CryEngine

Lore & Background

CryEngine 1 was first made and used for the first-person shooter video game Far Cry. It was originally developed by Crytek as a technology demo for Nvidia and, when the company saw its potential, it was turned into a game. When video cards with support for 3.0 pixel and vertex shaders were released, Crytek released version 1.2 of the engine which used some of the capabilities for better graphics. Later the company developed CryEngine version 1.3, which added support for HDR lighting. The engine has been licensed to NCsoft for their MMORPG, Aion: The Tower of Eternity. On March 30, 2006, Ubisoft acquired all intellectual property rights to the Far Cry franchise and a perpetual license to use CryEngine 1, which they heavily modified to create the Dunia Engine. CryEngine 2 is used in Crytek's game Crysis, and an updated version in Crysis Warhead. Crytek introduced CryEngine 3 at the 2009 Game Developers Conference. On August 21, 2013, Crytek rebranded CryEngine (starting from version 3.6.0) to simply 'CryEngine', and announced that their next CryEngine would not be advertised with a version number—though this was later contradicted by the release of CryEngine V in 2016. On March 22, 2016, Crytek announced a new version of CryEngine, called CryEngine V. In February 2016, Amazon released its own reworked and extended version of CryEngine under the name of Amazon Lumberyard. In June 2021, through Amazon Lumberyard, the open-source Open 3D Engine is based on CryEngine.

In Their Own Story

The rain had stopped, but the jungle still wept. Droplets slid off broad leaves and hit the black mud in a steady, almost metronomic tap. You crouched behind the shattered hull of a downed transport, your breathing slow, the HUD overlay a faint green wash at the edge of your vision. Somewhere past the ridge, a searchlight swept the treeline in slow arcs, and the engine's volumetric fog swallowed its beam into a pale, breathing column. You pressed your thumb to the trigger rail, felt the micro-texture of the polymer under your glove, and waited for the light to pass. The world around you was rendered in real time—every leaf, every raindrop on the hull, every mote of dust in the air—and none of it was a pre-baked illusion. It was the engine, doing what it was built to do: make the impossible look like Tuesday.

Reader's Guide

The CryEngine software development kit (SDK), originally called Sandbox Editor, is the current version of the level editor used to create levels for CryEngine by Crytek. Tools are also provided within the software to facilitate scripting, animation, and object creation. It has been included with various Crytek games (including, but not limited to, Crysis and Far Cry), and is used extensively for modding purposes. The editing style is that of the sandbox concept, with the emphasis on large terrains and a free style of mission programming. The editor can also construct indoor settings. As opposed to editors like UnrealEd, which use a 'subtractive' editing style, the Sandbox has an 'additive' style. Objects are added to an overall empty space. The Sandbox's concentration on potentially huge terrain means that it uses an algorithmic form of painting textures and objects onto the landscape. The Sandbox editor has the ability, with a single key press, for the editor to jump straight into the current design (WYSIWYP feature). The Editor also supports all the CryEngine features such as vehicles and physics, scripting, advanced lighting, Polybump technology, shaders, 3D audio, character inverse kinematics and animation blending, dynamic music, Real Time Soft Particle System and Integrated FX Editor, Deferred Lighting, Normal Maps & Parallax Occlusion Maps, and Advanced Modular AI System.

Did You Know?

• CryEngine 1 was originally developed by Crytek as a technology demo for Nvidia.
• The Sandbox editor uses an 'additive' editing style, unlike UnrealEd's 'subtractive' style.
• Amazon Lumberyard is a reworked and extended version of CryEngine released in February 2016.
• The Open 3D Engine, released in June 2021, is based on CryEngine through Amazon Lumberyard.