Crytek
CryEngine 2 was Heralded by the release of the PC shooter Crysis in 2007 and one issue for German-based studio Crytek has been filtering enquiries from interested parties in order to ensure it's working with clients who can make the most of the engine's capabilities.
Of course, the headline feature remains the engine's graphical quality, with the DirectX 10-class engine offering support for features such as real-time lighting and shadows that do not require pre-baked textures to create time of day and dynamic weather conditions.
Also integrated is a flexible physics engine, which enables the creation of fully destructible environments, and a realistic animation system that can combine motion capture and hand animation.
But in terms of getting good games made quickly, CryENGINE 2 production tools are just as important. The Sandbox game editor offers a collaborative, real-time working environment for game designers and level editors.
Tools include terrain editing, visual programming of features such as AI, special effects creation, facial animation, sound design, and asset management.
This is important as versions of your game can be generated and tested on target platforms without the need for assets to be compiled. Indeed, the only obvious lack is support for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, something that's currently in development.
CryEngine 2
Features: DirectX 10-class renderer with dynamic soft shadows; script-based shader system; asset streaming system, animation system; audio engine; integrated Sandbox 2 game editor including Lua-driven AI system and smart objects; low bandwidth networking
Platforms: PC (Xbox 360 and PS3 in development)
Integration with Other Technologies: Alienbrain, CRI, FMOD, Perforce, and Scaleform, plus plug-ins for 3ds Max, Photoshop and XSI
Cost: pre-visualization, SDK, and SDK plus source licenses available. Price on request
Released Games: Crysis (Crytek)
Games in Development Include: Entropia Universe upgrade (MindArk), Merchants of Brooklyn (Paleo), The Day (Reloaded), Blue Mars (Avatar Reality)
www.cryengine2.com, www.crytek.com, www.crymod.com
Crytek's Crysis
|
Printer-Friendly Version
On a related note, I'm pleased to find that there's more support for Linux than I previously thought. I'll have to look at a couple of them closer.
> It's safe to say Epic's Unreal Engine 3 is the current,
> de facto industry standard middleware
It's safe to say that it's currently the most popular 3rd party engine for AAA current-gen titles. That's not really the same thing as being a de facto industry standard. You wouldn't say the Ford Focus is the de facto standard for UK cars, just because it has the largest market share. By definition a de facto standard has to be so completely ubiquitous that anything other than it seems odd - that's not Unreal 3's status.
Like: Unity, Unigine, StemCell, NeoAxis, Quest3D.
And much more, there are Game Engines very good and the prices is more low.
Shouldn't this article be called "List of expensive commercial engines" ?
Why not the Nebula engine?
Or ... well.... the list is long: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines
Game engines have come a long way in the last few years and the commercial engines that had the market to themselves need to realise that they face competition and need to restructure thier licensing. the engine with the best tools and licensing will make a lot of money.