CryEngine. Hold on, Don’t Cry!

The slightly creepy CryEngine logo, it would be good if it was crying.

I will be doing a few articles on bits of tech that have impacted the games industry, just like i have already done Unreal Engine and Havok Physics. So now I have decided to do my next one (the article your reading now if you didn’t guess) on the CryEngine. It has a little bit more history than you think.

CryEngine 1

This engine, believe it or not was originally never going to be used for games development, instead just a tech demo for the technology company Nvidia, but after Crytek realised its potential…… Far Cry started development.

Later after the engines development, CryEngine 1.3 was released which supported HDR/HDRR lighting (wtf is that? See below.)

The only company that owns a license is NCsoft, who developed Aion: Tower of Eternity on the engine. Well that’s not specifically true. In March 2006 Ubisoft got  a permanent license to use the engine used in Far Cry . They also acquired all intellectual property rights to Far Cry.

Although the game was made in 2004, it still looks amazing.

CryEngine 2

This was the engine that saw the birth of the beautiful Crysis, The first company to grab a license for the CryEngine 2 was a company known as IMAGTP, who don’t make games, but they work in Urban planning and architecture.

Crysis was released in 2007 (before you say no it isn’t) it was released as a PC exclusive and then was re-released on the PS3/Xbox 360         4 years later in 2011, but on CryEngine 3.

A fun fact, in 2007 a college named ‘Ringling’ licensed CryEngine 2 for educational purposes.

In March 2009 at the Game Developers Conference, CryEngine 2′s successor, CryEngine 3, was shown on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

The game is 16+.

Crysis  running on CryEngine 2

CryEngine 3

This engine is bloody amazing when it comes to graphics, lighting, real time reflections and everything else. It was made for MS Windows, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U. The PC platform can support DierctX 9,10 and 11.

Although announced in 2007, the company decided to release it 2 years later.

The company announced in June 2009 that Crysis 2 will be developed for the consoles under the new engine. Oddly enough, Crysis (1) was  re-released   after Crysis 2, with the second game in the series being in March 2011 and the first in October later that year.

CryEngine 3 Tech Demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7JV-5a0Mdw

I found a pretty little photo describing what games have been developed on the engines (yes, Crysis 3 is missing)

I’m can fly!

HDR/HDRR stands for High Dynamic Range Rendering, to put it in words that idiots like me will understand;

No matter how bright something is, or how dark something is, you can still see the details in it.

Name a bit of tech as big as Unreal Engine, Havok Physics  or the CryEngine and if its good enough I’ll do my next post on it

Yay this is my tenth post