NeoGAF

Posted on Tuesday, January 29 @ 06:21:26 PST

Crytek will demonstrate their CryENGINE 2 game development middleware and their Sandbox 2 game editor at this year's Game Developer Conference, for the first time running on multiple hardware platforms such as the PS3 and Xbox 360.

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First publicly shown at last year's conference, and recently released as the technology underlying their critically acclaimed PC game, Crysis, this year's engine will be shown for the first time running on multiple hardware platforms such as the PS3 and Xbox 360, to a select audience. In addition, there will be a public demonstration showing how well the fully optimized engine can perform on a budget PC which can be put together for around 600 dollars complete, including keyboard and mouse. Visitors will be able to see for themselves the extremely high quality that can be achieved on relatively inexpensive consumer hardware today using the CryENGINE 2.

Cevat Yerli, Sten Hübler and Bernd Diemer will host a GDC session entitled "Crysis in the Making", providing a behind the scenes look at the challenges of developing Crysis and the CryENGINE 2. Other highlights of the show will be various conference talks and discussions involving key Crytek technical staff including Chris Evans, Technical Art Lead, Tomas Neumann, Crytek's Audio Programmer, and Tiago Sousa, R&D Graphics Programmer.

In addition, Crytek will once again be hosting a series of public presentations at their booth #6611 in the North Hall, where the topics to be covered will range from live demonstrations of rapid level creation using the Sandbox 2 editor, working with the next generation features of the CryENGINE 2 animation system, adding immersive sound and interactive music to your game, to a discussion of the overall CryENGINE 2 design, graphical pipelines and overall architecture. These presentations will be lead by many of the leading members of the Crytek's game development and engine teams. For the first time, Crytek will also be joined at their booth by some of their many licensing partners, which will also show the CryENGINE 2 being used for architectural visualizations and serious games applications. Seating for the presentations is on a first come, first served basis, and likely to fill quickly. Each of these presentations will repeat twice each day; no appointment is needed to attend.

Sounds interesting... guess we'll get to find out just how well the ps3 and 360 can handle this engine.

Didn't they show it off on all the platforms back at E3?

*EDIT*
Never mind. I'm thinking of id Software's new engine.

This will be interesting...

System Warriors Assemble!

Talking Points:
- Framerate superiority
- Texture resolution
- Colors: Washed out or no?
- Physics gimped?

Hell, this is a battleground even the PC gamers can love! :lol

Originally Posted by The Orange

This will be interesting...

I disagree.

As long as it doesn't look like SupCom 360, it'll be ok.

Crysis console version CONFIRMED :D

Originally Posted by theBishop

System Warriors Assemble!

Talking Points:
- Framerate superiority
- Texture resolution
- Colors: Washed out or no?
- Physics gimped?

Hell, this is a battleground even the PC gamers can love! :lol

Truer words have never been spoken. :lol

Originally Posted by CowboyAstronaut

Truer words have never been spoken. :lol

He forgot Anti-aliasing tho

They are clearly crying for licensees here. Epic has so many developers wrapped up in UE3, but I can't think of any 3rd party titles being developed on CryEngine 2. That is a shame, however, as the engine is absolutely incredible in what it can achieve. If they can show it running on console hardware, it could really help them lure developers to their front porch.

The thing is, while the engine is known for its rendering of dense jungles and huge vistas, it's incredibly capable of rendering beautiful indoor locales and tight spaces as well. The carrier portions of Crysis, for instance, were much smaller in scale (and ran much smoother), but were among the most realistic looking scenes in the game. The engine is capable of much more than open jungles and it should be considered for such uses.

As long as it doesn't look like SupCom 360, it'll be ok.

Different situation (SupCom is ugly on the PC too, if you ask me, but it is insanely demanding for different reasons). Have you seen videos of the 360 version, by the way? It's nowhere near as bad looking as I would have expected.

Crysis Instincts FTW:D

After the disaster Crysis turned out to be, no wonder they're trying to port it to consoles.
Besides, they always intended to sell their engines. Let's see which corners will have to cut though. If they make a stable version of the engine for consoles I bet we'll see some kind of Crysis spin-off.

Originally Posted by TTP

He forgot Anti-aliasing tho

Oh, let's not forget optical disc space and hard drive issues!!

I'd expect something along the lines of MedSpec (crysis on medium settings). Which still looks great, btw. And whatever game their showing will most likely be better catered to the consoles anyway (and not need as much RAM as Crysis needs).

The RAM limitation is the only thing Cevat Yerli complained about on the consoles that would make Crysis not work well on them. He said the CPUs and GPU was fine.

Cool.

Awesome news!

Originally Posted by Xdrive05

I'd expect something along the lines of MedSpec (crysis on medium settings). Which still looks great, btw. And whatever game their showing will most likely be better catered to the consoles anyway (and not need as much RAM as Crysis needs).

The RAM limitation is the only thing Cevat Yerli complained about on the consoles that would make Crysis not work well on them. He said the CPUs and GPU was fine.

I think they can tweak the game to look much better than medium settings, though. Ram is indeed the most significant limitation. They can mix and match various settings to achieve the best possible visuals. Look at how much tweaking has been done on the PC side. The game can look far better than "High" mode without sacrificing much in the way of performance. They can limit the areas that consoles would struggle with and focus on areas where they can excel.

He forgot Anti-aliasing tho

Heh, nobody is even using AA on the PC version of Crysis. The performance drain is just too great and it disables the edge AA (which has a very minimal performance impact). 720p without AA will look just fine.

When is GDC again?

This will be very interesting. I really wanna see how the lighting will be on the 360/PS3.

Originally Posted by later

When is GDC again?

18-22nd Feb.

I'm looking forward to it.

Originally Posted by dark10x

They are clearly crying for licensees here. Epic has so many developers wrapped up in UE3, but I can't think of any 3rd party titles being developed on CryEngine 2.

Hopefully it runs well on both systems and is relatively easy to develop for so some companies can dump the mess that is UE3.

Not only ENGINE 2 is crying right now...

Pay attention to the "select audiences" line people. Mark my words you'll have some websites playing devil's advocate talking about footage we can't see and telling everyone how much better one platform was running the engine compared to the other.

I suspect Shane and Ryan Patton will tell us the PS3 version of the engine looked and ran noticeably better :lol

Remember I called that. Personally I wont care other than having a desire to see it run well and look great on either one of the consoles. Doesn't matter I have both.

Then again... what's the point if a good game wont be using the engine :)

Originally Posted by later

When is GDC again?

February 18 to 22.

WOW! Can´t wait to see PS3 running it at 1080p!

Edit: in case somebody don´t understand, it´s sarcasm

Originally Posted by dark10x

I think they can tweak the game to look much better than medium settings, though. Ram is indeed the most significant limitation. They can mix and match various settings to achieve the best possible visuals. Look at how much tweaking has been done on the PC side. The game can look far better than "High" mode without sacrificing much in the way of performance. They can limit the areas that consoles would struggle with and focus on areas where they can excel.


Heh, nobody is even using AA on the PC version of Crysis. The performance drain is just too great and it disables the edge AA (which has a very minimal performance impact). 720p without AA will look just fine.

I think so too, but they would have to do a ton of tweaking to hit that level. The main problem with the settings spec is the GPU's in the consoles, which aren't exactly bleeding edge these days. More than anything Crysis boils down to extreme GPU stress + high RAM requirements.

If Crytek builds smaller worlds for the consoles, that'll help a lot and they probably wouldn't have to sacrifice much texture detail that way. But if they try to keep it the same scope as the PC version, well I wouldn't hold your breath in anticipation. Remember, Cevat already said that they're having to stream data on the PC version, so you can imagine how borderline impossible it will be to get the same thing going on the consoles limited RAM. Smaller levels is where I'm putting my money on optimization.

And Crytek being a PC dev means they're probably not going to optimize as well as if they were console guys. But I won't judge until I see it. They may do great things yet.

Originally Posted by CowboyAstronaut

I suspect Shane and Ryan Patton will tell us the PS3 version of the engine looked and ran noticeably better :lol

Surely not!

Originally Posted by CowboyAstronaut

Pay attention to the "select audiences" line people. Mark my words you'll have some websites playing devil's advocate talking about footage we can't see and telling everyone how much better one platform was running the engine compared to the other.

I suspect Shane and Ryan Patton will tell us the PS3 version of the engine looked and ran noticeably better :lol

Remember I called that. Personally I wont care other than having a desire to see it run well and look great on either one of the consoles. Doesn't matter I have both.

Then again... what's the point if a good game wont be using the engine :)

My money is on sharper textures on 360 (unified memory bank FTW!) and superior physics on PS3 (SPEs FTW!).

Originally Posted by SolidSnakex

Hopefully it runs well on both systems and is relatively easy to develop for so some companies can dump the mess that is UE3.

UE3 isn't a mess, though. It's a solid engine and has been used to create some incredible looking games. The developers that struggle with UE3 would have been even worse off if they were forced to develop their own technology from scratch.

CryEngine 2 could be an interesting solution, however. The tools sound as if they are pretty capable and the engine in insanely powerful.

I think the new id tech also has potential due to its focus on performance (the 60 fps demo was very nice). That's way down the road, though.

Remember, Cevat already said that they're having to stream data on the PC version, so you can imagine how borderline impossible it will be to get the same thing going on the consoles limited RAM. Smaller levels is where I'm putting my money on optimization.

One thing to note...

I have 4gb of ram in my machine (and using a 64-bit OS with Crysis 64) and the game really doesn't use much more than 1gb of system ram with everything cranked up. If you include the 512mb of video ram, you are looking at 1.5gb of ram, but that's a PC game right there and memory usage tends to be somewhat less optimized (as they have so much available).

Well the news doesn't say they'll show Crysis running on console. There were other CryEngine2 demos (one with a train for example)

The reason why I'm going with Medium Spec is because that's where the 7900 lvl cards crap out with Crysis @ 720p with good framerates. And that's pretty close to what's in the PS3 and 360 (judging by FPS performance in cross platform games and B3D). But even the 7900s (and 8600s) can get higher with some tweaking.

I'm cautiously optimistic at best.

Originally Posted by SolidSnakex

Hopefully it runs well on both systems and is relatively easy to develop for so some companies can dump the mess that is UE3.

One can only hope.

Originally Posted by Xdrive05

The reason why I'm going with Medium Spec is because that's where the 7900 lvl cards crap out with Crysis @ 720p with good framerates. And that's pretty close to what's in the PS3 and 360 (judging by FPS performance in cross platform games and B3D). But even the 7900s (and 8600s) can get higher with some tweaking.

I'm cautiously optimistic at best.

except the 360s graphic card is better than a 7900 with some things and the ps3 has the cell so y'know they could look pretty good

interesting.

If it's running well and there's no problem with the engine or devs tools, it might give UE3 a run for it's money.

Borys am Cry....engine?

Originally Posted by dark10x

UE3 isn't a mess, though. It's a solid engine and has been used to create some incredible looking games.

It sure seems like a mess, the only company that seems to be able to make something with it without having a bunch of technical issues upon release is Epic.

After playing it on a high End PC, i can totally see these two consoles pulling pretty acceptable results.

Originally Posted by Pharmacy

except the 360s graphic card is better than a 7900 with some things and the ps3 has the cell so y'know they could look pretty good

As long as Crytek is capable of leveraging Cell to take the load off of RSX. This isn't a CPU-heavy engine, so Cell wins no points here by itself. I'd expect the 360 version to look better because of unified RAM and stronger GPU though.

I'm still wondering how they're going to get around the RAM limitations. I know from using the CryEngine2 Editor that the engine loads the entire world and object data into RAM at the same time- using around a gig of RAM, and then it constantly caches data from the Hdd to swap textures and geometry (and other stuff).

They're going to have to change the approach significantly to make this work.

Originally Posted by 2Qr.

Crysis console version CONFIRMED :D

I think the sales of the PC-version already confirmed that. (Oh, and it has been known the engine would be ported for about 2 years now)

Originally Posted by 2Qr.

Crysis console version CONFIRMED :D

I don't even have the $900 to make that lo-budget PC that could run Crysis that Crytek showed off, so this news of CryENGINE 2 running on PS360 makes me :D

Originally Posted by theBishop

System Warriors Assemble!

Talking Points:
- Framerate superiority
- Texture resolution
- Colors: Washed out or no?
- Physics gimped?

Hell, this is a battleground even the PC gamers can love! :lol

Why would the physics be a problem?

It will look ass-tastic compared to Crysis.

Originally Posted by SolidSnakex

It sure seems like a mess, the only company that seems to be able to make something with it without having a bunch of technical issues upon release is Epic.

Well, look at the results...

Bioshock - One of the best looking games last year that also ran at a rock solid framerate

Stranglehold - Less impressive, certainly but decent enough looking and also running smoothly

Mass Effect - Performance issues, but insanely beautiful. When you remember that Bioware created KOTOR, however, those issues make sense (KOTOR was significantly less optimized with lower framerates, far more loading, and all sorts of other issues). Any problems were to be expected as that's simply how Bioware games are. Even MDK2 back on the DC and PS2 had serious framerate issues.

Lost Odyssey - Another beautiful game with only minor technical flaws. Considering that this company was Japanese and the translation of the engine into that language isn't up to par, I'd say this effort was fantastic.

RoboBlitz - A simple XBLA game that looked great and ran smoothly (developed by a small group)

Medal of Honor Airborne - Looks decent enough, but the important thing is that it runs very well and doesn't seem to suffer as a result of the engine

Poor quality titles:

Hour of Victory - A totally crap game, but it doesn't look TOO bad. The quality of this title is not likely tied to the engine.

Blacksite - Another poor game that had problems extending far beyond the engine used.

Fatal Inertia - An inexperienced team that created a sub-par racer. They would have struggled greatly regardless.

As you can see, most of those games turned out just fine in the end (with those three at the bottom failing for other reasons). Of the quality titles, only Mass Effect really has any performance issues and they would have had those regardless of the technology base.

Originally Posted by dark10x

Well, look at the results...

Bioshock - One of the best looking games last year that also ran at a rock solid framerate

Stranglehold - Less impressive, certainly but decent enough looking and also running smoothly

Mass Effect - Performance issues, but insanely beautiful. When you remember that Bioware created KOTOR, however, those issues make sense (KOTOR was significantly less optimized with lower framerates, far more loading, and all sorts of other issues). Any problems were to be expected as that's simply how Bioware games are. Even MDK2 back on the DC and PS2 had serious framerate issues.

Lost Odyssey - Another beautiful game with only minor technical flaws. Considering that this company was Japanese and the translation of the engine into that language isn't up to par, I'd say this effort was fantastic.

RoboBlitz - A simple XBLA game that looked great and ran smoothly (developed by a small group)

Medal of Honor Airborne - Looks decent enough, but the important thing is that it runs very well and doesn't seem to suffer as a result of the engine

Poor quality titles:

Hour of Victory - A totally crap game, but it doesn't look TOO bad. The quality of this title is not likely tied to the engine.

Blacksite - Another poor game that had problems extending far beyond the engine used.

Fatal Inertia - An inexperienced team that created a sub-par racer. They would have struggled greatly regardless.

Didn't Undertow use UE3? I saw an "Unreal Powered" logo at the start-up of the game...

Originally Posted by twinturbo2

Didn't Undertow use UE3? I saw an "Unreal Powered" logo at the start-up of the game...

Ah yes, that's right. Another game that was created by a small team that looks and runs smoothly.

I wonder if they're gonna get anyone to actually buy and use their engine this time around (on consoles). It's damn impressive, no doubt, but I can't see it being adopted like UE3.

I dunno. I have a feeling it's going to end being impressive on consoles, despite my previous pessimism. I don't think they'd take the time to go "HEY LOOK OVER HERE! CryEngine2 is ***capable!!!*** of running on consoles!! NO RLY! ITIS!"

If they're taking the time to show it off, it's probably going to be impressive. They probably had an "OH SHIT" moment when the PC sales data came in and decided they need to get this thing up and running well on consoles all of a sudden.

I think plenty of people are in for a surprise.

Originally Posted by theBishop

My money is on sharper textures on 360 (unified memory bank FTW!) and superior physics on PS3 (SPEs FTW!).

Who knows the PS3 has the standard hard drive and all the blu ray disc space so who knows what the situation could be in regards to the textures.

Ultimately I look forward to seeing the engine on these consoles if only just to see if they can actually pull it off.