CryENGINE 3 Updated, Crysis 3 Announced 60
zacharye writes "The next-generation Xbox and PlayStation consoles currently being developed by Microsoft and Sony will make the disparity between console and mobile gaming even more vast, adding more fluid animation support and a number of additional enhancements that will make video games more realistic than ever. But even when confined to the capabilities present in today's home consoles, new video game engines show us just how amazing gaming will be moving forward. Ctytek, the lab behind the popular Crysis franchise, recently released the CryENGINE 3 SDK 3.4.0 DX11 update for developers, along with a quick reel to highlight some of the engine's capabilities."
Crysis 3 has also been officially confirmed. They're aiming for a Spring 2013 release date, and the game will be set within a dome in New York City that contains an 'urban rainforest.'
Re:Prophet? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah. The story went something like this:
1. Alcatraz survives destroyed sub ...
2. Alcatraz gets nanosuit
3.
4. Prophet!
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Re:Prophet? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes. And this time...it's personal!
A Game Now? (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, maybe now they can actually make a game, instead of a glorified tech demo (Crysis) or an interactive movie (Crysis 2)...
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I actually quite enjoyed Crysis. Crysis 2, however, had none (or very little) of the freedom that I enjoyed in Crysis. I played Crysis through twice: once as basically an assault character who took fairly direct routes, and the second time as a sniper who travelled stealthily and for the most part didn't stick to the established/expected route at all. I don't think that would be possible in Crysis 2 -- it all seemed much, much more linear (and I didn't even bother finishing the game).
Re:A Game Now? (Score:5, Insightful)
When the video shows off nothing but graphical effects, it's unlikely.
Seriously, at some point, the oceans will be as realistic as they can be, the HDR will be spot on, the reflections won't affect performance, the model detail will be high enough for ANYTHING.
Then, what will they do? All their old games will look like junk, and have no redeeming feature beyond their graphics. And, maybe, finally, we can get back to making *games*. You know, things with plots, gameplay, a point, freedom, etc. Sound hit that point a long while ago - you know, I don't think there's much more you *can* do to improve upon a game that has proper 3D sound with real-time effects - so games don't even mention it any more whereas ten or fifteen years ago stereo, or 3D sound, was something to boast about.
As it is, the gaming scenes are currently dominated by rehashes of old-school games that are playable, open, and fun (hell, Minecraft pales in comparison to something like Hunter on the Amiga, etc.). While crap like this sinks billions into graphics and engine development that will eventually stop recouping its costs.
I'm just hoping, beyond hope, that if HL2:Ep3 ever does appear, it will show something NEW. I don't care about graphics - I want something I can play on my laptop. I want something that's *fun* to play and engaging. HL2 managed that. I literally played it through in one hit and then later went back to play through all the released episodes again in one long session (with, I think, only one or two breaks in gameplay - and NOT to play another game).
Seriously, developers, what are you going to do when EVERYONE can play games with ALL this crap in them? It's not as far in the future as you seem to think. And just what will you do then?
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Re:A Game Now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh... some companies will continue to make game engines, others will make games?
Camera companies, whatever will you do when all your cameras can do colour, high res, steady camed shots with the minimum of glare?
Crytek is a technology and tools company, that makes a game on the side to show off what can be done with their tools, to some degree gamebryo. Epic does something similar, as does gamebase (gamebryo aka Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout NV, Civ4, WAR). You can argue on the quality of the games they produce, but the products they have are technology projects. Don't think for a moment that the content creation side of things isn't hugely important. How quickly you can generate worlds, water, ground, buildings etc depends very much on the quality and usability of the tools. And I don't just mean procedurally generate, although that too, I mean that you're building all of these level design tools for a bunch of artists and non- programmers (and not computer scientists, not engineers, they are tradeschool level people) who actually build most of the game. Making it so they can actually use the tools, understand what they do etc is a big challenge. Crytek (and Epic) both work collaboratively with their own teams and anyone they licence too to improve the tools, but ultimately the first title produced is being made while the tools are being made. Game engines since DX9 have gotten to the point that that isn't a huge problem. But they're still building tools primarily around workflow, build integrity, management etc.
All of the development happening is happening to support people who actually make games.
Seriously, developers, what are you going to do when EVERYONE can play games with ALL this crap in them? It's not as far in the future as you seem to think. And just what will you do then?
Dance for joy? Focus on actually making games and not fighting a technology battle with deciding what features we cut based on what percentage of the market will support whatever we're doing. Tell stories. Build worlds. That's the whole point. Go play Skyim. This comment will still be here after you've played a while. Say 80 hours worth. That's what we're trying to do. Build the tools that make an experience believable, and grandiose. Oblivion and Morrowind (elderscrolls 4 and 3 respectively) had great technology for their time, but compared to skyrim, they look like student projects. Now that you've played skyrim for 80 or so hours you'll also realize how far we have to go in actually building worlds. As cool as it is to see a horse that has a fur mane that waves around, or armour that has fur protruding out of it, swords that look like real metal, animals that look sort of like real animals, there's a long, long way to go. People like you will have said the same thing 10 years ago, and on one hand, you're kind of right. Since directx 9 and the ability to make arbitrary 3D worlds there's a lot less pressure on graphics, and a lot more on building the world. On the other hand, if you wanted to make a game today at the quality of morrowind (directx 8) or oblivion (still directx 9 with skyrim) you would be compared to skyrim, and found very much wanting. If you *can* do the graphics, whether that is weather, bricks, lizard men, or whatever, the better it looks the more believable it can be, the better the experience for the player. The easier it is to build those worlds, the more we'll make them. But even from the day we can produce photorealistic images in real time on desktop hardware (and we are no where near that) we will still have work to do, to make the content creation easier, to make more exotic objects and materials and optical physics effects. And as people below have talked about, there's a lot more to games than just visual quality, there's animation, sound, AI etc. And some of those problems are a lot farther away than photorealistic images. But a lot of them don't play as nice with videos either.
Caveat: I'm not sure how skyrim loo
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The idea is, right now were are fast coming to that point. Actually, I can't wait for the day where graphics really are good enough. You mentioned sound, that after fully immersive sound was available, the industry moved on. Right now, graphics are the easiest way to say "my game is better than yours". Once we get to the point of practical real-time photo-realism is achievable on a console or bargain bin laptop and there is no real graphical difference between a Michael Bay film and the latest EA release, t
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Seriously, at some point, the oceans will be as realistic as they can be, the HDR will be spot on, the reflections won't affect performance, the model detail will be high enough for ANYTHING.
You think this is limited to games?
A novice director put together a trilogy of movies back at a time of limited special effects, always thinking that his other trilogy couldn't be made as he envisaged it, because he didn't have the technology. Finally the time came when the tech was available and we ended up with Jar Jar.
Another director got his hands on absolute state of the art 3D movie making technology and decided to remake Pocahontas.
Don't blame the people developing the technology, blame the directors
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One problem there (Score:4, Informative)
That wasn't a Crytek game. It was made by Ubisoft Montreal. So completely different dev team, writers, and so on, hence totally different gameplay. The engine was based on Cryengine, but heavily modified.
So their games are good only when someone else develops them :).
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Nobody cares about the gameplay. Bring it on! (Score:3)
Far Cry and Crysis were amazing virtual environments. I played both just to experience the graphics. There are tons of games out there with superior gameplay, so let this be a demo that is so immersive you can feel the sea breeze or smell the dirt fresh from rain...
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Crytek has sucked at games from day one.
That is of course a matter of opinion.
I remember buying COD 4 Modern Warfare full price. It had excellent reviews, hugely popular, but the game itself sucked so much. Just a bunch of obvious triggers that spawned or stopped spawning enemies. How can anyone like that? Oh well.
Then I got Crysis. It was oodles of fun, and when I finished it I got FarCry... and it was even better. Crysis 2 was a bit of a letdown but was still much more enjoyable than Modern Warfare 3 (a gift). FarCry 2 wasn't good at all,
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I found Far Cry rather boring and quit it half-way. Crysis on the other hand was a great and fun game. Warhead was even better. Crysis 2 was a huge letdown after Warhead.
Just because you don't like the gameplay doesn't mean that others don't like it either. Suit and its powers was a fairly novel concept and allowed for truly multi-faceted approach. And mind you, my system ran Crysis and Warhead just fine at release, just not at max settings. Plot wasn't terrible for a pseudo sci-fi themed shooter either, th
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Crysis 1 was good game to the point where player was placed to drive a tank and at least on point when aliens came to picture, game was lost its all last possibilities.
Why it is so hard to make a games like Crysis with human enemies? Why there needs to be some fancy aliens or mutants what to shoot?
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No, you're certainly not alone (Score:2)
I suspect there are quite a few of us out there who are sick of this, and I completely agree with pretty much everything you wrote.
I used to be a keen gamer. I have far more disposable income now, in my 30s, than I had say ten years ago when I would buy the big name titles, and I would happily spend some of it on good games today. However, I haven't bought a new AAA title in several years, for a few simple but almost universally applicable reasons:
1. If your game is so buggy that there's no guarantee that I
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Re:A Game Now? (Score:5, Interesting)
How this frankly stupid post god mod'd +3 insightful is beyond me, I guess I'll spend 10 damn minutes giving you a response that you don't deserve.
First off Crysis 1 is no where near a tech demo, if anything the only thing which could make one think that is the fairly poorly told story throughout the game. That being said, at least Crysis 1 had a good story concept, whereas Crysis 2 CLEARLY outlined to me just how bad they are at story and storytelling. Sometimes it's best to have an idea and then let the user to fill the gaps. (Think Doom, Half Life 1)
Then we come to the gameplay, the suit offered a huge variety of playstyles, from stealth hunt and kill to just typical run and gun action fighting from a standard FPS. Furthermore on higher difficulties the gameplay quality simply ramped up, the combat became even more interesting as stealth was near forced on the player as well as dynamic playstyles.
The ability to modify your guns was refreshing and fun, I loved putting a mid range scope on the basic gun, choosing burst or single fire mode and setting maximum strength (less recoil, more accurate, more damage) then I could mid range snipe my targets, without the limitation of the sniper ammo in the 'proper' sniper rifle. Some however prefferred to sneak up invisible, then run in, hit maximum strength and just choke the guys out and discard them (as seen in the introduction movie)
Many people dislike the open world playstyle, I myself find it can be a bit daunting but the best part of Crysis was it a "linear" open world game, you had some freedom but it was guided, allowing you to not get too far off the beaten track and keeping you in the action and on the story. If anything the pacing was _excellent_ it felt a lot like a movie to be honest, quiet, action scenes, story, quiet - more action and so on - you walked from site to site for the action and it was never more than 15 minutes without a major event.
Yes, the graphics were exceptional, this does not make the game a tech demo, a tech demo is Quake 3 (and I loved id software and I still do) but that game is the true definition of a tech demo, no single player at all, basic multiplayer levels - just shiny graphics. Crysis did exceptionally more than this.
I won't even go in to how bad Crysis 2 is, there's too much dissapointment regarding that game. They took away most of the good stuff and added only bad things. I am still annoyed I paid good money for it. (for a start the mouse input code is flat out broken as default, requiring console tweaks, the 'suit menu' which was intuitive, clever and useful in the first game is somehow tweaked to simply be less responsive and frankly broken - and again, now that they are trying to tell a story? ouch - it'd be better if they just went back to a basic concept and let us fill in the blanks)
In conclusion, you're completely and utterly wrong about Crysis, there's also still a large community of fans and mods for the original. If anything Crysis 2 is the definition of 'selling out' and catering to the masses. Good for the bottom dollar but they definitely lost me as a customer.
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The suit features I guess could be (personally I found no major difference with the skills) but the intuitive and fluid radial menu was utterly abortioned in Crysis 2, despite the same basic functionality (hold down button, move mouse, release) something simply went /wrong/ maybe it was timing of the window appearing or timing of the window closing - but it simply was broken and no where near as fluid
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crisis meets uncharted jungle levels meets the simpsons movie? what?
Just hope they don't have Pauley Shore doing the voice acting.
Important question ... (Score:1, Funny)
Will it run Crysis? Wait a second...
Beautiful, but missing something. (Score:1)
The quality, definition, and everything, and implementation is getting better each time, but I've always felt something is lacking to make it truly like reality.
I don't know what is is, because it's beautiful, and almost every details are here, but it does not look true.
Maybe it's because it's too good, ie it is lacking the defaults which make reality what it is?
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This FPS on console was the worst FPS I've ever played in terms of support. Crysis 2 had so many bugs that simply have never been fixed. I will never buy another Crysis game on console again. I'm sure you PC players love it, but console players really got the shaft.
I thought you'd be used to it by now ;)
Oh, good! (Score:5, Funny)
I was finally able to build a machine that could run the original at full graphics...it'll be nice to have a game that can't possibly be played with current hardware again.
2 is still broken, but they are coming out with 3? (Score:2)
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Fixing bugs won't earn them any more money. (their probable reasoning for not supporting a product that is no longer selling)
Not fixing bugs though will cost them future sales.
A game for the future (Score:2)
Nobody seems to have put the pieces together yet (Score:5, Insightful)
But so many games still can't be arsed to do it right, so things in the environment aren't things, they're lumps of terrain with a picture skin. Cars on which you can't shoot out the tyres. Or the windscreen. NPCs your gun won't shoot at, or won't hurt if you do. Glass that doesn't break, wood that doesn't burn, and magic invisible walls at the edge of the world. Or in the case of the Battlefield games, a magic invisible line with artillery insta-death just 5 seconds away if you dare to cross it.
Ramping up the triangle count just doesn't cut it any more. Yes, the face in the video is very clever - what happens when I shoot it? The water's lovely - does it make ripples when I walk through it, or splash when I jump up and down? The AI might well react to my presence - how will it react to a 9mm to the kneecap? Or a fire? Or a rocket going off 10 feet away? Are NPC soldiers all inhuman combat robots, totally unafraid of death, and 100% combat effective until their last hit point is gone?
Because, you know, I've played Doom. A super-shiny version of the exact same gameplay no longer appeals. I know there were restrictions on game design caused by having less memory for the game than my current CPU has cache. All the right things have been done at least once. Now could someone just please do them all together?
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CryEngine 3 does do water interaction:
"User interaction with surface will generate waves propagation" from http://freesdk.crydev.net/display/SDKDOC2/Water+Shader [crydev.net]
And surface type collisions (like object falls into water) generate a particle effect according to a spreadsheet. Water is already set up as a standard collision type, but you can make custom ones.
Also boolean destructibles (damage subracts from the object shape):
http://freesdk.crydev.net/display/SDKDOC3/Boolean+Destructibles [crydev.net]
Of course, just because
Wait for it ... (Score:1)
Competition for Unreal Engine (Score:2)