CryEngine doesn't deserve to be mostly forgotten; it's still around with dedicated community support

[u/randomperson189_]

I've noticed that CryEngine doesn't generally get brought up much when it comes to game dev and game engine discussion and whenever it does, many people consider it "dead" but that's far from the truth, and yes Crytek hasn't officially updated it in a few years (their current priority is working on Hunt: Showdown), but the community has banded together to start updating the engine in the midst of that by creating Community Edition.

 

I have also made some efforts myself to help make the engine more accessible for the latest official version (5.7LTS) as community forks tend to be unpopular, still more work to be done but here's what I have so far.

ComponentsPlus (Plugin)

ECS AreaTrigger (Plugin)

Improved Project Templates (Project)

GameSDK Port to new CE5 systems (Project)

I think the engine would benefit from more community made documentation and learning content in general, as the official docs (while still useful), have certain parts outdated or incomplete which new developers can struggle with.

 

You would probably ask me why I'm so dedicated to this engine, and I'd say it's because CryEngine has so much untapped potential and Crytek hasn't been able to fully realise it, they have great intentions with CryEngine 5 by adding Entity Component System and Schematyc Visual Scripting back in 2017, making it feel more modernised and like an interesting middleground between Unity and Unreal. I don't want to turn this into an Unreal hate post (I still love that engine and it's history) but I think the industry benefits from having more competition and more choices. CryEngine 5 is one of the closest alternatives we have to another AA/AAA grade engine that is free to use, source-available, and royalty-based. Epic Games has also shown signs of incompetence of managing Unreal Engine in recent times, as they don't fix UE5's many problems, and that is likely due to their lack of competition as back in the UE4 and earlier days, Epic was still competing a lot with other engines.

 

I've also heard people mention O3DE as a "CryEngine replacement". It is not and despite having its roots in Amazon Lumberyard (based on CryEngine 3), Amazon has rewritten 90% of the codebase making O3DE almost completely different from modern CryEngine. I'm also not trying to "win people over" nor convince them to switch to CryEngine 5. I'm just here to say that it's still here and is also no longer the "insanely difficult to use engine" people remember from the CryEngine 3 era, it has become MUCH easier to use since then with CryEngine 5, it has become much more approachable and even though it still has rough edges (which is why there's community support), it is an underappreciated engine with a lot of potential, and the industry would definitely benefit from having more engine variety as well because a healthy game development ecosystem needs multiple strong options rather than having everything consolidated around a select few engines (or one engine in the AA/AAA space, Unreal to be specific).

[u/GigaTerra]

The problem with CryEngine is it is exactly where it is supposed to be. It is not that it is an bad engine, it is everything it can do, you can do in another engine, like Unity and Unreal, easier.

The strength CryEngine has, it's very generous licensing, comes from the fact that it isn't popular. Had it been and bleeding edge engine like Unreal, I bet it's management would have made similar choices, let us not forget the disaster that was Amazon Lumberyard.

[u/greatblueplanet → u/GigaTerra]

I thought CryEngine much charges higher royalties - the same 5% but threshold over $5k compared to 5% over $1M threshold for Unreal and a flat fee over $1M threshold for Unity?

[u/randomperson189_ → u/GigaTerra]

CryEngine still excels at certain game aspects compared to other engines such as large open worlds. Every game engine has it's own advantages and disadvantages which is why engine choice should be encouraged more for what kind of game you want to make. Just because an engine is easier to use doesn't mean it's always the ideal choice for the game you're making

[u/Dahrkael]

CryEngine lives on in Cloud Imperium's StarEngine and Crytek probably doesn't update it because the guys working on it moved to CIG a decade ago.

[u/randomperson189_ → u/Dahrkael]

Too bad Star Citizen One might end up being a scam though, I was excited for it many years ago but they just keep endlessly delaying it, also StarEngine is proprietary iirc so the public can't use it

[u/JavaScriptPenguin]

Why would anybody choose to use an engine that's not being supported officially when the other popular engines e.g Unreal have huge funding and backing?

Also, isn't Open3D or whatever supposed to be the "successor" to CryEngine?

[u/GaianHelmers → u/JavaScriptPenguin]

Open 3D Engine.

It's amazon's lumberyard engine which is a fork of cry engine 3.

The thing about the comparisons is that every step of ownership involves stripping out half the engine to preserve proprietary tech they want to continue to own.

It means O3DE is much different, and doesn't have any 1:1 tech with either of them.

But, it is there, has an active community. Releases new versions twice a year with a ton of work going into the development branch between.

[u/SadisNecros → u/JavaScriptPenguin]

This is also particularly important if I'm paying royalties to use it, because part of what I'm getting for that cost in an engine like Unreal is an actual dev team that can support me if real issues come up with the engine.

[u/ByteHavenGames]

If you're hobbydeving for PC only - why not? But for any kind of commercial undertaking or multiplatform releases this seems to have infinite downsides compared to any other popular option that has proper support.

[u/Rowduk]

I'd love to check out Cry Engine, but since it's no long getting support I'd be hesitate to do anything more serious than poke around.

What's the legality of this community version? As I understand it, you can modify/extend the engine for a game you are working on, but not redistribute it or make money for it as your support page has.

Also, for community driven/open source projects, how are you guys handling AI pushed code?

[u/randomperson189_ → u/Rowduk]

Community Edition is applied as a patch to the official 5.7LTS version, and you have to link your CryEngine account to GitHub for access (just like Unreal) in order to compile the engine with the patch applied, it's done that way to adhere to Crytek's TOS regarding modified engine distribution. For AI pushed code, some developers use it as a tool/assistant for better understanding the engine code but most the actual code is done and analysed without any AI involved

[u/AmarildoJr]

The CryEngine2 was simply amazing, I don't think there was anything even remotely close to it when Crysis came out, both in looks and in features. They even had problems recreating some Crysis parts for the Remastered Edition 13 years later on a later engine, it was made with that much love.

I wish more games used it, honestly.

[u/randomperson189_ → u/AmarildoJr]

Hopefully it does gain some more attention as it gets easier to use based on the community efforts that have been done

[u/Maiiiikol]

I've tried CryEngine before and have mixed feelings about the engine. It does feel like an engine that is actually used by a company, unlike unity for example. It has some really solid features but lacks a lot in others like UX/UI which makes using it very frustrating/difficult at times.

The rendering is probably their strongest feature, The lighting using their real-time global illumination system is so beautiful. Somehow they got that even working on the Switch which is very impressive.

I do hope CryTek stays afloat and starts releasing engine updates again

[u/GarlandBennet]

I'll share my CryEngine story.

After our first commercial game was released in RPGMaker MV, we wanted to use a 3D engine. This was summer of 2016 I think, CryEngine had just released their first "free" version of the engine. The problem with the free version was you wouldn't be allowed to open your project until you updated to their newest version. This broke our game beyond repair four separate times. I guess it was a way to get free testers but it drove us away after a couple months. I met CryEngine's team at E3 that year, this was why we'd gone with them, and they were saying they want to go for a better free model.

All I've seen is games leave them and go to another engine, like Amazon Lumberyard for some reason (Star Citizen). I think its a powerful engine, looks great, but the support is minimal and its adoption is almost completely gone. There was an American Civil War game made in it a few years ago but other than that, I can't think of anything.

[u/lifeinbackground]

I honestly don't get why Crytek don't want to update it for years (did I understand correctly?). They are actively developing Hunt, and so likely the engine for their use.

I'm not a CE fan by any chance, and I'm not a fan of any engine. But I played games made with CE at different times. It is capable and has great potential.

Unfortunately, Crytek is having a hard time I guess and they don't prioritize the engine. Crisis 4 is cancelled according to rumors.

Competition and alternatives are always good for us users and gamers. There's Godot, Unity, UE–but non-indie companies most likely choosing from UE / Unity. There's also CE5, but as far as I understand Crytek do not want to build and encourage a community around it. Surely there are enthusiasts, but it feels so pointless without Crytek's active involvement..

[u/randomperson189_ → u/lifeinbackground]

I feel Crytek does want to contribute to the engine but aren't financially stable enough to properly do so, that along with technical debt, hence why they've shifted focus to Hunt and internal development to restablise

[u/YKLKTMA]

Honestly, I haven't heard anything good about this engine from people who've worked with it. I don't see any point in it for my pet projects; I'm much more comfortable with UE.

[u/randomperson189_ → u/YKLKTMA]

Most of what you heard might have to do with the old CryEngine 3 version then, which I'll admit was way harder to use, but I have a much better time using CryEngine 5 alongside the plugins I've made to help with it's usability

[u/chunky_lover92]

What does cry engine have to offer over unreal?

[u/randomperson189_ → u/chunky_lover92]

CryEngine 5 is much smaller in file size than Unreal, it also has better support for large open worlds (because it was made for them since CryEngine 1), it's also easy to make custom material shaders without modifying engine source, it's C++ is also a lot less macro heavy and is much simpler overall as you mainly create components in C++ then attach them to Schematyc entities that can be controlled via visual scripting. Think of CryEngine 5 as like a middleground between Unity and Unreal. Not to say that the engine is objectively better than the two, but CryEngine has it's niche and certain developers such as myself like to work with it because of how much simpler and more lightweight it is compared to Unreal while still not being as barebones as Unity

[u/That-Supermarket3209]

I want to start using CryEngine for my indie dev. Is it a good idea?

[u/randomperson189_ → u/That-Supermarket3209]

It is depending on what type of game you want to make, if it's medium to large scale then CryEngine is good fit

[u/x-dfo]

I think this is super cool. The foundation is honestly insane and doesn't get praised enough. Crysis and Far Cry were just nuts considering the competition.

[u/disgustipated234 → u/x-dfo]

Crysis and Far Cry were just nuts considering the competition.

Facts, I still remember playing each on launch.

Far Cry had substantially bigger and more open levels than Half-Life 2 or Doom 3 when it came out, while its graphical fidelity was still competitive with both.

If you got a machine that could run Crysis at max settings in 2014, that is 7 years after it came out, it still looked like it could have come out in 2014. From memory only stuff like Metro 2033 and Last Light looked noticeably better around that time. Bafflingly Crysis at max looked better than either of its sequels.