Essential Game Engines: CryEngine

Creator: Crytek
Platforms: Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PS3, Next-gen consoles
Seen in: Crysis, Warface, Aion
www.crytek.com

Crytek’s popular CryEngine 3 middleware is the powerhouse behind the company’s hit triple-A franchise Crysis.

Also available as a free SDK, the tech features support in AI, physics, networking, audio and ‘high-end’ effects, and can be used for development on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

“With the combination of scalability and efficient development with the Crytek graphics and rendering, we believe this makes CryEngine 3 the maximum game development solution,” says CryEngine director Carl Jones.

“With no pre-calculation or loading times though using the platform, there are now no delays to developers seeing their creations in-game – therefore there’s faster overall project progress.”

Jones believes that the engine space is currently in great shape due to a hugely competitive market and high demand from developers for Crytek’s own platform, which has recorded almost half a million installs of the free SDK to date.

He adds that the sector will continue to grow, as engines need to provide ever-increasing power for users as games come closer to the quality of CG movies, whilst also keeping apace with the demand for faster tools and pipelines.

As well as providing a high performance tech for the current generation of consoles, with indies also taking advantage of the engine for downloadable content, Jones confirms that Crytek’s platform is also currently being used for next-gen development.

“We’ve been planning for next-gen development since we started CryEngine 3,” he says.

“We don’t need to rebuild our engine to deal with higher spec gaming devices, which will come on line in the next few years.

“In fact, developers are already using CryEngine 3 for games with target platforms significantly higher in power than the current-gen consoles. We’ll be showing more on this during 2012.”