IGN interviews Harald Seeley, Crytek’s Engine Business Manager about Cryengine 2. In this interview, they discuss Crytek’s goals for the engine, the console port of Crysis, as well as the CryEngine 2 demo video. Here are a few exerpts from the interview.
IGN: Tell us a bit about the Sony Bravia spoof trailer that you made for GDC? Tell us about the video, how long it took to make, and what kind of hardware it was running on.
Harald Seeley: We prefer to think of it more of a tribute than a spoof, the original ad was certainly very well done and very memorable. For the last couple of years, one of the most lasting legacies of our attendance at the Game Developer’s Convention and other such shows has been the various CryENGINE 2 tech demo videos which we have released. So we knew we would have to work hard to top our previous efforts and create something that would stand on its own, but without requiring the use of any engine features that we had not revealed previously.
So this time we decided to feature our real time physics system, and of course our real time photorealistic renderer, set in an urban setting rather than a tropical or jungle environment. We wanted something as technically impressive as the many user-generated "falling barrels" videos that have been circulating online, but of course visually much more pleasing. And finally, the GDC is held in San Francisco, so what better or more universally familiar urban environment could we choose? It didn’t take long before the natural convergence of these ideas lead to our parody of this famous advertisement. We wanted to demonstrate not only that it could be done in our engine, but that it could be done in real-time, and of course we had to include a tribute to the Utah teapot, and also include a cameo performance of our chicken mascot.
IGN: In what ways has the CryENGINE evolved since Crysis? What improvements have been made? Have you focused on improving visual fidelity, performance, or both?
Harald Seeley: There have been so many improvements it’s really hard to know where to start. Adding native support for DirectX 10 and Vista, re-working our multi-threading approach to support the latest multi-core processors, implementing our greatly expanded integrated physics system, adding a completely new animation system which seamlessly combines procedural and pre-recorded animations, and replacing much of the need for creating game-side C++ code and LUA scripts with the output of our visual flow graph editor, are just a few of the highlights. But of course, what everyone immediately notices is our new near-photorealistic renderer, which has completely eliminated the need for pre-baked light or shadow maps, and provides fully dynamic HDR lighting, soft shadows, sub-surface scattering and ambient occlusion, among other features, all in real time.
IGN: Would you like to share any thoughts as to the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360? What about the Wii? Will we see CryENGINE 1 games on it, perhaps?
Harald Seeley: Well there is no doubt that porting our engine to the PlayStation 3 is the more challenging of our two ongoing conversion projects, but that works to our advantage in the end. We feel certain we have the ability to get the most that is possible out of that platform, and therefore PS3 games which run on our engine in the future will definitely stand significantly apart from other games that don’t. We haven’t seen a great deal of demand for third party engines for the Wii, the limited complexity of games which can be developed for that console also limits the need for the kind of sophisticated tools and middleware which we are known for. So I doubt we will be providing any engine technology for that console in the near term.
IGN: What are the advantages of the CryENGINE for developers?
Harald Seeley: There are many advantages for a developer choosing to use the CryENGINE 2, chief among them that it was the most highly awarded game engine last year for both technical and artistic quality, and that it has been through the quality assurance process of a commercially shipping title, which was of course Crysis. But the biggest advantage lies in our associated tools, particularly the "what you see is what you play" Sandbox 2 editor, which together with the engine provides a very powerful platform for rapid game development. With this combination, there is no down time waiting for assets or builds to compile, or game executables to load. A developer can have an idea, quickly realize it in the editor, then immediately drop into the game to test it. Ideas can be tried out, then refined or discarded and replaced with new ones, almost as fast they occur to the designers. Read on..............
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