The team behind CRYENGINE have released version 5.5 of the engine which boasts UI/UX improvements, documentation overhaul and more.
The update states it supports automated packaging. If you recall a prior post, I had difficulty deploying the end product so I'm curious of this solves that issue.
Source: https://www.cryengine.com/news/cryengine-55-major-release
Crytek has announced a new 5% royalty-based model for CRYENGINE. There is also a certification program, revamped documentation and editor source code availability.
Apparently, Crytek has put some resources into making the engine easier to use. This should be interesting to see.
In my quest for the holy grail of game engines, I evaluated CRYENGINE a long time ago. At the time, I wasn't exactly impressed. It felt disjointed and not particularly versatile. I was also on the mobile game train back then and this wasn't supported, so I ignored it.
Well, times have changed. CRYENGINE was once offered as a subscription but it's now free. Let's revisit it, I thought.
Imitating UE4 and Stingray, CRYENGINE is distributed via a launcher which helps manage the software, projects and assets instead of a zipped folder from yesteryear. Creating a project was fairly trivial and previewing it even more so. When trying to open the project in the editor however, I ran into issues. It seemed I had some files missing which the installer/launcher didn't catch. I installed Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015 and was able to open the project in my editor.
My project was made from the Blank Game Template and in the editor, I attempted to run the game and it seemed to do so. I attempted to export it but as it turned out, I didn't have a level. I created a new one using the file menu and proceeded to craft a new terrain. I performed some minor sculpting since I had trouble generating a nice random terrain. Even then, the export function didn't do what I thought it would do. After investigating a little, it seems like there's no simple export process. After browsing the documentation, it seemed like everything was documented except for a way to export a simple CRYENGINE game for immediate distribution.
I really enjoyed the simplicity of the UI and how it guided me along as I tried to build a minimal export. I learned a bit about the engine's build system and how its resources are organized. However, it seems this very powerful AAA game engine fails step two of the Joel Test which is a one step build process. I'm uncertain how this product was sold at one point to consumers on Steam as a way of building games. Competing products have a trivial export process in comparison. It's a little disappointing; I could almost ... shed a tear.
CRYENGINE's new Pay What You Want licensing model is now accepting Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency.
Since this engine is basically free and royalty-free, donations go a long way towards its development. So don't be shy, open your hearts and wallets!
Source: https://www.cryengine.com/news/pay-what-you-want-with-bitcoin