Shortly before attending GDC 09, I learned that Crytek announced the CryENGINE 3. I’m not a big PC gamer, so I didn’t really look into the announcement. It’s Crytek, so I knew it was going to be bigger and badder than ever … and you’d most likely need a rig like this to run it. Needless to say, I was quite shocked when I walked into my appointment with Crytek to see an Xbox 360 sitting on the ground running the CryENGINE 3.
Read on to find out how the CryENGINE 3 is going to make developing games easier then ever and what this means for PC and console gamers.
I sat down with Cevat Yerli, the president and CEO of Crytek, and Jens Schafer, PR Manager, as they walked me through the CryENGINE 3. The video above shows off everything that I got to see happening all in real time. Crytek really wanted to drive home the point that this engine can work on the consoles so they ditched the PCs and all of the content shown last week at GDC was through the PS3 and Xbox 360. The engine looks exactly the same running on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Typically, one version will suffer, but Cevat wanted to make sure the engine runs the same on both systems. It wasn't that hard to make happen, as Cevat told me: “People always say the PS3 is a bitch to work on [laughs], but it’s not actually.”
The tech demo started off in the room you see in the video starting at the three second mark. The purpose of this room was to show off how advanced the lighting system has gotten. With the CryEngine2, three to eight light sources could be used at a time. Now, as you can see in that first portion of the video, over 300 lights are being shown.
A little later in the demonstration, we take a visit to a level from Crysis. Yes, thanks to the CryENGINE 3, Crysis is possible on the consoles. It doesn’t mean we’re going to see a Crysis port, but it’s a realistic possibility now.
I want to remind you again that I saw this all in real time as we toured the different locations on the Xbox 360. Not once was there a loading screen through these different portions of the demo. The transition from each scene was instantaneous and I had to remind myself several times that this was on the Xbox 360.
The CE3 was built with a top down approach. The priority is of course, for the PC. When a company puts out a game using the CE3 on multiple platforms, it’s going to look the best on the PC. But now it’s easier than ever for a developer to bring their game over to the consoles and not have to put in a ton of work to get their game to run on the console when developing a multiplatform game. On top of all that, CE3 is ready for whatever the next big systems Microsoft and Sony are working on. The engine is next-gen ready.
The beautiful part of the CE3 is how developers will be able to edit their games almost instantly. Say you just completed a level and want someone to have a quick run through of your creation. While the player is going through the level, you’re going to be looking at everything to make sure things are running smoothly. If you something wrong, you can go fix the problem and immediately update the game across all the platforms it’s being developed on. Usually it can take hours, but now, developers won’t have much of an excuse to fix bugs other then plain laziness.
It's ridiculous the potential Crytek has laid out here and it's going to be really interesting to see what comes of all this.
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I guess this has always been the goal for video games; an ultra real simulation experience. But for what ever reason I'm just not that excited to see highly anticipated games head into this direction.
Very nice. The jump between 2 and 3 isn't as big as between 1 and 2, but I don't think it has to be. I'm very happy they're spending so much time optimizing the engine and getting it to run on consoles. If CryEngine2 has one weakness, it's how damn hard it is to run. I would love to see a re-release of Crysis running on the CryEngine3. That would probably allow people who's rigs weren't powerful enough before to play the game at acceptable framerates. But yeah, I like Crytek. They're one of the elite developers for sure. No bitching about how the PS3 is hard to program for, and no shitty excuses. They get shit done.
All i can say is...FUCK YES!!!! I really wanted to play crysis but im completely computer illiterate lol. Plus whats the point on buying stuff for a computer when you could just by a box and put disks in and it works.
Grey, yeah, the engine itself has nothing to do with the genre. If you're not going to make an outstandingly pretty open world game, however, go for something else maybe.
I love you, Crytek.
Pew, whatever you say about the games, you can't argue that the engine itself isn't a technological marvel.
seems that they are stealing id the show with there engine approach - one design, 3 systems.
and before anyone starts bashing crytek and defending id, id's new engine and game are not finished yet, their enigne looks great, the game will probably be good but it is not an automatic hit only because id develops it.
crysis is a good game with currently the best graphics on the market. it is not the best game and there are many more games that are better.
Cytek is a great company and this new engine looks very, very promising. I hope that it does work on the 360 and doesn't crash. I think it will run fine on a PS3, but the 360 doesn't have much head room.
I remember Crytek already announcing a Crysis for the consoles, they just needed to "tweak the engine" so that it would work on consoles. This may just be the engine they were talking about.
@Narishma: Farcry 2 uses a different engine? I did not know that. I figured they would use it since the first one did.
@PhazonYoshi: I know engine and game genre are different, I'm referring to the fact that it seems thats all they use it for though. That engine is only in a handful of games, all FPS games (that I know of). If it's such a great engine, it should get licensed for other games.
I'm so glad I've held off on getting a desktop computer. I'm going to keep doing so once this Rage become relevant, as those are looking to be some graphical beasts, and a worthwhile investment.
glad this'll be coming to consoles too. I love Crytek.
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12:00 PM on 03.30.2009
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Sarcasm aside this sounds great and I can't wait to see what devs do with this engine.
Personally, I'm very impressed. I've seen the demo and that stuff can't be easy to do. The most impressive was the bending palm trees.
CE3 might be a big player in this gen. Lots of companies are working towards Renderware status of the PS2 generation.
+1 to the man with the balls to say PS3 was easy to work with.
But you saw that effect? When the tree falls isn't very real the impact with the floor. Could it be better, but still awesome!
And yes the video show a comparison between PS3 and 360. So it's comin' for both of them... =D
@ black nexus
nah, they just fired up some PS3's, keepin' it nice and toasty down there.
I love you, Crytek.
Pew, whatever you say about the games, you can't argue that the engine itself isn't a technological marvel.
and before anyone starts bashing crytek and defending id, id's new engine and game are not finished yet, their enigne looks great, the game will probably be good but it is not an automatic hit only because id develops it.
crysis is a good game with currently the best graphics on the market. it is not the best game and there are many more games that are better.
mrt181: idtech5 already does one-click compiling for every platform...
@PhazonYoshi: I know engine and game genre are different, I'm referring to the fact that it seems thats all they use it for though. That engine is only in a handful of games, all FPS games (that I know of). If it's such a great engine, it should get licensed for other games.
glad this'll be coming to consoles too. I love Crytek.