CryEngine 3 - wow. (+questions)

adam

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWvgETOo5ek&hd=1"]Crysis 3 - CryEngine3 Tech Trailer - YouTube[/ame]

I know nothing about this engine other than its rendering capabilities and which games use it.

I'm curious about a few things, primarily gameplay/mod/"game design" related.

How capable is the engine from the scripting/gameplay side of things? How far can you take it when coming up with custom gameplay before you need a programmers support?

Can someone make a complete game with CE3 using the tools and its interface or does it get to a point rather quickly where you now need custom code in order to achieve your goals?

megalmn2000

SOOOOOO sick! I hope we'll get thoses features soon on the SDK! ^^

Paradan

toad tech is gonna revolutionize gaming.

wasker

Looks awesome

osman

Adam, I think it depends on what you mean by 'not needing a programmer'. If you're capable of SOME c++ or lua, you might be able to do some simple stuff, but I think( I'm pretty sure I'll get corrected if wrong) you always need someone who can eitehr code in c++ or lua.

I haven't really checked out their visual scripting thingy, but I think it's only for events and logic. Spawn player here, when he hits this trigger, end level, or go to this map etc etc.

adam

Ah, OK. So you couldn't some how create new rules/logic to use with the editor? I wrote that assuming no one in my scenario knew C++/LUA.

Y_M

I'm also very interested in these questions, as someone who has only ever worked in Source and is planning to mak a small scale game in it (me + 1 programmer) I want to know how it's moddability compares with source. One of the biggest hurdles for me in swapping to CE3 is that all of my optimisation knowledge for Source would be totally useless, I have no idea how big/complex a CE3 level can be compared to a source BSP.
I love Source but every time I see CE3 I Hgggnnnnn so bad I just can't get the desire out of my head.

osman

You can probably change a lot of the existing functionality, around the default game-mode/game-type they provide. But say you want your character to take AI hostage and use them as shield. That kind of stuff is probably too much for the flowgraph.

It seems very similar to Kismet when just looking at this:
http://freesdk.crydev.net/display/SDKDOC2/Flow+Graph+Node+Reference

That's what you can play with, if you want custom nodes, you'll have to code them yourself.

Paradan

^this

pretty sure you can quite a bit with the flowgraph system, more than just FPS.

racing, arcade-like flight sim, third person, rpg. (ok rpg might be pushing it)

its got dialogue, vehicle, character, and sound editors. well sound is actually via fmod, which is in the tools folder.

i havent done so yet, but i'm gonna try to use flowgraph to distribute distance clouds across my sky so i dont have to go in and break up repetition by hand.

haiddasalami

Should really play around more with the CrySDK. This stuff is looking really stellar and awesome.

osman

@bissoncurtis, a good place to start might be games created with the engine . Crysis had some pretty big environments. You can probably open those games up, and see how they did their stuff. There's only a few special situations to know when you're optimizing, most of it is common sense.

RexM

A lot of the gameplay created for this was done through flowgraph.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6xH9sHsx1Y

Flowgraphs in Cryengine are quite powerful and can be used to build gameplay systems.

cholden

want! oh wait....got?

Ace-Angel

You can use Flowgraphs, but honestly those are the poor-mans version of the tools, you're still going to need a programmer to do the heavy kludge work if you want something which isn't simple math and camera position change.

Andreas

Wow even the difference in visual fidelity since the last time we saw C3 is a massive jump. Might be one of those games to buy just for the graphics, and gameplay be-damned. If it plays much better than C2, bonus! :P Definitely going to be needing a new laptop this Autumn! Top work Crytek dudes!

(If I'm being picky the bird and butterfly animation could be worked on further. The frog is spot on though! :P)

Paradan

@bissoncurtis: I went from Source(L4D) to CE3, and its been no problem so far. Biggest change for me was building everything externally(walls, buildings,etc), instead of just props.

O and being able to adjust a light in real time, instead of having to guess and compile, repeat.

Computron

Area Lights and 3rd Gen LPV/IV GI have my curiosity peaked.

Cryengine 3.4.1 will either be out this week or after GDC if they miss that deadline according to Adam from the dev team.

It will not have all or any of these features necessarily, as they branch their releases.

Sandro

TOAD TECH!!!!

Ace-Angel

Haha, yes, Secret Toad Tech, that part really hit the funny bone

Snacuum

I made a thread a while back about games not comparing to professional folios and well, hey here we are.

Snefer

how about fbx to import meshes? : D

3DKnight

The general consensus is, is for pure ART, cryengine wins, though it's can't hold a candle to UDK and its kismet system for rapid game play and system prototyping.

You end up with the design team being blocked by programming requests to implement systems they want, while in UDK the design team can easily go into Kismet and do what they need to, then ask programming to implement into the code to make it faster and more streamlined.

Also unlike Unreal, cryengine doesn't allow you to custom make your shaders. Do you want to do a Linear Interp across three materials using 2 UVs and 3 gradients? You need to go to a programmer to get that shader created.

It looks gorgeous, just needs a lot of programming time to setup correctly for the needs of your project.

Cojax

I'm curious. How big is this dev team?

Tech video looks great!

Brygelsmack

adam wrote: »

Ah, OK. So you couldn't some how create new rules/logic to use with the editor? I wrote that assuming no one in my scenario knew C++/LUA.

You can use Flowgraph to some extent. But a Flowgraph should never replace code.

Snefer wrote: »

how about fbx to import meshes? : D

Cinebox got that already, which is CryEngine3. It's probably coming later for the rest of us. For now I think you can use Ruan's FBX support for CryENGINE3.

3DKnight wrote: »

The general consensus is, is for pure ART, cryengine wins, though it's can't hold a candle to UDK and its kismet system for rapid game play and system prototyping.

I disagree. I think Flowgraph is an extremely capable utility inside the engine.

R3D

Very Very Pretty. With this, UE4 and Source2 on the way i'm excited to see the games in the coming years.

ScottP

Ive been working with UE3 for years now but am dead tired of its inferior lighting system.

From an artist standpoint, i think the only thing UE3 has on CE3 is the material editor and content browsers ease of use. Im sure UE4 will be a great upgrade from UE3, but for now CE3 is visually superior in my opinion.

McGreed

Awesome, now I can use the line "But can it run Crysis?" again!