Whats so good about the CryTek engine?

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2004-05-09 11:49pm

Alot of the mods I use are looking pretty seriously at the CryTek engine, so I decided to grab FarCry and have a look. I've got a few observations, but its not like I know anything

1) The engine is relatively ineffienct. It's far worse than UT2k4, and worse even than Vietcong

2) The large outdoor areas, foliage etc was done in VC.

3) The map DSP is actually quite primitive

4) Popup is extremely promienent

5) The AI (on 'challenging) is appalling, just as bad as every other game in the 'lets walk through the doorway piled high with corpses' perspective

6) Conefire

7) Each island is a separate level, with substantial loading (only mentioned because I was led to believe it was Halo-style)

Physically accessible map areas (holes in bunkers, narrow ledges, etc) are blocked by invisible walls

So I'm really torn. The engine looks okay (although not when the choppiness is considered), and UT2k4 is hardly realisticly textured, but I'm not sure why realism mods are looking at it. Anyone want to share their views?

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2004-05-10 12:11am

CryTek was largely designed as an outdoors engine, while ut2k4 uses and indoor engine. I'm told that there's significant differences between the two.

But whatever. Once Source engine (HL2) comes out, nothing else will matter.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2004-05-10 12:14am

I think most of the complaints you have are with the game itself, and not the engine. From what I've read, the most interesting thing about the engine is that it takes advantage of most of the new graphics card features.

From a game design perspective, you can change the maps. You can change the AI. You can change the weapon fire mode. You can fix the use of clipping in maps (that's what the inaccessible areas are). You can change the textures.

The main things to worry about with an engine are 1) configurability (How hard is it to program new stuff?) and 2) graphical capabilities.

Edit: And jeez, Shinova, could that signature be any more frenetic?

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2004-05-10 12:42am

I'm aware of the flexibility (although until the SDK for CryTek comes out, who knows how flexible it is) my point is that is waaaaay slow. On both a 9600pro and a 9700pro it lags along on medium; raising the tex to highest slows it only slightly but doesn't really improve the textures. I'm sure patches will fix alot of this, but for what it is, it doesn't seem to be superior to anything else out there.

Agreed, I have issues with the game design, but I'm trying to ignore that and think bout the engine; the level geometry is primitive, the textures aren't that great. Going by some of the smaller levels, I'm not sure reducing the area allows them to increase detail that much.

And everyone seems to love it. I don't know why; I'm currently a fan of the UT2kx engine, and HL2 does look pretty nice (I'll prolly hate the game, but the engine looks very nice). I'd hate to be playing Far Cry on a low end system, tho

@Shinova - You just wait for HL2. Let me know when it arrives? I'll be busy playing games

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2004-05-10 01:00am

From everything I've seen the the visual technology is just short of Doom3. That's why it runs like ass.

And the only reason why UT2Kx games look nice as they do is because they use prefabs extensively.

2K3 had waaay too many prefabs in its maps, resulting in players getting stuck and less significantly room to move around in. They simply got in the way.

2K4 is better, though. And UnrealEd is awesome.

wautd · Post by **wautd** » 2004-05-10 10:05am

Well i liked the engine and the game as a whole. (i think i almost finished it now)

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2004-05-10 10:08am

Stark wrote:I'm aware of the flexibility (although until the SDK for CryTek comes out, who knows how flexible it is) my point is that is waaaaay slow. On both a 9600pro and a 9700pro it lags along on medium; raising the tex to highest slows it only slightly but doesn't really improve the textures. I'm sure patches will fix alot of this, but for what it is, it doesn't seem to be superior to anything else out there.

Then I suppose my 9700 shouldn't be avraging 40 FPS on 1000 rez?

Then again, if you can't part with your 4X AA and 8X AF you shouldn't complain.

Currently I see nothing really wrong with the engine, and its jungles are stunning, prohibitions seem to come from the level design, and from developer tricks, not engine limitations.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-05-10 12:32pm

Indeed. The CryTek engine is so slow because it pushed the bleeding edge of then-available hardware (R350/NV35). There may be room for optimization, but I don't think the developers did such a poor job on it a'la Halo.

IIRC, they're going to release a patch that supports Pixel Shaders 3.0 (aka DX9c), but I don't know what it's going to do. At any rate, only the NV40 will support it.

wautd · Post by **wautd** » 2004-05-12 05:53am

Over the game itself: my god those Trigens are nasty critters

Nastier than the aliens in AvP imo (but maybe that was because you had better weapons to kill them)

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2004-05-12 09:16am

wautd wrote:Over the game itself: my god those Trigens are nasty critters
Nastier than the aliens in AvP imo (but maybe that was because you had better weapons to kill them)

At one point I was totally out of ammo so I tried attacking a fatboy from behind with my machete. That didn't work out too good...

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2004-05-12 11:13am

What has me wondering is why the hell is it a 3 GB install and it comes on 5 CDs rather then a single DVD.

Executor32 · Post by **Executor32** » 2004-05-12 12:09pm

It does come on DVD, you just have to order it that way.