Popularity of Game Engines: What happened to CryEngine?
interpolator
TL;DR: Why don't more people use CryEngine when compared to UE4 or Unity. Documentation? Or did they simply miss the ball when Unreal Engine and Unity came around?
---
You don't hear much from Crytek these days outside of trade shows, and there was that whole confusion with Lumberyard.
First of all I'm not saying CryEngine is dead, far from it as more and more games are released each year by a number of developers. But it seem that for all the features it boasts, and how much it's evolved over the past years, it's community has largely remained quite small.
A couple years ago CryEngine was really at the forefront of graphical fidelity in games, boasting real time radiosity solutions, SSAO and AA before UDK, Unity and UE4 were able to support it, come close, but never quite as clean and nice. Obviously a game engine isn't only about the graphics options and features. CryEngine really missed the beat when they initially launched to the public, keeping their licensing on a per-project basis where you had to deal directly through them instead of the more layman-friendly Unity which allowed for a one time purchase and UDK/UE4 for their royalty structure. The same can be shown for Valve's own Source engine, once ModDB was flooded with new an exciting Source mods, but as Unity and UDK became more inviting, transformed into IndieDB with more and more stand alone games coming into fruition.
Communities began to develop wikis and documentations updated, CryEngine was left in the dust as Unity and Epic expanded further, now also supporting these budding communities with art challenges, user-made animations, and monetary incentive.
Even the technical forums on Polycount are now Unity or UE4 related, showing a lack of users, a lack of a larger broad community able to propel the CryEngine forward.
So why is it that today, you don't use CryEngine? And if you do, why do you think it's community isn't as large as Unity or Unreal 4?
---
You don't hear much from Crytek these days outside of trade shows, and there was that whole confusion with Lumberyard.
First of all I'm not saying CryEngine is dead, far from it as more and more games are released each year by a number of developers. But it seem that for all the features it boasts, and how much it's evolved over the past years, it's community has largely remained quite small.
A couple years ago CryEngine was really at the forefront of graphical fidelity in games, boasting real time radiosity solutions, SSAO and AA before UDK, Unity and UE4 were able to support it, come close, but never quite as clean and nice. Obviously a game engine isn't only about the graphics options and features. CryEngine really missed the beat when they initially launched to the public, keeping their licensing on a per-project basis where you had to deal directly through them instead of the more layman-friendly Unity which allowed for a one time purchase and UDK/UE4 for their royalty structure. The same can be shown for Valve's own Source engine, once ModDB was flooded with new an exciting Source mods, but as Unity and UDK became more inviting, transformed into IndieDB with more and more stand alone games coming into fruition.
Communities began to develop wikis and documentations updated, CryEngine was left in the dust as Unity and Epic expanded further, now also supporting these budding communities with art challenges, user-made animations, and monetary incentive.
Even the technical forums on Polycount are now Unity or UE4 related, showing a lack of users, a lack of a larger broad community able to propel the CryEngine forward.
So why is it that today, you don't use CryEngine? And if you do, why do you think it's community isn't as large as Unity or Unreal 4?
Replies
Didnt amazon buy the whole thing in the end? But it wont be the same without the devs.
1. Not artist friendly or flexible.
2. Poor documentation and community support.
3. Financial woes, who knows if CryEngine and Crytek will be around in 5 years.
4. Not widely used, much more likely to end up at a studio using Unreal Engine or Unity over CryEngine
I still have a softspot for it, but just haven't used it since UE4 was released.
Crytek's support was much more nuanced. Once Crysis was out of the spotlight, what was left to get excited for? There was Ryse, which was definitely impressive at release but it wasn't enough to keep the focus on Cryengine itself.
I believe Crytek could have had a chance if they continued to pioneer their lighting tech. From what I remember, Cryengine had one advantage over all other engines in that it was farther ahead in real time global illumination. This was especially true when UE4 initially opted for a real time GI system but dropped it in favor of the pre-baked solution which disappointed a lot of people (including me). I also remember reading on the UE4 forums that foliage looked and performed better on Cryengine than in Unreal.
They were several years behind for consoles at which point they lost out on a significant part of the market to Unreal, and completely missed out on indies and mobile targeted by Unity.
Also their engine is now pretty much free via Amazon Lumberyard.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/02/09/amazon-lumberyard-cryengine-twitch/
Why aren't people using lumberyard? I'm guessing marketing? I rarely see anything on it.
I think lumberyard is playing a hefty dose of catch-up. They would need to contribute something significantly disruptive at this point to capture any market share this late.
I was thinking about learning Cry Engine, but the learning curve is way grander compared to unity and Unreal, which makes it unappealing to me and I think many other artists.
Don't get me wrong there is some great tech behind it, but the issue is they are not catering to what the market is asking for as well as the competition or offering anything substantially different from everyone else at this point in time.
they either have to come out of the gates with something game changing or they are going to flop further.
First off let me preface it with this - I am super excited for Cryengine's next two major releases. Which includes allot of really nice Improvements and features. I am not an employee of Crytek.
But first why I am excited -
They are adding a new Visual Scripting system called Schematyc. It is similar to UE4's blueprint system.There is a new material editor that is being worked on for the 5.5 release. I do not know much about this.
Mobile support for CryEngine is happening. This makes me really happy as it means we will see general optimizations to the render pipeline and toolset. Which will benefit desktop and console.
This is just a small sampling of what is coming more can be found here.
Revolutionart said there is a FBX importer and it works. It has been there for a while as well.
That bit said - To answer R3D's Question. CryEngine does not have a very large community. Most of us CryEngine users are on slack which is why the forums seem like a ghost town at times. This is mostly because of early issues of the Cryengine FreeSDK being complex as all hell and it sucking. This is not the FreeSDK.
CryEngine had it's place, namely it had excellent real-time foliage, dynamic lighting and half-decent terrain tools - but the rest of the toolset just isn't that great to work with, and it's just not the best choice for games that don't need it's specific strengths.
not rating any of these engines, mind. never done the comparison myself.
It seemed like a lot of years of poking around Unity wishing there was a windows version till that happened around 2010
( almost 5 years before it even exploded on windows. Tho Mac fans may argue that it was exploded when it was MAC only I guess? Either way, It's been around years before the first Crysis game. I remember going to some IGDA meeting Post Mortem demo because of the environment wow factor for far cry back in the day? But I don't know if that tech could be considered a real precursor to cryengine? )
But modding for Cryengine was of interest pretty fast?
And as far as I am concerned Cryengine and Lumberyard are far from irrelevant? Haven't touched as much in years but considering my eye wanders and I have peek at least once every other month if not every other week to see what's brewing...
If they ever had an assault of full time including development/reference competing week after blog worthy week...
I could easily jump the UE4 ship in a heartbeat.
On top of that, the last cryengine game I played, star citizen, has the worst experience i've ever seen in terms of its build quality (amazing artwork aside). jittering through walls, falling through my ship, stuttering all the time presumably loading stuff, really terrible reliability in interacting with objects in the world, and the worst fps cam/movement i've ever seen. every 2 minutes it locks up so i cant even rotate left. My hate for root motion fps aside, it's just really shoddy and jittery and I dont know why. It's not hard to make. and overall terrible performance for what isnt actually that much visually.
Now, that game has an insanely high budget and they're fucking up real basic things - I cant imagine their staff are clueless morons, they surely arent, so working with the engine must be terrible. It's still just as bad on the lumberyard side too.
This strategy was unwise.
Guess which engine that was.
It had the least tuts I guess to? And to be fair I never followed what the modders were actually doing with it back then. I was just surprised that as much was possible so quickly.
Yep Valve did a lot better with Half Life 2 in consideration for open source dev back then!
( considering the engine was stolen n released so quickly!
I remember that even made the national news when it was pirated! )
I don't have high hopes for Amazons offshoot, Lumberyard.
Aside of the mentioned 'issues' with Cryengine (all engines have their downs and ups) they missed out on a big opportunity:
A: The big sandbox shooter franchise with a lot of fans + A new multiplayer FPS
B: A perfectly usable 3D engine said shooter franchises were made with
Now logical conclusion would have been;
C: Mod or at least Mapping tools and support for Warface (+Crysis 3) - leading to a new generation getting accustomed with Cryengine and adding value to the existing games, the new users Cryengine desperately needed and that could also have pushed warface or Crysis to new heights. Sure, mod support is a lot of work, but come on, you make the engine and the game how can anyone not see the connection.
Also they really would have needed a asset store and less strict implementations.
Point being with SC though, they have huge money and their results are still jerky and shitty as fuck - i cant imagine they're shit so the engine must be a pain.
All in all cryengine is more of a Realtime portfolio engine than a game engine, the Devs aren't really super friendly and they're mostly obnoxious, not to mention they don't even treat their employee's that nice.
I moved to unreal because it allows you to have more control over what you're actually making, no messing about its all straight in front of you. you go on crydev forum and ask how to create an area box that generates modular building pieces, 9 times out of 10 you'll be laughed at and the explanation will be 'it takes to long so no point' there's no helpful community and it's pretty much a free for all now!
Rant over
Nothing happened to cryengine, that was the problem, everything else got better.