#CRYENGINE

[videogamescreenshotsdaily]

January 17, 2023

Far Cry (2004)

[mvfm-25]

" If at first you succeed, cry, cry again! "

Surge Magazine n04 - Fall, 2004(?).

Not really sure when this specific issue was released, it says 'Fall 2004' right on the cover; but one of my previous posts (Surge Magazine n01) completely contradicts this information… If you have any indication of this issue's original release, please, either send me a message or send it through my fan submissions' tab!

[blogtaculous]

Crysis was really one of the games of all time.

I played through the remastered release on PS5 and have some thoughts.

The obvious one is the back half of the game stinks.

The first half is great. Tight, controlled experiences with a balanced set of tools. Later Cry games have completely failed to live up to the tension present in Crysis. It works because the open world isn’t really that open, but is just enough to feel like a huge, sprawling island. Not only this, but the enemy encounters are intentional and crafted. These days the game throws together an “outpost” with stupid enemies and alarms and whatever that’s easy as hell to assault because ammunition is everywhere for OP guns. Crysis, though, even with the nanosuit, is really challenging, and requires careful play throughout.

It has the same jank from the original release, like some weird bugs and weird checkpoints, but it remains, I think, the best Cry game at saying “here’s a position, take care of it.”

The North Koreans are pretty smart and hit hard. Even armor mode won’t save the player from poor planning. Modern Cry games are so easy. Every outpost can be cheesed without even trying. There’s just so much extra garbage, too, which isn’t really the subject here because Crysis isn’t an action RPG but I think my point is that this kind of linear design works really well and it falls apart under the weight of “Open World” expectations.

Of course once the aliens show up it becomes a real slog. The player is slow and it’s hard to look up, so suddenly these aliens can hover above the player and just hammer away, and the cloak tool becomes just worthless. The final boss(es) aren’t fun (and I had to restart the entire last level to get the exosuit to spawn and fuuuuuuck it sucks).

In all, I wish linear storytelling in big games would make a comeback, because open world collectathons and “survival crafting” isn’t working.

Will I play Crysis 2 again? It was my favorite of the series (from what I remember). Maybe. But first I’m trying the newest Ratchet and Clank game

[linuxgamenews]

Experience the Thrilling Story of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II the story-driven action RPG game launches on Steam Deck and Linux via Windows PC. All credit to the brilliant minds at Warhorse Studios for this adventure. Which you can now find on Steam with 93% Positive reviews. Seven years after the first story-driven action RPG made headlines, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is here, and yes, you can play it on Steam Deck and Linux via Proton with Windows PC. Warhorse Studios and Deep Silver are back, bringing Henry’s story into a bigger, deeper, and even more engaging medieval world.

A New Journey Begins

Henry, the blacksmith turned warrior, is back, and his path through 1403 Bohemia is anything but easy. War, betrayal, and personal choices are due to shape his destiny. With improved combat, richer storytelling, and an insanely detailed world, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II drops you right into the chaos of medieval life. Will you be the hero people need, or will you carve your own path, no matter the cost?

What’s New in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II?

A Living, Breathing World – Every town, castle, and village feels real, filled with NPCs who also have their own lives, stories, and problems.

Your Choices Matter – Every decision affects the world around you, while leading to different outcomes and shaping Henry’s journey.

Intense Combat – Master the brutal swordplay, ranged combat, and tactical fighting that made the first release so good — now with even more depth.

A Stunning Experience – Next-gen visuals, historical accuracy, and a powerful orchestral soundtrack bring Bohemia to life like never before.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Official Launch Trailer

Expanding the Adventure

The title is out now on Steam, but it’s also coming to GOG in the spring and supports GeForce Now, giving players more ways to dive into the medieval action. And if you’re into gaming soundtracks, you’ll like this one — composed by Jan Valta, it’s already on Steam and heading to Spotify soon.

More to Come in 2025

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is just the beginning. Warhorse Studios has confirmed tons of free and paid content throughout 2025. Expect horse racing, Hardcore Mode, new blacksmithing mechanics, and fresh quests and adventures. Plus, quality-of-life updates will keep the experience smooth and engaging.

Pick Your Edition

You can grab Kingdom Come: Deliverance II in three versions:

Standard Edition – The full game, ready to go. Pre-order for the Lion’s Crest bonus items.

Gold Edition – Includes the base game, Expansion Pass, and Gallant Huntsman Kit with exclusive hunting gear.

Collector’s Edition – Everything in the Gold Edition plus a Henry and Pebbles statue, a cloth map, enamel pins, a Letter of Hope, and collectible cards.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II isn’t just a story-driven action RPG sequel — it’s an experience. Whether you’re a longtime fan or a newcomer, Henry’s journey will pull you in and keep you hooked. So, ready your sword, make your choices, and step into Bohemia like never before on Steam. With a base price of $59.99 USD / £49.99 / 59,99€. While offering support for Steam Deck and Linux via Proton with Windows PC.

[pixelarabcom]

كيف جعلت Crytek لعبة Crysis معيارًا تقنيًا لا يُنسى؟ في مقابلة حديثة مع المدير التنفيذي لفريق التطوير Crytek، Cervat Yerli، تم التطرق إلى كواليس تطوير محرّك CryEngine المستخدم في لعبة Crysis، وكيف أن الفريق لم يدّخر أي جهد أو نفقات في تقديم تجربة تقنية غير مسبوقة. ركّز المطورون على أدق التفاصيل، بما في ذلك التفاعلات الفيزيائية للأشجار والتربة القابلة للتدمير، ما جعل اللعبة معيارًا تقنيًا للألعاب الأخرى لسنوات

[soloindiegamedev]

Choosing the Right Game Engine for Your Project

You have a brilliant idea for a game! That’s great, but now you need a game engine to realize your masterpiece. Fortunately, there are plenty of options out there nowadays to make that happen since there are so many game engines to choose from. Free, or paid. The first question you need to ask yourself is which program would be best to create the game just as you have envisioned. I’m not going…

[qbren]

Crysis 3 https://twitch.tv/qbren

Wandering around in the muck of New York, Nanosuit equipped, Ceph attacking is what these streets are made of. Hack the invading hivemind!

[twohitgames]

Hunt: Showdown 1896 debuta en consolas y PC

Saltando cronológicamente hacia adelante y dirigiéndose hacia el oeste del pantano, Hunt: Showdown 1896 trae consigo el poder de Cryengine 5.11, que incluye una muy esperada actualización de las imágenes, el diseño de audio, el rendimiento de renderizado y más. Los jugadores serán bienvenidos de nuevo al pantano después del lanzamiento con los mapas originales revisados y restaurados y con un…

[guywithbeer]

Check out my review of the awesome first person shooter game, CRYSIS 2 here.

#crysis2 #review #firstpersonshooter #fps #stealth #videogames #gaming #crytek #playstation3 #xbox360 #xbox

[antirepurp]

grabbing rise of lyric with my fangs. like sure whatever it was probably for the better for sega to intervene with some aspects of the development like having the characters' designs be less stylized and wacky and stick a bit closer to their original looks, but the micromanaging and insistence on a more typical sonic experience is what kills me bad. ignoring the fact the game came out on a console that wasn't designed to run shit made with that particular version of the cryengine (if it could run any cryengine games for that matter) which was ultimately why rol ended up like that, it presented a wonderful opportunity to innovate on sonic games and introduce Something New to the mix that hadn't been done in the big releases since unleashed. had boom been successful and become the funny side franchise sega decided they wanted it to be, they could have had games that did not Need to stick to the boost formula or whatever the Thing in the mainline games has to be. they could have had games that people who typically don't go for fast-paced action platformers (like me!) would be more willing to pick up as their first sonic game, which could later lead them to try some of the other games as well. instead they insist that a game that was conceptualized as a 4-player co-op experience and built around this idea needs more speed sections which feels like something that inherently clashes with the idea of co-op play with multiple people anyway and might not be the part that anyone would remember most fondly about such experience. and then they put it on the wii u. and then they make it a franchise thing and give the reigns of it to some cartoon writers who know nothing but the basics about the game they're supposed to make a cartoon about.

laying down in a puddle cradling rise of lyric in my arms and falsely trying to assure it that everything's okay when it very much isn't and the world did my darling so fucking dirty

[nitrosodiumgameanglia]

Why Sound Design is so Important in Games

Sound design is a key point in games, though it is often neglected in college games where we do a lot of work without speakers on. Having some good audio in a game really helps elevate the experience beyond just being a solely visual medium, as much as audio changed silent movies. The games with the best sound design are often those with realistic sound systems, or ones that elicit the desired emotional response. Good sound design can make you terrified to turn a corner; it can make you cry in the game's saddest moments; it can turn a level from a selection of rendered polygons to a truly real-seeming experience. Obviously our game's sound design isn't that deep, but it doesn't add nothing to the game either.

The first game I am looking at is Thief: The Dark Project. This game came out in 1998, but I would say it still holds up today with a few patches to make it run on modern systems. The game has a unique stealth system that lets you hide in shadows, but the main thing we're looking at is the sound. Different surfaces are different levels of loudness when walked on - carpet is perfect for sneaking, but metal catwalks are loud and clank under your feet. This isn't just set dressing either, because enemies are more likely to hear you if you're clanking about on steel grating. Then there is the ambient sound, where you can hear nearby guards muttering or whistling (in a great bit of game design, this helps you keep track of them when they're out of sight), torches crackle, and strange ambient screeches echo down hallways. The ambient soundtracks in each level are interesting, and use a lot of electronic synthesiser noises, which gives them an 80s John Carpenter vibe. They help make the environments foreboding, but also help tell the story in a way that 90s graphics simply could not. For example, as you enter the deepest annals of an ultra-religious Hammerite compound, the ambient whirr of machinery gets replaced by solemn choir and hymns. Caves can have dripping water and the occasional crumbling rock, while more twisted forest environments have the endless chirring of insects and chuckling from unseen nymphs and satyrs. The actual sound technology is also really good for the time, because it supports sound cards, even though they aren't used too much anymore. With them enabled, you can listen against a door and gauge how big a room is based on the echo of the guard's voices inside. Even for today that is fairly advanced, and as far as I know, not present in many other games.

The next game I am looking at is Hunt: Showdown. It is a 2018 horror shooter taking place at the end of the 19th century, where you play as a bounty hunter trying to kill various cryptids and monsters. The game uses the Cry Engine, so it already looks good on a visual front, but the audio is also phenomenal. Most of the quality comes from its directional sound system, which is so specific you can tell where players are through buildings, which is useful for lining up shots when you don't have a good visual read on their whereabouts. Every gun also has a unique sound and echo, which allows an educated player to guess what weapon has been fired, from what direction, and even from what distance. The way that the game calculates sound waves travelling is a very unique and realistic system; a gunshot ringing out over an open field will be louder and clearer than a gunshot fired in the middle of the thick backwoods. I assume this is a built-in feature for CryEngine V because I know of no other games with this level of realism when it comes to sound - I can only assume it calculates for windspeed and other factors and then runs the sound effect through various in-engine filters.

Finally, I will look at The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. One of the lesser-mentioned qualities of this game is its environmental sound design, which help the various holds of Skyrim seem like realistic places. The wind whistles about your ears, giving you a good sense of your player's altitude and the temperature around you. In the mornings and evenings, you can hear crickets chirring and birds chirping. The rushing of rivers sounds different depending on the course - swelling into a roar of white noise in the rapids, but dissipating to a trickle when the river becomes a lazy stream. Then there are more ethereal sounds, like the creaking of the aurora borealis on winter nights. Towns have their own soundscapes also, with the creaking wood of huts and the crackle of flaming torches. The ambient music by Jeremy Soule (the same guy behind the LOTR soundtrack) also adds a lot to the game's atmosphere, with majestic orchestras making even a simple walk through the valleys a much more emotive and captivating experience. However, you can play with the sound turned off and just listen to the layered soundscapes.

From my research, I can see that the main theme that makes a soundscape good is attention to detail. Not just having one sword hit sound, for example, but several, altered depending what material you strike, and echoing with a different resonance depending on where you are. I would say that with Wallpaper of the Mind, we have achieved this as best we can in four weeks, with the different footstep surfaces. The sounds I myself provided were more stock quality, but it doesn't matter, because how sound is used mechanically is just as important. I will make a blog post on this soon.

[aortaplatinum]

Why Sonic sucked in the second half of the 2010s

-A lot of this second post is speculation based on what I've seen on The Cutting Room Floor, heard in interviews, and pieced together myself. Japanese studios are notoriously tight-lipped, so it's hard to get a clear and definitive picture of what happened, but this seems to be the likely story.-

Do I really have to talk about Sonic Lost World? It's so immensely boring and poorly tuned, I nearly forgot to mention it in either of these posts. TL;DR SonicTeam scrapped the successful and popular boost formula gameplay to try to copy Super Mario Galaxy almost 10 years after it released. The game sucked and the story and script sucked, but that's just down to SonicTeam forgetting to take their brain pills every morning during the planning phase of development.

What I REALLY want to talk about is Sonic BOOM. Finally realizing that it's almost exclusively the Western world that cares about Sonic, SEGA partnered with the newly-founded studio Big Red Button to begin development on Sonic Synergy. Founded by ex-Naughty Dog developers in 2007, they seemed to be the perfect team to reinvent Sonic specifically for North American audiences.

And they probably were, but we'll never know, because of what happened next...

In the early 2010s, SEGA signed on with French animation studio OuiDo! productions to begin work on an unrelated animated comedy Sonic TV series, Sonic BOOM. At this point, SEGA seem to have had a really stupid version of a Jimmy Neutron Brain Blast, and decided, "Hey, what if we combined both the Big Red Button and OuiDo! projects into one thing? And made the video game a tie-in with the animated series!" So SEGA goes to Big Red Button, who were in the middle of developing Sonic Synergy with their own lore, characters, and world, and who already had enough developed to create an internal trailer for higher-ups and investors and SEGA goes in and is like "Hey all this Lyric and Ancients and time travel stuff is real neat but we're gonna need you to overhaul the FUCK out of it and make it like THIS instead aight have fun assholes were gonna go blow our Yakuza money on some other stupid shit." [paraphrasing]

This overhaul and combination then lead into another new idea- that Sonic BOOM should be an entire separate sub-franchise of Sonic the Hedgehog, complete with toys and comic books and all the other merch that comes along with a plan like this. So, Sonic Synergy was renamed to Sonic BOOM Rise of Lyric, and BRB took what they already had and crammed OuiDo!'s tone into it while also removing their own lore from the game.

You may have noticed that despite sharing a name, there's VERY little crossover between Sonic BOOM Rise of Lyric, and Sonic BOOM the TV series. Most of the characters are in both, but Lyric is only in RoL and Eggman's island fortress is only in the TV series. It's very obvious in hindsight that the game and the TV series were two separate things that were mashed together during development of both.

Now, sometime during the development of Sonic BOOM, SEGA signed another deal, this time with Nintendo. This was an exclusivity deal, an agreement to make the next three Sonic games exclusive to the Nintendo platforms of the time, the Wii U and 3DS. The first of these was Sonic Lost World, and the second was Mario and Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. But it seems SEGA didn't even have a third game planned, because instead of working on something specifically for Wii U, they went BACK to Big Red Button and were like "Yo I see you got this running on Xbox One or some shit Imma need you to put it on the Game and Wario machine instead lmao have fun" [paraphrasing]

So, working with Nintendo to quickly port Rise of Lyric onto a console it wasn't designed for, running on a modified version of CryEngine, which the Wii U wasn't natively compatible with, Big Red Button got Sonic BOOM Rise of Lyric out the door and promptly exited console video game development. Visiting their site now, you can see that they went into VR games.

The DISASTROUS financial performance of Rise of Lyric- a half finished game retrofitted with another team's vision and then forced onto hardware that shouldn't have been able to even boot it- severely damaged the Sonic BOOM franchise's reputation right out the gate, which in turn hampered TV ratings, and since no one was watching the TV series, no one was buying the merch. And to add on top of that, Cartoon Network, the channel airing Sonic BOOM in the US, has always judged a series' "success" on merch sales. So since no one was buying "Here comes the BOOM" t-shirts or Sonic BOOM birthday party paper plates, CN shifted BOOM around to different, weird time slots until finally offloading it onto their sister channel, Boomerang, where it died after two seasons. Everything went wrong because of SEGA's short-sightedness and their willingness to fuck over the game development team they were working with. This was a MASSIVE, multi-faceted plan with dozens of projects holding up other projects, and it was an unabashed financial failure.

Needless to say, this cost SEGA Sammy Holdings as a whole likely BILLIONS OF DOLLARS. Because Sonic had lost them so much money, there was very little money to invest back into Sonic. This lead to the Sonic drought, as it's been called by the community, where for years, no new major Sonic stuff released. We had a few mobile games and some limited physical releases of the Sonic BOOM TV series and that was about it. Sonic as a whole was just coasting on what was already made for BOOM, and trying to recoup their losses by any means necessary. The 3DS game, Sonic BOOM Shattered Crystal, seemed to sell decently, because it DID get a sequel in Sonic BOOM Fire and Ice, which DID tie in directly with characters and storylines from the TV series, but at that point, it was already far too late.

Embarrassed, financially hurting, and in need of a safe win, SEGA went back to SonicTeam, and had them start work on updating the Hedgehog Engine used in Unleashed and Generations, and start work on Sonic Forces- and that's why Forces sucks. It was a safe-bet "PLEASE make us money" project that tried to appeal to everyone and inevitably wound up as a massive disappointment to everyone, because only SEGA knew what Forces really was meant to be. Sonic Mania was made for the same reason, it was a "oh God we have no cash, hire the cheap fans-turned-developers to make a nostalgia bait 2D pixel Sonic game" situation. Since Mania promised so much less and delivered on those promises though, it was VERY well-received. These two "life raft" projects together started to get SEGA and Sonic out of their financial pit, which in turn, gave them the leverage to bounce between a few different American movie studios to try to shop around the Sonic movie as a pitch, and to begin development on Sonic's first open world game, Sonic Frontiers.

In interviews, Frontiers is cited as being a "last chance" for SonicTeam during development. While this may sound harsh, it may have been that SEGA just didn't have faith in the franchise as a whole anymore, so the movie and Frontiers were to be potentially the final Sonic projects.

But I don't need to tell you how wrong SEGA was about this :D

[catonator]

You hear about video game development?

Well. I wouldn't say I expected such a catastrophic implosion from Unity.

Now, I can't say that I didn't laugh at the situation. It's a hilariously terrible case of bad management coming up with bad ideas in desperation. But it's also a somewhat scary indication of the sorry state of the industry.

Unity controls about 40% of the engine marketshare (according to a linkedin post I found anyway). Unity dominates the engine scene by a large margin, followed by Unreal at around 30% and Cryengine by around 5%. Unity forms such a large part of the entire game development industry, that it's difficult to really even understand just how much they control the concept of games as a whole!

Most people are jumping to some paid alternatives, like the aforementioned Unreal and, to a lesser extent, Game Maker, but my suggestion is this: don't!

Within the last decade, all-encompassing closed super game engines have become less of a side venture and more of an expectation. Back in the 2000s, there were a few engines like this, mostly amateur ones. Game engines were less creation stations and more of a loose collection of middleware and tools. Purchasing the rights to the engine meant that you also got the responsibility of also tying the engine into something resembling a game yourself. I feel like this art has been lost.

Game engines nowadays are more of a purchase of a passing right to use and incredibly specific, closed set of tools. You don't get to define the tools, and you don't get to really own the tools. It's yet another example of the tradition of the games industry fucking over the customers, and the customers just going with it. Because of this, while Unreal got some free dunks on Twitter for this, I can assure you Epic is planning something equally terrible as Unity's PR faux pas, and it'll come into to play in about 3 years when everyone's just accepted that Unity sometimes financially screws you over.

But, game developers are indeed developers. They know software, and they can learn to make new software.

If you're a game dev and still reading this, I'd recommend taking a peek beyond the curtains of corporate cockfighting, into the realm of DIY game engines. It's a… somewhat janky world full of strange characters with unusual ideas on how much time it's acceptable to spend not working on a game, but it's also a place where you're not being sat on by fatcats.

Just as game engines have progressed in the past 20 years, so have libraries, middleware and resources for independents. Making your own engine isn't just picking up ANSI C and toiling for a year in software rendering hell. Open tools like Pygame, Monogame, LÖVE and Cocos2D (among many, many others) are far beyond just simple rendering libraries and border on being game engines sometimes. The difference is, these tools are open source, and they do not restrict you with what you can do with them.

There are several games you may have played made using these frameworks. Streets of Rage 4 (MonoGame), Celeste (MonoGame), Fez (XNA, aka. MonoGame), Miitomo (Cocos2D), Geometry Dash (Cocos2D)… I got tired of looking up more. There are a lot of games.

The future which I hope to see for game developers is one where you have a large assortment of simple tools you can pick. Level editors, asset converters, entity systems, all small chunks of a game engine you could drop into your own project to slowly build up your own collection of workflows to make games your own way, completely independent of any larger forces on the market.

The support for these frameworks is still somewhat barren compared to Unity, but I believe, that if more people jump to alternatives like this, more tools, tutorials and middleware built for them would start showing up. This is how Unity also got its start, about 15 years ago. You also really don't need all the power in the world to make your simple 2D Megaman clones. The fog created by the monolithic engines we have now have obscured just how simple the building blocks for your favourite games can really be.

It just takes some bravery and willingness to learn a new way to approach making games, but I think the outcome is worth it, even just for you.

[qbren]

Crysis 3 https://twitch.tv/qbren Prophet and Psycho team up for one last ride: The Alpha-Ceph! Eliminate it, get revenge. Rasch betrayed us to the hivemind, it's time to stop them!