Crytek calls out Epic

[lilhasselhoffer]

Sources articles: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Cryengine-3-Unreal-Engine-4-CryTek-Epic-Games-Cevat-Yerli,16012.html

http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/14/crytek-says-cryengine-3-already-does-awesome-graphics-as-good-as-unreal-engine-4/

Yeah, me think that Crytek doth protest too much.


The gist of both of these articles is that Crytek has had unique features, that UE4 is only now getting, for years. They put it as:

"If I look at what people call next-gen technology now, it’s what we were seeing three years ago," Yerli added. "We already had massive particle systems, we already had GPU rendering, all these things. Deferred shading. We had tessellation already since we shipped Crysis 2. We already had DX11. We didn’t just talk it up as tech demos, we have games that are shipped and are doing it."

Perhaps I'm remembering wrong, but:
1) Cryengine 3's first actual game release was with Crysis 2.
2) Crysis 2 was released Tuesday 22 March 2011.
3) Crytek announced Cryengine 3 October 14, 2009.

I'm not a fan of Epic or Crytek, but I have to call shenanigans here. Crysis 2 debuted with tesselation, that brought performance down because even underground water was being tesselated. The claimed DX11 support was broken on day 1, and took month to fix. Finally, GPU rendering of what? Rendering is a function of the graphics card. Perhaps he meant GPU accelerated physics calculation rendering?


Beyond this, there is exactly one game that uses Cryengine 3, three years after it was "officially announced." There are a few titles slated for 2012 release, and even one for 2013. The dozen or so other games have been announced, but have no date. Why do I take so much issue with this? Check out this quote from the same article:

"I also think that we are dedicated to online games," he added. "When you look at our number of licensees in that space, we have more licensees than any other engine in the online space. In the console space it’s a different story. In the console space we’re definitely not leading. But I think the next time around, it’s going to be a very different picture."

Crytek is trying to make their announced shift to the free to play model seem like a good decision retroactively. They already have so many licensees [sic] you see. Crytek's trying to say one thing, and retroactively justify their actions with a completely crap reasoning. They have less experience selling their engine than Epic, saw almost no action on the first two iterations, and have basically started out by saying Epic can't compete with Crytek.


Putting aside all personal feelings, it seems like Crytek is taking the same route as Epic. Both companies started out making great games on good engines, but have been unable to produce decent games in the recent past despite making successfully licensable engines. Hopefully the competition will spur growth, though I fail to see how another pissing contest between two companies will improve media coverage...

 

[TheMailMan78]

Because Gears of War was a flop?

Crytek isnt even in the same ballpark as Epic.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

All I have to say is CryTek make a lot better use of their engines than Epic does their's. A lot of developers make UE3 look far better than Epic ever does in their games, Rocksteady being just one of them.

CryTek haters will say what they want regardless of what happens, but clearly Epic are in the engine making business more to make money off it than make good looking games themselves.

 

[RoutedScripter]

Sources articles: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Cryengine-3-Unreal-Engine-4-CryTek-Epic-Games-Cevat-Yerli,16012.html

http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/14/crytek-says-cryengine-3-already-does-awesome-graphics-as-good-as-unreal-engine-4/

Yeah, me think that Crytek doth protest too much.


The gist of both of these articles is that Crytek has had unique features, that UE4 is only now getting, for years. They put it as:



Perhaps I'm remembering wrong, but:
1) Cryengine 3's first actual game release was with Crysis 2.
2) Crysis 2 was released Tuesday 22 March 2011.
3) Crytek announced Cryengine 3 October 14, 2009.

I'm not a fan of Epic or Crytek, but I have to call shenanigans here. Crysis 2 debuted with tesselation, that brought performance down because even underground water was being tesselated. The claimed DX11 support was broken on day 1, and took month to fix. Finally, GPU rendering of what? Rendering is a function of the graphics card. Perhaps he meant GPU accelerated physics calculation rendering?


Beyond this, there is exactly one game that uses Cryengine 3, three years after it was "officially announced." There are a few titles slated for 2012 release, and even one for 2013. The dozen or so other games have been announced, but have no date. Why do I take so much issue with this? Check out this quote from the same article:


Crytek is trying to make their announced shift to the free to play model seem like a good decision retroactively. They already have so many licensees [sic] you see. Crytek's trying to say one thing, and retroactively justify their actions with a completely crap reasoning. They have less experience selling their engine than Epic, saw almost no action on the first two iterations, and have basically started out by saying Epic can't compete with Crytek.


Putting aside all personal feelings, it seems like Crytek is taking the same route as Epic. Both companies started out making great games on good engines, but have been unable to produce decent games in the recent past despite making successfully licensable engines. Hopefully the competition will spur growth, though I fail to see how another pissing contest between two companies will improve media coverage...

I've used a lot of Cryengine and i can confirm this is true, UE4 is nothing special.

I can also comment on the public stance, most modder hacker wannabes see only unreal engine as the only sole holy engine in the universe, a pretty shallow view.

Most of the HYPE unreal engine receives is by the public awareness who don't really have any idea what they're talking about. Every kid gamer in the WiiU speculation was spelling doom on nintendo if UE4 is not supported, this is ridicolous, the industry doesn't depend on 1 outdated engine, nor does any of the consoles.

The reason why i call it outdated, that's because that's what UE3 is, it's outdated, it's ancient old editor, i don't like it at all, silly 2D views birds-eye and building maps is weird too, i want real stuff like the crytek's sandbox editor where you can free-roam around the map.

 

[RoutedScripter]

All I have to say is CryTek make a lot better use of their engines than Epic does their's. A lot of developers make UE3 look far better than Epic ever does in their games, Rocksteady being just one of them.

CryTek haters will say what they want regardless of what happens, but clearly Epic are in the engine making business more to make money off it than make good looking games themselves.

Yes indeed. EPIC is really serving the licensing world, they've completely stopped producing anything innovative, we might see what that PC exclusive is ... a facebook game ?

Come on, i've been keeping an eye on EPIC since i've started to try it's editor, even UDK, never used it again, and they've totally been out of radar for me in terms of usefulness ... i don't like those ridicolous tools, apart from that, they don't do anything, wha a dudebro console game, that's silly.

They pushed into the businesses, that's why they have this big following, thought the fanboys really actually don't have any idea about tech. Stuff that was demonstrated in SAMARTIAN DEMO ... the bokeh DOF and other effects , it's what Crytek demonstrated 2 years earlier.

You can see the great carmack interview on engine licensing and why you don't see IDTech being licensed, there is a big difference of "not being able to" or "not want to":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoLaA-CVmTE&feature=player_detailpage#t=910s

 

[hellrazor]

So at this level, what's the difference between CryEngine 3 and competitors like Unreal Engine 4? He said it's the "fluidity of the overall experience," comparing the differences with an Android phone and an iPhone. Both can do the same things, but the iPhone feels more fluid, more organic.

WTF am I reading?

 

[AphexDreamer]

Well actually Crysis 2 did not have DX11 on day one but a patch was released a few months after Crysis 2's release date and there have been other DX11 games before that.

Not to mention what they found was that they were tessellating useless flat objects that would just slow performance with no real visual gain.

But yes Crysis 2 now does have many technologies that Epic is just now announcing, but can they do a better job if it?

 

[Binge]

WTF am I reading?

Complete BS. Please PM me when you can send an xls, let alone a picture, from the iPhone's built in e-mail application. To anyone thinking they've got me on the picture point... no I will not accept sending a photo from the gallery application. That does not fly.

On topic~ Crytek has a great engine, period. Don't call them out on bugs because both have their own fair share. More to the point Crytek did it all first, and no amount of respect will change that fact. EPIC's unreal engine is not crap, and everyone should consider it a worthy platform for game design. The truth of the matter is there's a little sh!t flinging, and for good reason since they're both trying to succeed. Crytek is going to talk about its competitive edge. Don't even deny how far they have pushed visual engines so much as to talk your own talk over the real content of an interview. Crytek is coming so watch out. *badboys theme*

 

[RejZoR]

What good are "unique features" if no one is using your engine? Crytek should jerk around less and make better games or use more aggressive approach to sell CryEngine. Because at the moment, only games using CryEngine are their own games, Nexuiz and some mod from years ago.

Unreal Engine has been used on loads of games since the age of gaming. So CryTek, stfu and get to work. I like if games use different engines because this way they don't feel too generic but then again if one engine is superior for game making and is also affordable, i can't blame companies for picking Unreal instead of CryEngine.

id Software has fallen in the same problem "hole". Remember the days of Quake 3 Arena? If the games weren't using Unreal Engine, it was most probably a modified version of a Quake 3 engine.
What about these days? Any other developer using Doom 3, Quake 4 or Rage engines? Can 't think of a single one apart from few modders and the game done by id Software.

 

[erixx]

I hope "organic" doesn't mean "smelly" in mac-heads neolingua.

 

[justtakemymoney]

I really don't care what game engines used to create games today. The developers of the game still have the final word where the game goes . . . specially at Graphics. Even a crap car can win the race with a good driver than a good car with a dumb driver.

 

[m1dg3t]

Does this really matter at all? I mean seeing as PC gaming is seemingly moving more towards a "streamlined" enviroment with consoles (more & more game "ports") who has/is the best engine seems somewhat moot to me since consoles are so limited in their capabilities when compared to PCs

Would be nice to see the PC side of things nut up and put the generic consoles back in their places. One can dream right?

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

Because I'm enjoying this argument so much, perhaps the following should be considered.

Betamax was a superior technology to VHS. It cost a slight bit more, but eventually lost out to VHS.

RDRAM beat out SDRAM in raw performance. Again, licensing fees and general costs killed it.

Blu-ray beat out HD DVD. It wasn't the extra quality, or the more reasonable pricing. The pornography industry supported it, and Sony threw so much money at it that failure wasn't really an option.


Considering these three things, it is clear that the "superior" technology doesn't always win. It is also clear that money is often a greater factor in adoption than superior technology. Let's say Cryengine 3 is better, with as little penetration and awareness as Crytek has (specifically among programmers) how do they entice new developers to license their engine?

Additionally, the consideration that consoles haven't currently got DX11 means that all of the extra features of Cryengine can't be realized on the most popular gaming hardware. It's hard to see a difference between engines, if the differences can't even be rendered. As much as PC gamers hate to admit it, we are the minority of the gaming consumers out there.


Thoughts? Flaming hatred because I seem to be marginalizing PCs, despite the fact that I'm a PC gamer myself?

 

[AphexDreamer]

We just need awesome PC games that will make people want to play PC games lol

Diablo 3 I think was a great example of that.

And lets not forget WOW. And those games don't even look that good, any console could run them.

We aren't really that much of a minority... Its like its scarce to find a PC gamer... Can't really say I know the odds though. And where do we draw the line at PC gaming? Becaues most PC's these days have games and people play them. Plus I'm sure there are far more PC's in the world then there are consoles.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

I want to see what a computer with like a GTX680 or something can do when its full 100% utulized like a console. I could careless who had the effects for next gen first, I want to see a game that utilized a PC 100% no matter the configuration. It might be impossible, but when it comes to coding your only limited by what your hardware can do so lets go developers!

 

[Frag_Maniac]

I don't see how more devs using a particular engine automatically makes it better or the team that made the engine better. Let's not forget that this is business, and as with any business the price paid and familiarity with the product = less time and expense on the developing end. You could also say that's quantity over quality.

The fact is CryTek's Sandbox editor is just as easy if not easier to use than Unreal's editor, it's just that it hasn't been around as long and a lot of devs choose to stick with what they're familiar with. I'm a relative noob at map building, yet I was able to easily figure out a lot of Sandbox's features, and that was with the Crysis version of it. It's even easier to use now, esp object texture alignment.

What's really amazing is Sandbox's AI node building though. They are all pre-scripted and plug together via drag and drop. Out of curiosity when I was working with SB I DLed Unreal's editor build at that time. I watched tutorials and looked at it's layout and it was still like Greek. It's nowhere near as intuitive as Sandbox.

I'm telling you all this talk about Unreal's engines and editors is just that, talk. It's nothing but a mass marketing scheme they got going, much like Valve pioneered digital downloads via Steam. I also agree that Epic are trying to dupe the naive. Just the fact that they claimed most PC players are pirates, wrote them off, and now say they're going to make another PC game, makes it clear they are full of BS.