Crytek shows CrysisENGINE2, innocent trees shot
by Zack Stern 
{ Mar 8th 2007 at 5:28AM }
Crytek occupies a medium-sized booth space at this year's GDC show floor. The company, showing its CryENGINE2 to developers, announced that it found its first customer in Avatar Reality, Inc. Hoping to land more interest, the company is hosting a series of rotating presentations about its level editor, sound system, character animation, engine, and other features.
Harald Seeley, Development Director for Crytek briefly spoke with us about the engine and its outlook, saying that it's at alpha now for the PC, and they'll ship the SDK to AVI in four to six weeks. Seeley said that Crytek is working to bring CryENGINE2 to the PS3 and Xbox 360, but those plans don't mean that Crysis will be released on those platforms.
Modders and indie designers should look for a PC version of the development environment bundled with Crysis. Seeley said that the consumer tools offer nearly all of the features of the fully licensed engine, and that modders may be able to work out terms to release commercial software created with the free editor.
Seeley thinks that the commercial version of CryENGINE2 will lead other middleware engines because it was developed for DirectX 10 instead of being prettied up from an older version of the API. He said, "This will become the standard. ... [Gamers] won't be willing to settle for titanium trees any longer. If it looks breakable, if it looks like you should be able to pick it up, [you will.]"
Gallery: Crytek GDC booth
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ken @ Mar 8th 2007 11:06AM
You gotta respect that.
Anonymous @ Mar 8th 2007 1:16PM
The idea behind engines and "Middleware" really pisses me off. I realize that it cuts costs, lowers the development time etc, but how many games need to implement middleware such as Speedtree (Tree Generator Middleware, used in Oblivion, Project Gotham Racing and others) before developers realize that it sucks? All Engines do is squelch creativity, and create a generation of games that all look and feel similar and generic.
the_insider @ Mar 8th 2007 2:41PM
Hey you Joystiiq folk wouldn't have recorded one of these tools and engine presentations by any chance? Would be very useful to see...
JD @ Mar 8th 2007 3:02PM
I saw the demo loop yesterday and it is very impressive. I was more entertained watching it than the live demo of Crysis over at the Intel booth. But the CryENGINE2 demo was pre-rendered.
In any case, if they are including dev tools for this with Crysis, that'll be quite a deal for $50. I can't wait to see what the modders will do with the destructable environments and motion blurs.
CowboyGA @ Mar 8th 2007 2:58PM
Anonymous,
The engines allow faster production. That may actually allow the developers to come up with great games faster. I don't mind rehashing details that work so long as they're still good. Also, this engine is (supposed to be) leaps and bounds beyond the current software, so I want to see what can be done. Creativity from the ground up is a great idea, but it's almost impossible for some devopers to match the big guns and come up with quality.
I understand where you're coming from, but I still support these tools.
Rallion @ Mar 8th 2007 7:19PM
@2, I like the idea of engines. Yeah, they do kinda increase the number of crappy games we see. However, I think they can also provide opportunity for other, better games to be made. It allows those who are great and the low-level nitty gritty code-crunching to make the tools that those who are great at the high-level abstract design elements can use to produce engaging, fun games. I'm not sure how often that happens in practice, but I sure don't want to miss any opportunities for the production of awesomeness.
Axelrod @ Mar 8th 2007 10:34PM
@2:
Here's a question for you. Did Beyond Good and Evil, King Kong, Rayman Raving Rabbids, and the Prince of Persia games (starting with Sands of Time) "look and feel similar and generic"? They were all built on the JADE engine.