that, and doom before that, and I don't know what before that but I can assure you, if the first game you encounter with MODs is Fallout 3, then you where missing out on a lot!

    6. Re:Bravo by ildon · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure how you define "official mod support", but as I define it, Quake and Unreal both had official mod support. Tools and sources were released by the developer for the express purpose of letting people create mods, and the games had hooks or commands that directly facilitated modding and running mods (and really would have served no other purpose, otherwise).

      I would say Doom and Wolf3D did not have official mod support because of the workarounds and nature of the tools required to run mods for those games.

      Duke3D is kind of in between.

    7. Re:Bravo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Marathon 2 had "official mod support" before Quake or UT. It actually came with a very well put together toolkit that let you edit levels, graphics, physics, etc. But yea, OP is fucking retarded if he thinks this is some sort of new phenomenon. And from a business standpoint, it's still kind of questionable. The fact is, only a small fraction of gamers will ever install a mod, so justifying spending any sort of development time on mod support is difficult.

    8. Re:Bravo by h4rr4r · · Score: 1

      Are you a kid or did you not have a computer for the past 20 years?

      CounterStrike started as a mod, the whole game.

    9. Re:Bravo by Pinky's+Brain · · Score: 1

      This is not official Mod support. There is no way to get Crysis 2 servers to run code written with the SDK (server exe's aren't available and all Crysis 2 files are encrypted).They will release a map editor for Crysis 2, but that in itself is not enough to create mods.

      As it stands Crysis 2 will have no real modding.

    10. Re:Bravo by dunezone · · Score: 1

      Doom was officially supported, Carmack made sure it was easy to modify after all the work he saw going into tools to reverse engineer Wolfenstenin. He designed Doom to have WAD support so anyone could modify the game easily.

    11. Re:Bravo by filthpickle · · Score: 1

      when he said "Fallout 3 was the first..." I thought to myself, 'oh this guy is gonna get ripped' before I even scrolled down.

    12. Re:Bravo by nedlohs · · Score: 1

      Fallout 3? Seriously? Did you start playing games in 2010?

    13. Re:Bravo by McKing · · Score: 1

      Did you actually read his post? He said *IF* the first mod you ever ran across was for Fallout 3, *THEN* you missed out on a lot, UT, Quake, Doom, etc...

      --
      If only "common" sense was actually that common...
    14. Re:Bravo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Doom's Chicken launching bazoooka was the best.

    15. Re:Bravo by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Not to mention Team Fortress. A lot of people bought Quake to play mods like TF. It was later ported to Half Life (although the balance always seemed a bit wrong there) and finally became its own game.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    16. Re:Bravo by Matheus · · Score: 1

      No... *YOU* missed the original post... the quote you are including is the first *REPLY* to that post slamming *THE* original poster for his lack *OF* experience.

      Get off my lawn... I was modding Pong in the 70s!

    17. Re:Bravo by BCGlorfindel · · Score: 1

      Fallout 3 is the first game I came across that was fully supported by the community with mods, skins, and improved game play with patches to fix bugs.

      You must be young.

        I remember mods for Wolf3D and Doom. I remember rarely playing vanilla Quake because there were so very many great mods for it. So many in fact that Quake's gamer/developer community spawned a host of new game companies, most notably Valve.

    18. Re:Bravo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Slashdot. The only place where "I've played video games more than you!" is bragging, not a cry for help.

      Well, Slashdot and nearly every other forum on the Internet.

    19. Re:Bravo by ildon · · Score: 1

      I wasn't necessarily trying to claim Quake was first, just that by no means was UT first (Unreal being the most obvious example to me, considering it was made by the same developer and had extremely similar mod support, i.e. I'm almost certain the original Unreal also supported "mutators").

    20. Re:Bravo by TheLink · · Score: 1

      Giving the engine for free is a massive swing to what I believe is the future of gaming

      And the future of 3D graphics benchmarking? ;)

      --
    21. Re:Bravo by billcopc · · Score: 1

      Go tell that to the Team Fortress guys...

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    22. Re:Bravo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Duke3D had a full map editor, full character editor, scripting engine for NPC behavior, and lots of hooks for effects like transparency and walkways. There was even a commercially available (in brick and mortar stores) 'extras' pack that had unused character skins, example maps, etc. There was no support, but I spent some significant time editing Duke3D mod FAQ's in the 90's.

    23. Re:Bravo by w0mprat · · Score: 1

      More importantly it's a boost to PC gaming. It's a platform that's always had so much more potential than consoles.

      --
      After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
    24. Re:Bravo by ildon · · Score: 1

      I couldn't remember if that stuff was user-created or released by 3D Realms.

  2. Re:Its not opensource nor will it run Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A link that redirects to a page containing goatse? How clever of you! By the way, I think your bandwidth is exceeded, the image fails to load.

  3. Right For DUKEEEEEE!!!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Right on time so slightly updated Duke Nukem Forever can be released next year!

  4. Bravo-Content. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Giving the engine for free is a massive swing to what I believe is the future of gaming.

    The "future" of gaming is content, not the engine. The content can be locked up even if the engine is open. Also considering the miss to hit ratio of community mods game publishers have little to worry.

    1. Re:Bravo-Content. by Jonner · · Score: 1

      Giving the engine for free is a massive swing to what I believe is the future of gaming.

      The "future" of gaming is content, not the engine. The content can be locked up even if the engine is open. Also considering the miss to hit ratio of community mods game publishers have little to worry.

      I think you're exactly right about content vs. engine. While this is a move in the right direction by Crytek, it would be even better if they released it as Free or Open Source software. They're already planning to make the source available to anyone, so it seems they're not trying to hide anything. If they released it under a copyleft license, they wouldn't even have to worry that much about competitors gaining an unfair advantage, since improvements couldn't be made proprietary.

  5. Re:port? by Hadlock · · Score: 0

    Let me warm up my beowulf cluster.
     
    ...Right after I finish getting these grits out of Natalie Portman's maternity pants.

    --
    moox. for a new generation.
  6. Re:port? by Hadlock · · Score: 1

    p.s. Get Off My Lawn, I've been playing Crysis 2 on my Regan-era iPaq since last year in glorious 16-shade greyscale LCD.
     
    Call me when they port over Quake 3 to the Apple Newton like John Carmack promised at Quakecon 2001. He must be too busy porting Rage to the iPhone still.

    --
    moox. for a new generation.
  7. Re:Its not opensource nor will it run Linux by umberleigh · · Score: 1

    Congrats. It's been a long time since I saw goatse.

  8. build complete games from scratch for the PC. by atari2600a · · Score: 0, Troll

    Allow teams to build complete games from scratch for the PC. complete games from scratch for the PC. from scratch scratch MFW: :| If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -Carl Sagan

  9. Re:Its not opensource nor will it run Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    When I'm promised goatse, I demand to see goatse.

    Half the fun of clicking blindly on Slashdot links is knowing that goatse could pop up at any time. When all I get is a broken image, it's like the sacred oath between troll and victim has been broken.

  10. Yeah yeah right... by Robert+Zenz · · Score: 1

    ...but under what license will the sourcecode be released?

    1. Re:Yeah yeah right... by whiteboy86 · · Score: 1

      They are giving away source code for the SDK samples, headers and such, not the engine itself... right?

    2. Re:Yeah yeah right... by Robert+Zenz · · Score: 1

      This will be a complete version of our engine, including C++ code access, our content exporters (including our LiveCreate real-time pipeline), shader code, game sample code from Crysis 2, script samples, new improved Flowgraph and a whole host of great asset examples...

      To me this smells like access to underlaying engine code, I could be wrong, though.

    3. Re:Yeah yeah right... by alen · · Score: 1

      free if you make games and don't sell them. if you start to make money they want their cut which is fine.

      it's ridiculous the places i see the unreal engine. iOS is the latest one but MS Kinect Adventures, Gears of War and Mass Effect all use the Unreal Engine

    4. Re:Yeah yeah right... by am+2k · · Score: 2

      No, the engine is shipped as a DLL, and you are free to call its methods. Still, you can go a looong way with just that. Only stuff like adding new data types to flownodes or adding new editors to Sandbox won't be possible.

    5. Re:Yeah yeah right... by flimflammer · · Score: 1

      What that means is you can use C++ code yourself.

      Take a look at things like the Unreal UDK. It's a really nice package for the Unreal Engine 3 which you can use to make games, but you can't write your games with native code or call native functions in libraries you may posses.

      What they're saying here is that you have this sort of access.

    6. Re:Yeah yeah right... by Jonner · · Score: 1

      ...but under what license will the sourcecode be released?

      It seems pretty clear that it will still be available only under proprietary licenses, but there will be no charge for non-commercial use.

  11. Still does not come close to licensing UT3-engine by anomnomnomymous · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've seen this described as Crytek taking on the likes of the UT3-engine, though I find there's one very important difference:
    The UT3 engine can currently also be used to sell commercial games: Up to the first 50k of sales, it's completely free for developers. After that, Epic will take 25% of the earnings.
    The cool things is that this 50k only works for the share that people get -after- the app stores get their cut. Have a look at their site to see their licensing agreement.

    Not related to Epic in any way; Just a happy 'customer', and hopefully a published indie developer in the near future.

    --
    When you shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?
  12. Pointless by mustPushCart · · Score: 1

    This is kind of pointless. You can release everything but if you don't have a license to release a commercial games for independent developers no indie developer is going to take the trouble of using your engine. To be a great engine you need to have widespread acceptance, for that you need studios to use your engine. For studios to use your engine you need to have the people walking in for interviews use it. For those to use it your forums and community need to be abuzz with help and praise for your engine (because lets face it, community is run by indies and a few studio mods). And Indies will not touch an engine which does not have a commercial license available. The best you get will be some hobbyist or student trying it out a bit but for widespread adoption, get a nice cheap commercial indie license.

    1. Re:Pointless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't have the slightest clue what you're talking about.

    2. Re:Pointless by flimflammer · · Score: 1

      Pointless? This is far from pointless. It lets the masses at large familiarize themselves with the engine which is very good for both them and for Crytek. It allows companies to try before they buy.

      This is massive exposure. Just because you can't use this version to profit doesn't mean a whole lot.

    3. Re:Pointless by Pinky's+Brain · · Score: 1

      This is far better done through official modding support for Crysis 2 (this is not the same as releasing a development SDK, game code needs to be clearly separated and released with full source, the encryption of shaders/etc has to be opened up, it needs to have an infrastructure to check/upload/load custom code/content for mods etc. etc.). Modding lets people get up and running with content fast.

      Really their current setup is the worst of all worlds ... an SDK which is hard to use for amateurs compared to a traditional modding SDK and without a boiler plate license to make it an option for semi-professionals like their biggest competitor.

    4. Re:Pointless by mustPushCart · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't use it as an indie developer. And understanding a whole new engine, architecture, language, workflow is a huge investment that i would like to have the possibility of getting back in $$. Its a huge exposure yes, source level access to a big name engine is quite something but if you want people to use it you need to dangle the carrot in front of them to get them to become active members of the community. Less work for studios trying to work on the engine to train their staff if they have done indie work on it and with a bigger community.

    5. Re:Pointless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "If you want to use it to make a game to launch commercially, we'd like to help you with that. If you want to take your product down a traditional commercial route, we will offer an innovative low cost licensing model if you want to release your game digitally.

      If you're looking to use CryENGINE for non-gaming purposes, we'll have a per-seat business model for the engine - please enquire at mycryengine.com for further details."

  13. THANK YOU CryTek! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I'll add support in my map generator for your engine... :)

    and i gnore the stupid comments here... some people here suck because they are paid by companies that suck to write comment that suck on websites that suck (slashdot)...

    1. Re:THANK YOU CryTek! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ps I like the word suck

  14. Re:port? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why?

  15. non-commercial by RichiH · · Score: 0

    So not GPL nor APL nor BSD. Not interested.

    1. Re:non-commercial by LighterShadeOfBlack · · Score: 4, Funny

      So not GPL nor APL nor BSD. Not interested.

      The gaming world at large is devastated by this news.

      --
      Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
    2. Re:non-commercial by RichiH · · Score: 1

      > The gaming world at large is devastated by this news.

      And a good thing also.

      But seriously, releasing things under non-Free licences seems to be very 90ies and while it's nice that they are making an effort, it's mis-guided, imo.

    3. Re:non-commercial by LighterShadeOfBlack · · Score: 1

      But seriously, releasing things under non-Free licences seems to be very 90ies and while it's nice that they are making an effort, it's mis-guided, imo.

      Equally seriously, what world are you living on? That sentence doesn't even slightly describe reality. If you hadn't mentioned APL and BSD in your previous post I'd assume your were Richard Stallman.

      --
      Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
    4. Re:non-commercial by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're an idiot. So they spent years developing new algorithms for their system, and you want them to now just give it for free? I guess the company can just fire the engineers that worked on this system, paying salaries is so 90ies...

    5. Re:non-commercial by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So not GPL nor APL nor BSD. Not interested.

      The gaming world at large is devastated by this news.

      Actually, fuck you pal. This is akin to Microsoft releasing a level editor for "Hover!". No real use to the community, especially not in the sense that Carmack releasing the Q3 and other engines was. You're not going to see Tremulous, OpenArena, or Nexuiz come out of this proprietary crapware. As such this article ends up being essentially a slashvertisement.

    6. Re:non-commercial by bigstrat2003 · · Score: 1

      Prepare to have your mind blown: you can open-source the majority of your game while still having a proprietary engine. You can let people re-use your code, just not theirs.

      Oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-

      --
      "16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
    7. Re:non-commercial by LighterShadeOfBlack · · Score: 1

      No real use to the community, especially not in the sense that Carmack releasing the Q3 and other engines was.

      What community is that? I expect the game-playing community will be quite happy with what comes from this. As will many in many of the game-making communities. The open source community may not get too much from this, but whoever said it was for them?

      As for the stupid, rabid, open-source-or-die community which you represent perfectly, you can go die in your hole or irrelevance. Nobody cares about you.

      --
      Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
  16. Re:port? by rekrowyalp · · Score: 1

    They're not giving away the source code, just the SDK...

  17. Engine market gone? by ivucica · · Score: 0

    Looks like market for selling engines off-the-shelf is generally badly hit over the last few years. You can get a quality engine (and SDK!) for free, and you only buy extras. Engines and SDKs that I know of and that are free, or require payment for commercial development or upon release: Unity3D, Unreal, now CryEngine. Not to mention Ogre3D and other open-source engines (without editors, though).

    1. Re:Engine market gone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Ogre is not an engine, just a renderer. You still need input handling, audio, artifical intelligence (if you want bots) and more.

    2. Re:Engine market gone? by SuperDre · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm sorry but Ogre3D or any opensource engine doesn't come even CLOSE to UnrealEngine3 or Cryengine... But it also all depends on the license the freeversion of CryEngine will ship with, if it's just as interesting as the UDK it might be VERY interesting, only CryEngine doesn't run on Mobiles, whereas UDK does...

    3. Re:Engine market gone? by ivucica · · Score: 1

      That's what I meant -- rendering engine. In Ogre3D, input handling is practically bundled (OIS). AI is not and can not be universal; that piece of the puzzle is definitely game code, not engine code. Audio is easily integrated.

      It may not be a complete solution, but for rendering (which is one of the hardest pieces of the puzzle) it's surely good.

    4. Re:Engine market gone? by ivucica · · Score: 2

      I'm sorry but Ogre3D or any opensource engine doesn't come even CLOSE to UnrealEngine3 or Cryengine

      Crappy stuff can be made with any of those. So can good stuff. I'm talking about erosion of market because major stuff is available in all engines for free. Open source engines are mostly missing fancy editors, since they work primarily with rendering.

      Since you are obviously knowledgeable with all three systems, when you work with them, what major thing is missing from Ogre3D? What major thing do you think Unreal Engine 3 and CryEngine include that cannot easily be done with Ogre3D? Feel free to be subjective, if you need to be.

      Can you also say a few words on flexibility of UE3 and CE when developing a new idea?

      But it also all depends on the license the freeversion of CryEngine will ship with, if it's just as interesting as the UDK it might be VERY interesting, only CryEngine doesn't run on Mobiles, whereas UDK does...

      For most stuff on mobile, you don't need a 3D engine. In fact, 3D games I have played on mobile are all far less compelling than 2D, but fancy, stuff I have seen. What game do you find compelling that uses 3D on mobile, and that its design depends on 3D and could not be done with 2D?

    5. Re:Engine market gone? by am+2k · · Score: 3, Informative

      You need very good artists (3D modelling, animation) to get anything out of CryEngine, except stomach ulcer for the programmers due to the complete undocumentedness of the code.

      Regular characters in Crysis2 have 20+ animations running at the same time (breathing, walking, look IK, foot IK, etc), all blended with each other. That's not going to fly for an amateur project where the artist is happy to get a half-assed walk cycle going. For those, Ogre3D is much better with its full source available and very nice documentation, and much easier access due to not having every trick in the book and then some implemented.

    6. Re:Engine market gone? by am+2k · · Score: 2

      Open source engines are mostly missing fancy editors, since they work primarily with rendering.

      No, Ogre3D is a rendering engine, while CryEngine is a game engine that happens to have an industry-leading rendering engine implemented. You can easily add a fancy game engine with very much the same capabities of CryEngine3 (except for the rendering stuff) on top of Ogre3D. In fact, there's a rather good business opportunity there.

    7. Re:Engine market gone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ogre3D is not a game engine, it is a rendering engine (a dated one at that). It has no networking, physics, audio, or AI.

    8. Re:Engine market gone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ai can be very universal to some level, goal / target selection (criteria matching), pathfinding (node, nav mesh, grid etc) etc.

      There is also no networking modules which can also be pretty universal.

      Engine is more than presentation.

    9. Re:Engine market gone? by flimflammer · · Score: 1

      What a silly comment. You don't need any of that to use CryEngine. Sure you might not be making the most out of it but who cares really? You can still get a lot of handy features out of it.

      I'm not understanding why people are constantly comparing Ogre3D with CryEngine. They're not the same thing. One is simply a Rendering Engine (Ogre3D) and one is a complete package that encompasses all aspects of gaming (CryEngine).

    10. Re:Engine market gone? by uncledrax · · Score: 1

      Also, you're forgetting by doing this, they are increasing the pool of persons that are familar with working on the engine.. in theory increasing the number of smaller startups..

      Successful small companies become bigger companies.. == more games == more sales == more commission/shares for the Engine company.

      It's a business move, and one I can agree with.

      --
      ----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
    11. Re:Engine market gone? by am+2k · · Score: 1

      What a silly comment. You don't need any of that to use CryEngine. Sure you might not be making the most out of it but who cares really?

      If you're not using 90% of the features of the engine, why use it at all? I'd prefer using something that's easier to understand.

      You can still get a lot of handy features out of it.

      Yes, your development will still suffer, because the engine is so complicated as soon as you step one millimeter out of the Sandbox editor (I know what I'm talking about, I've been using CryEngine3 for a while now).

      I'm not understanding why people are constantly comparing Ogre3D with CryEngine. They're not the same thing. One is simply a Rendering Engine (Ogre3D) and one is a complete package that encompasses all aspects of gaming (CryEngine).

      Yes, I've made that distinction in another reply to this thread. Ogre3D comes with several aspects of a game engine, though, like animation/particles and user input (via an external library though). Further, some integrations exist that would belong into a game engine, like physics.

    12. Re:Engine market gone? by ivucica · · Score: 1

      So, nitpickers are making me say "Ogre3D + additional libraries typically used with it"? :-)

      Sure, those few generic classes for AI can be taken off the shelf. Is that among the things that CryEngine offers?

    13. Re:Engine market gone? by ivucica · · Score: 1

      There are numerous libraries typically combined with Ogre3D to provide it physics and audio. AI can be written relatively easily, and reusability is limited. Networking can be difficult to reuse.

    14. Re:Engine market gone? by ivucica · · Score: 1

      What a silly comment. You don't need any of that to use CryEngine. Sure you might not be making the most out of it but who cares really?

      If you're not using 90% of the features of the engine, why use it at all? I'd prefer using something that's easier to understand.

      That's right!

      You can still get a lot of handy features out of it.

      Yes, your development will still suffer, because the engine is so complicated as soon as you step one millimeter out of the Sandbox editor (I know what I'm talking about, I've been using CryEngine3 for a while now).

      Nice to hear from someone that actually used the engine to confirm my suspicions :-)

    15. Re:Engine market gone? by ivucica · · Score: 1

      Business move is smart, indeed. How useful to other developers - this remains to be seen.

    16. Re:Engine market gone? by ivucica · · Score: 1

      Rendering engine means nothing without good artists. Otherwise, insightful -- here's a cookie :-)

    17. Re:Engine market gone? by am+2k · · Score: 1

      Yes, but the artist can't do much when the technology doesn't support it. For example, I was pretty much blown away when I read what a wrinkle map does. Ogre3D is nowhere near to supporting that detail in animations.

      Thanks for the cookie ;)

    18. Re:Engine market gone? by SuperDre · · Score: 0

      Since you are obviously knowledgeable with all three systems, when you work with them, what major thing is missing from Ogre3D? What major thing do you think Unreal Engine 3 and CryEngine include that cannot easily be done with Ogre3D? Feel free to be subjective, if you need to be.

      Good tools, no matter how sophisticated and feature rich an engine is, without good tools it's completely useless.. The Unreal Engine 3 has already been 'battle'tested on a lot of different platforms, CryEngine is getting there, and both engines are complete game-engines, and both have great tools to make your workflow faster and easier, I looooove the ingame realtime (seeing it directly on the PC,xbox360,PS3) sandbox editor of the cryengine.. That's the problem with Ogre3D it's not a complete game-engine, it still requires a lot of extra components, which you have to connect yourself, and then you have to create tools yourself to get the content in there.. So in short, you still have to create a complete game-engine yourself, which ofcourse is nice but with all the battletested options it's better to use that time on better gameplay/content than having to spend all that time on writing the basics..

      What game do you find compelling that uses 3D on mobile, and that its design depends on 3D and could not be done with 2D?

      Have you actually seen the latest games for the latest smartphones/tablets? Yes I'm a 2D fan myself, I really like 2D platform games and adventure games and don't think 3D adds anything to it, but when I have to create a new game the customers expect 3D these days, so it's very nice if you have an engine that works on all platforms and you don't have to change your workflow constantly.

    19. Re:Engine market gone? by ivucica · · Score: 1

      Interesting! Thanks for the info! I'm pretty sure if one sat for a while and thought about it, one could come up with a way to easily implement wrinkle maps with Ogre. On the other hand, there may be many such tricks in CryEngine.

      In the end, it all comes down to this: how much of those tricks does one need for most games?

    20. Re:Engine market gone? by ivucica · · Score: 1

      What game do you find compelling that uses 3D on mobile, and that its design depends on 3D and could not be done with 2D?

      Have you actually seen the latest games for the latest smartphones/tablets?

      Yes, but I have not seen any 3D game that makes me want to really play it. I find the 3D aspect interesting professionally, and from a technological perspective, but I don't find it adding entertainment value.

      Yes I'm a 2D fan myself, I really like 2D platform games and adventure games and don't think 3D adds anything to it, but when I have to create a new game the customers expect 3D these days,

      I disagree that customers demand 3D on mobile. In fact, I disagree that they demand it on desktop, for many game concepts. Despite what my personal tastes say about it, tons of people play stuff from casual vendors such as Big Fish Games especially from the "Hidden Object" category.

      Does 3D add significant value and (more importantly) improved visuals to puzzle games, to hidden objects? Do you think people wouldn't play Torchlight if it were 2D? 3D games we already very strong back in 2000, yet Diablo II was mostly 2D.

      I don't think people's tastes are all that radically different today. Games can be improved by 3D, but it might be unimportant, and it may significantly hinder the visuals of the games if they have the same budget. A game with 2D sprites, background et al can take advantage of excellent renderers in 3D modeling packages and only then be touched up in Photoshop to improve the look. A game with 3D environment has to have great texture artists, great modelers, great shader writers and display the entire good looking 3D environment quickly on even poor machines.

      It all depends on what your market is.

      so it's very nice if you have an engine that works on all platforms and you don't have to change your workflow constantly.

      I agree with this one completely!

      It does depend, however, on how complex is it to implement your ideas with an off-the-shelf game engine, and sometimes it may even be so with an off-the-shelf renderer. Just sayin'. :-)

    21. Re:Engine market gone? by am+2k · · Score: 1

      I'm pretty sure if one sat for a while and thought about it, one could come up with a way to easily implement wrinkle maps with Ogre.

      Yes, since Ogre is fully open source, you can implement everything that is technically possible. The question is just how much time you can invest. At some point it's just as easy to create a rendering engine from scratch.

      On the other hand, there may be many such tricks in CryEngine.

      There are a lot. You can find a brief overview at mycryengine.com. The character stuff is also very impressive.

      In the end, it all comes down to this: how much of those tricks does one need for most games?

      Yep, if you don't have a team of graphics and animation artists sitting at the office and working on characters all day for a year or more, you can't use most of those features anyways. Additionally, they don't add anything to the game concept itself. As an indie developer, an innovative game concept is the key to success, not having perfect water or skin rendering.

  18. Oh my God... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You guys are taking so many things out of context it's making me laugh hysterically... if it has anything near the accessibility of UDK.. I, for one would be excited.

  19. Re:port? by Cunk · · Score: 1

    I bet he feels dumb for posting this article now, eh?

    --

    I am the inventor of the hilarious refrigerator alarm.
  20. Re:Its not opensource nor will it run Linux by slashwindow · · Score: 0

    goatse.ru hosting provider decided to put them offline of a while.
    Sorry for inconvience, not my fault.
    As soon as outage were reported to me, I switched to another goatse mirror.
    BTW, goatse.ru is up and running again.

    My deep apologies, and here is a goatse link for you

  21. Re:Still does not come close to licensing UT3-engi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Thats nice and everything but I dont play UDK based games simply because Epic wimped out of porting (for commercial reasons) UDK to Linux.

    If you want to make it big as an indie developer you need to support as many platforms as you can.

  22. Re:Still does not come close to licensing UT3-engi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "If you want to use it to make a game to launch commercially, we'd like to help you with that. If you want to take your product down a traditional commercial route, we will offer an innovative low cost licensing model if you want to release your game digitally"
    If you read the letter on crymod you'll see Crytek will go the same way.

  23. Re:port? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Enjoy Norton Antivirus because that's the best you'll ever get on your crap platform.

    Linux gamer here, playing Portal 2, Wesnoth, Trine, Minecraft, Spiral Knights.... don't mind me, just chilling with my penguin.

  24. Worst Engine Ever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Fantastic! Now everyone will learn how woeful this engine is to work with :)

  25. Re:Still does not come close to licensing UT3-engi by daid303 · · Score: 1

    Epic didn't start out with that, the 'free' unreal 2 engine had a very explicit "You shall NOT create games!" in the license. The basic commercial engine license was 150k back then.

    No hate for the unreal engine, I love it, I learned a lot from it. But just wanted to point that out.

  26. Re:Its not opensource nor will it run Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So is getting goatse.cx'd an example of being 'dickholled'? :-D

  27. Re:port? by ildon · · Score: 1

    The first time I read it it seemed like they were giving away the engine source, due to the line "including C++ code access", the emphasis on "complete version of our engine", and the fact that they mention the "sample game code" as a separate bullet point, but the more I read it and think about it the less likely that seems.

    I'm starting to think the emphasis was given due to the fact that you can download and use this SDK and engine without purchasing a Crysis 2 license (which is actually very uncommon and a good step on its own), and that's why it only contains "sample Crysis 2 game code". i.e. until the source code was released, you couldn't release a standalone Q3 mod even if you replaced all the assets. The people playing your game also had to have a license to run the quake3.exe binary at that time.

  28. Re:Still does not come close to licensing UT3-engi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, but adding more of the big players to the "freebies" mix is good. Other engine vendors will eventually be forced to make competitive licenses.

    Anyway, I'm sure if you use the CryEngine to make a nice game, you will be able to reach an agreement with CryTec to sell it.

  29. Death of Tinkering by Gr33nJ3ll0 · · Score: 1

    I think it's sad how companies are engaging in every manner possible to prevent people from tinkering around with their purchases. This is yet another example of this exact trend....

    1. Re:Death of Tinkering by RobDollar · · Score: 1

      I must have missed something, could you elaborate?

    2. Re:Death of Tinkering by Gr33nJ3ll0 · · Score: 1

      Sorry, there was a post yesterday about all the locked down devices and the death of tinkering, which was "clearly caused by abusive corporations". And hackerspace NYC to the rescue.

    3. Re:Death of Tinkering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pardon? This might show how much OTHERs are preventing such a thing, but these guys have released their engines code to non-commercial purposes, that sounds like encouraging tinkering to me.

  30. Re:Its not opensource nor will it run Linux by jgtg32a · · Score: 1

    Maybe you should consider how you come up with your throw away accounts? I've noticed than anyone posting a link with slash in the name is posting goatse

  31. Bungie put out offical tools before UT by uncledrax · · Score: 1

    I say this as an Epic fanboi (Except for cliffyB.. he's a smacktard because he says dumb things)..
    Myth (by Bungie before they turned evil^H^H^H^Hinto a M$/console tool) came out with their map/tag tools, I know it shipped with Myth 2 (1998), but I was pretty sure it was available for Myth 1 as well at some point, and there ended up being some pretty sweet mods for Myth 1 & 2.
    Actually, going back and poking some more, Marathon even had an official toolset released and map contest.. (circa 96)...

    I really did love Bungie before they put out Halo... sigh... anyway

    You are correct though, there a ton of people modding even Wolf3d before Doom or Quake was on the scene.. .

    Does 'Adventure Construction Set' count as an officially-supported-mod-platform? And heck that's just my personal game-modding experience.. I know for a fact some of hte older/more-crusty types did a ton of stuff before me..

    --
    ----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
    1. Re:Bungie put out offical tools before UT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Halo still pisses me off. Myth/Myth2 were *my* games and I couldn't wait for Halo when it was announced (waaaay early). Enter MS and Bungie becomes just another lame team w/a hit :(

    2. Re:Bungie put out offical tools before UT by MachDelta · · Score: 1

      I STILL remember reading Jeff Green's editorial at the back of CGW the month that merger was announced. His closing statement:
      "Ladies and gentlemen, Han Solo has joined the Empire."

      Nnnnnnnnnooooooooooo!!! :(

  32. Our company have zero-tolerance policy on modders by Dainsanefh · · Score: 0

    All modders are nothing but modify/hack the game to gain unfair advantage. We banned these people on sight. We scan YouTube regularly so that all modders account who post their latest creation will be immediately perma-banned.

    --
    Twitter: @dainsanefh
  33. Amazing ! Esp the Cinema mode by Latinhypercube · · Score: 0

    Wow ! Go Crytek and go PC gaming ! The Cinema Sandbox version alone is a game changer ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeE09tsYWvQ

  34. Hype by g0bshiTe · · Score: 1

    I think Crysis is all about hype. Yeah the game looks stunning, but the gameplay is truely some of the worst I have had the displeasure to play. I much more enjoyed Prototype. I mean if I am in this city I should be able to go where I want, and not be stuck to a linear path. Not even bringing into play the fact that I have to spend a half clip of ammunition to take out 1 enemy. That's just dumb. It totally makes the game about finding ammo. If I wanted that I'd just play Resident Evil.

    --
    I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
    1. Re:Hype by mcvos · · Score: 1

      The problem with Crysis is that it's old by the time my hardware can handle it. It's rather interesting to see a company invest to make itself irrelevant.

  35. Re:Still does not come close to licensing UT3-engi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "But just wanted to point that out - because I like being a smartass dick"

    There, I fixed it for ya'.

  36. My jaw actually just dropped by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is _fantastic_ news! I cant wait to get my hands on that code and my head around some sweet new projects! Still need to tinker with the UT3 engine too... and have some spare time... and some ideas to implement... but aside from those things I am going to be very busy!

  37. Re:port? by spire3661 · · Score: 1

    Economics

    --
    Good-bye