Cryengine is announcing Linux support!

[-Archmage-]

Source

I'm currently developing with Cryengine using the Cryblend exporter. I'm almost considering developing a little sample version of glest running on Cryengine. They only 1 thing that the Glest engine has over Cryengine, is that it's open source. Although in Cryengine this doesn't really matter because C++ plugins, Lua scripts and even in-editor flowgraphing can manipulate the engine to an unbelievable degree. I made a ledge climb entity, a hud, money system, and more all just with flowgraphing(which is the least powerful method by far).

Benefits of Cryengine?
-Everything is real-time.
-Support for the most advanced DX11 features(realistic shadows, tessellation, displacement mapping, and more).
-Extreme optimization. I placed down 3200 rocks that I made and I still had over 60fps on my laptop. That was about 700,000 polygons, with normal mapping, DX11 shadowing, and real-time GI.
-Advanced physics: Ragdoll, rigidbody(particles can even use this), rope(rope bridge, leaf of vegetation, rope hanging from character), cloth(placed as an entity or attached to a character), wind, rain, mass particle physics from basic collision to full rigid-body.
-Editor: All maps could be made and tested instantly.
-Vegetation system: There would be no cell limit to stop you from creating truly dense and realistic forests, that look and perform much better. Not to mention that physics could be added to the bushes and grass to make them react to wind and physical entities.
-Lighting: All lights in Cryengine are dynamic and destructible, it can be point, ambient, spot, area and more along with fully custom lens flares for each and every light.
-Sky: Cryengine can do a photo-realistic sky. Plain and simple.
-Characters: Could be done the same as glest using a .cga instead of a g3d. OR they could be done with full IK systems(means feet actually interact realistically with the ground) and exported as .skins and .chrs with fully custom body parts and texture changes on the fly.
-PBR: Many times beyond what Glest has, this feature is coming to the FreeSDK with Linux support(or before it). Physically Based Rendering uses real physical values to create much more realistic looking material and light interaction.
-Water: On the lowest setting the water can be flat with basic sky reflections and flat refractive ripples generated upon physical interaction(from ANYTHING). On the highest setting you get either paralax 3D waves or DX11 tessellated waves with automatic foam creation, water caustics(can be caused by water interaction ripples too), tessellated water ripples, reflections, refraction, subsurface scattering. Water volumes are also available to compliment the ocean with most of the same abilities and settings. And again to compliment those there is a river tool.
-AI: Cryengine has amazing AI, with a lot of options and great pathfinding abilities.

You may think I mention this just for the graphical abilities it would present, but honestly Cryengine could do a lot more than the Glest engine in any other field. Look at Crysis 1, 2, and 3. If you're still not impressed, look at Star Citizen and what they're doing.

Now for the porn:
Cryengine 2012
Cryengine 2013(Crysis 3)
Cryengine 2014(Ryse: Son of Rome)

[MoLAoS]

Why all the gratuitous comparisons to Glest? Of course an opensource warcraft clone engine that started as a student project is going to be inferior to an engine that has had tens or hundreds of millions spent on development with the top game programming and graphics talent in the industry working on it.

[-Archmage-]

Why all the gratuitous comparisons to Glest? Of course an opensource warcraft clone engine that started as a student project is going to be inferior to an engine that has had tens or hundreds of millions spent on development with the top game programming and graphics talent in the industry working on it.

Because few people on this forum know anything about Cryengine.

[MoLAoS]

Why all the gratuitous comparisons to Glest? Of course an opensource warcraft clone engine that started as a student project is going to be inferior to an engine that has had tens or hundreds of millions spent on development with the top game programming and graphics talent in the industry working on it.

Because few people on this forum know anything about Cryengine.

That seems unlikely. Its an extremely well known project, although its not commonly used for RTS games.

Since it requires an amount of programming not commonly accessible to modders, and programmers are the most likely to be aware of it, it seems a little weird. Especially given that your last post was something like 4 months ago. It seems like you are evangelizing CryEngine to people here.

[-Archmage-]

No, you misunderstood. Most people on this forum haven't actually used Cryengine or developed with it.
It's a pretty big deal for an engine of this magnitude to be ported to Linux.
I haven't been active here cause I'm busy with other things.

I mention it because from my perspective I see no reason for Glest not to use an engine like Cryengine.
It's not commonly used for RTS games simply because it wasn't initially developed for that, and licensing has only recently become a lot cheaper and easier. Cryengine is more capable of handling an RTS than the Glest engine is.

[Baŝto]

Because this engine is closed source and costs money.

Furthermore some people like to hack around with the sources and learn C++, OpenGL etc.

I would rather use SpringRTS or pyrogenesis than making the game closed source freeware.

There is also a philosophy behind free software https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

[John.d.h]

Because this engine is closed source and costs money.

Furthermore some people like to hack around with the sources and learn C++, OpenGL etc.

I would rather use SpringRTS or pyrogenesis than making the game closed source freeware.

There is also a philosophy behind free software https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

^ Quoted for truth.

However, any time a piece of software is ported to Linux, that's a good thing.  People have been running Crysis on Wine for some time now, but native support is a heck of a lot simpler for the end-user.

[-Archmage-]

Actually... you're allowed to modify it through gamedll modification. There are a lot of C programmers that use Cryengine, that aren't affiliated with Crytek at all.
Basically the only issue you could possibly have with Cryengine is that they make money. If they gave their source code away they simply wouldn't be able to compete at the level they do, and that's just not fair to them. They give a hell of a lot of stuff away already with the FreeSDK and it's constant updates.

Honestly, very very few people who play your game will care if your game is "free" or "free". I can understand the Glest engine being completely open, because it's not a competitive engine at all. I've gone from Linux to Windows, and Open Source to the best I can get. I still love Linux and appreciate things being completely free. But in the end it just doesn't matter at all(to me).

I'd rather make the game closed-source(only on the main engine side, which no one would need to touch anyway because you can modify stuff through the gamedll), and have the game be superior in every way.

Philosophy is great, but in the case of "free software philosophy" that's really just looking down on developers that don't give away everything. Sure it's good to share everything with other people, but it's not bad to make money in the field of gaming, just likes it's not bad to make money is just about any field. It's trying to apply right and wrong to something that has no right or wrong. This kind of high-end software competition also helps the economy. Crytek employs well over 700 people, a lot of other people do contract work for specific games(this is great for people that aren't established in the game development scene), and they have produced a lot of AAA quality games both paid and free-to-play. They also take in a lot of people trying to get into the development scene.

Based on some of the amazing things I see being done on the Cryengine(hell even the Cryengine 2 still has some jaw-dropping content) I'd say it's far more important for them to push the boundaries and continue to do so, than it is for them to give the source code away.

[John.d.h]

Open source is about a lot more than being able to modify it.  Hell, the NSA has approached Linux developers and asked them to install a backdoor in the operating system for their illegal surveillance, but the beauty of open source means that they simply can't include anti-features like that.  However, anti-features seem to be the norm now with AAA titles, from restrictive DRM like SecuROM, to "phoning home" constantly, to spyware and adware, or the ability to delete things that you purchased like on the Amazon Kindle.  Closed source is all too often broken on purpose by the developers.  A love of freedom and open source is not just a philosophical stance; it's a practical one.  Using closed source software means trusting a company with your privacy, security, and dignity.  Even if you "have nothing to hide", companies make money by selling your private information.  Closed source allows the developers to hide whatever malicious and harmful code they want, and you put it on the same machine that contains boundless personal information about yourself.  I'm not against developers making money, but I am against them abusing their customers.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/proprietary-surveillance.html
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/proprietary-back-doors.html
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/proprietary-insecurity.html
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/proprietary-sabotage.html

If given a choice of two burritos, would you rather eat the one that had a full list of its ingredients, or the one that specifically forbade you from ever trying to figure out what was in it?  Would the latter not make you really suspicious?  What don't they want you to know, and why?

[-Archmage-]

Um John... a LOT of people have their hands on the Cryengine source code. Same with Unreal and other big engines.
These things may be true of a lot of programs I don't know, but Crytek could never get away with it.

Maybe an engine like the one behind CoD could do that, but not an engine like Cryengine. There's a huge huge difference between those two engines. Cryengine is out in the open, whereas the CoD engine is behind closed doors.

Not to mention, there's a very good reason for closed source which I mentioned before. Crytek, Epic, and a few other of the top competitors are just that, competitors. Notice how none of the biggest engines are open source? That's because open source engines can't compete, their open source code just gives away anything that could possibly make them competitive.

Name one anti-feature that Cryengine has(that doesn't have a reason for existing, such as anti-piracy)?

You're pulling up all these examples that have nothing to do with Cryengine. Not only is most of what you said generic conspiracy theory about anything not open-source. SecuROM in particular is a publisher choice that could easily be put onto any game(that sells).

[tomreyn]

Personally I know next to nothing about CryEngine. I do know that it's proprietary, though, and that I would not be contributing my spare time to any project based on proprietary code, no matter what features it has and how well it performs. I'm sure it's the same for Softcoder and maybe Titi, too. It is obvious that the most technically advanced games are proprietary, as are the reasons for it.

The decision to spend our spare time on a fully open source project is a deliberate choice which grew out of the GNU philosophy but - at least in my case - also out of recurring experiences of working with proprietary software. As a result, we cannot be part of the most technologically advanced game project, which is a difficult decision, but one I (and I am convinced that's the same for Softcoder and Titi) can and want to live with - otherwise we would not be doing this.

This said, it's perfectly fine to discuss other engines, including proprietary ones, on these off topic forums. Please do accept it, though, when the relatively small but slowly growing number of idealistic people (and people who can afford to be idealistic in their spare time - surely not a situation everyone is in, but a luxury) who contribute to Free Software state that they will prefer to work on those rather than contributing to a software which is owned by someone else, under terms defined by someone else.

[Baŝto]

Yes, it is hard to nearly impossible getting rich. But there are some interesting concepts: http://ardour.org/download.html http://harrisonconsoles.com/site/store-mixbus.html

That's because open source engines can't compete, their open source code just gives away anything that could possibly make them competitive.

It’s always possible to recreate features, but closed source software can‘t use GPL code, if they do that, that would be a copyright infringement → you can sue them.

[MoLAoS]

You forgot to mention Unreal Arch. It has a similar program now.

[John.d.h]

Name one anti-feature that Cryengine has(that doesn't have a reason for existing, such as anti-piracy)?

You can never know.  That's the point.  They could have ANY anti-feature.  Considering the extensiveness of illegal spying by organizations like the NSA (it may have been a conspiracy theory, but this time they were right) and how many companies and developers they've coerced into harming their customers, it would be silly to assume any piece of proprietary software (especially made in the USA) wasn't involved in some kind of unethical behavior unless you yourself have seen the code.

[MoLAoS]

I think John is being slightly paranoid. But there is some evidence that many private companies have shady dealings with the government.

[tomreyn]

No, John is not paranoid there, not even slightly. By now, there have been public statements by many of the acting parties confirming that all of the largest IT companies (which also happen to be the largest IT companies in the world), and all of them, were in bed with secret services. Again, the actors themselves have come forward and stated that it's true. So I think we can safely consider these to be facts, not an irrational fear which paranoia (a key element to several types of mental illnesses) can develop from.

On a side note, please be aware that suggesting that someone can be paranoid should not be done lightly and only after you have double-checked that what they are saying are not actually facts (which you may just have missed), since doing so can change how other less reflective people will value their past and future statements.

Both to contrast the facts discussed above, but also to explain why paranoia can be widespread these days, here is a conspiracy theory (if one many political scientists in different cultures agree upon):
For more than a decade now, the "westeners" (which I guess includes me) live in a climate of constant fear, intentionally driven to irrational levels starting around 9/11 by (some, not all) political parties because they (like anyone who is into simple psychology) know how people react (and then vote) if put under constant stress. To me, someone who is supposed to represent the people and is to act in their best faith, but actually abuses their power to create, as part of a strategy, artificial uncertainty and fears amongst those people, willfully degrading social coherence as a side effect, just to remain in power for longer, has deceived these people and is guilty of treachery of a whole country. And so are every other countries' leaders who apply the same strategies to their politics and extend this despicable business.

[-Archmage-]

I would have to agree with MoLAoS, that's paranoia. Besides Crytek is based in Germany, and the founder is Turkish, so it's quite unlikely they'd be involved in anything of the sort.

It’s always possible to recreate features, but closed source software can‘t use GPL code, if they do that, that would be a copyright infringement → you can sue them.

It's mainly the fact that they can see all the tricks used to create the competitive feature which means it can be recreated easily or even better.

You forgot to mention Unreal Arch. It has a similar program now.

I prefer Cryengine to Unreal, Cryengine is fully real-time dynamic, and is much better optimized. Also, Cryengine has extremely impressive visuals that Unreal hasn't been able to beat.

[John.d.h]

It's not paranoia if it's actually happening.

Also:

http://xkcd.com/743/

[Baŝto]

the hover text is great

The heartfelt tune it plays is CC licensed, and you can get it from my seed on JoinDiaspora.com whenever that project gets going.

[MoLAoS]

I would have to agree with MoLAoS, that's paranoia. Besides Crytek is based in Germany, and the founder is Turkish, so it's quite unlikely they'd be involved in anything of the sort.

It’s always possible to recreate features, but closed source software can‘t use GPL code, if they do that, that would be a copyright infringement → you can sue them.

It's mainly the fact that they can see all the tricks used to create the competitive feature which means it can be recreated easily or even better.

You forgot to mention Unreal Arch. It has a similar program now.

I prefer Cryengine to Unreal, Cryengine is fully real-time dynamic, and is much better optimized. Also, Cryengine has extremely impressive visuals that Unreal hasn't been able to beat.

You are all making the same mistake. I didn't say he was paranoid, full stop, I said he was slightly paranoid. Its possible that a game engine would have the stuff that very clearly other software has, but I put the possibility fairly low. The idea in general is reasonable. Operating systems and browsers and other stuff are likely to have such "features."

[John.d.h]

Oh, I recognize that there is a good chance that nothing sinister is going on with any given game, but nobody knows just how big the problem is.  It seems like every report that comes out shows that the surveillance is more extensive than anyone ever thought possible, so I think that being cautious is warranted.  I doubt that the NSA is approaching many small-time game developers, but for popular and corporately-owned properties like Crysis I think it's a real possibility.  For anything by Blizzard, Zynga, or EA, it's even worse to the point of being basically a given.

[MoLAoS]

Oh, I recognize that there is a good chance that nothing sinister is going on with any given game, but nobody knows just how big the problem is.  It seems like every report that comes out shows that the surveillance is more extensive than anyone ever thought possible, so I think that being cautious is warranted.  I doubt that the NSA is approaching many small-time game developers, but for popular and corporately-owned properties like Crysis I think it's a real possibility.  For anything by Blizzard, Zynga, or EA, it's even worse to the point of being basically a given.

I wouldn't put anything passed Zynga or EA. Blizzard may be in that boat, too.

[GunChleoc]

The German TV station ZDF did an interview with Edward Snowden a couple of weeks ago. It was originally geo-locked because of some "legal" issues, but you can now watch it:

https://archive.org/details/snowden_interview_en

Transcript: http://www.ndr.de/ratgeber/netzwelt/snowden277.html

[kagu]

Cryengine is now open source http://www.dsogaming.com/news/crytek-open-sources-cryengine-available-download-everyone/

[titi]

Its not really OpenSource in the usual meaning, you can just access the source code for free. It still has very proprietary Licenses.