This is pretty much my view. The only reason I’m interested in Lumberyard is the way it supports an online infrastructure, dynamic servers on demand etc. I haven’t looked at stuff like that for UE though, so I don’t have any material for comparison.
CryEngine doesn’t has what UE has: The Power of Native C++ Code.
E.g. I’ve making a game where i can shoot TONS of bullets simultaneously! (8k takes 3 ms on a single thread with 16 ms update time on AMD Phenom II X6 1090T) On Unity, despite C# is well known as pretty slow, 1k bullets worked for 10 ms. Lua just a little bit faster.
And I hate CryEngine optimization or even lack of it. Crysis 3 is unplayable on most PCs.
Or even more: I taken my game (FPS), selected build target Android, builded, it works!
CryEngine is a C++ game engine… “most PCs” run on Intel’s integrated graphics, so it’s no surprise those systems won’t run Crysis 3. Top of the line gaming computers struggled to run Crysis when it was first released. Whether you like CryEngine or not, Crysis raised the benchmark for PC gaming and forced hardware manufacturers to develop better GPUs.
The CryEngine is not an easy beast to tame and from the looks of it, it has not been redesigned except for the new name and a Zombie Clause. Things move really fast in the tech world and if they don’t pick up the pace it going to fizzle out soon or interest will die out.
Since UE4 , Epic has not shown any sign of slowing down and is actually moving forward with new engine features every day. At this rate one month’s work in UE4 is probably about one year with Lumberyard. UE4 is too far ahead and is furthering the gap from all other engines.
However, learning other engines is valuable experience.
That depends on how much time you got to play with a new toy. If you going to make a game having a well put manual a strong community and plenty know how’s is key to getting the tech out of the way. You wanna focus on making a game not spend hours trying to figure out how to spawn a cube. I’ll go for the easiest engine without sacrificing quality.
The single biggest roadblock for CryEngine has been it’s dependency on the AutoDesk pipeline. It might have something to do with the similarities between 3DS and the Crytek Designer interface. They look exactly the same if you haven’t noticed. Also the promotion of AutoDesk products by Crytek staff on their forums leads me to believe that they might of licensed 3DS for CE Designer and as part of the license agreement they weren’t able to open their pipeline up to competing companies. This would also explain the lack of full source, expensive licensing (1.2 Million) and the cost of Amazon’s licensing fee. Regardless of this conspiracy, their refusal to adopt an open pipeline was ultimately a near death sentence for them.
I’m a fan (not a fanboy) of both Crytek and Epic’s lineage but I think you are gravely underestimating the capability and quality achievable in CE in relationship to UE4. In terms of features, Unity is to UE4 what UE4 is to CE. Unity (more so) and UE4 rely heavily on plugins and marketplace content where CE it comes packaged with the engine. I would argue the opposite regarding your deadline to pick up the pace. Now that the engine source is out in the wild it will make it even more difficult for other companies to catch up with LY. Once developers start contributing and asset producers start creating content for it the gap will only widen in LY and CE’s favor.
In the end, we all benefit from competition between engine producers. I will continue to both engines. LY for 3D games and UE for top down and 2D games.
Untrue. I’m sounding like a broken record at this point, but where is Unreal Engine’s real time global illumination solution (once again, excluding Nvidia VXGI)? CryEngine has had this for a long time (in the form of LPV and now SVOGI/SVOTI). From my understanding, Epic basically abandoned the implementation due to performance considerations. Fair enough. However, within the next 6 months, 14nm video cards (after being stuck on the 28nm manufacturing process for over 4 years) are going to hit the market, and it’s going to result in massive performance increases which will make real time global illumination solutions viable. However, it’s not even on Epic’s roadmap (other than being filed as a “R&D” task). The light-map creation process for baked lighting is so tedious (with the choice between a slow workflow with good results, or a fast workflow with average results), that if nothing else, a real time global illumination solution would be welcomed to speed up the content creation pipeline.
Well it’s nice and dandy that the CryTek guys are very good graphics programmers. Maybe the Epic guys are not that much, or maybe they are, but hey sure did prove us with UE4 they are very good Game Engine programmers (including Tools and Pipeline). In terms of complexity, very roughly both of them have the same complexity in their source code. I would argue that UE4 has the visual material editor and that add extra.
In the end which one offers you the best pipeline and user friendly workflow, stability, the features you need and maybe some you need later, modern graphics for Consoles/Desktop or super speed on mobile if you target that ?
Every engine has its place, they all have pros and cons, people can argue forever over which engine is the better engine, but in the end its whatever is the best tool for the job, that includes UE4, LY/Cryengine, and Unity.
+1 to this.
While I’m still learning more about UE4 and Unity, I can smash out a prototype in Construct2 faster than anything else.
Right tool for the job, just like in programming or anything else really.
I am just wondering, people forget CE was deigned with one concept in mind; “Their game will only run on a pc”. thus they could go wild with graphics. It doesn’t make their engine any better, if they only have one environment to worry about.
Go to UE guys, tell them you want an engine, that will only run on high end PCs, and see what they will do for you guys.
I like both engines, would like to see how LY will change, now that Amazon took over. I would say this tou. Amazon will probably need another year or so before they have an stable enough engine that can export your game to all platforms + proper coding and document and an asset store.
Personally, I think Lumberyard’s got a some way to go to catch up with UE, which is way ahead in features and user base. Not like I wouldn’t be open to new things.
I looked at this but game up when it asked me to install everyone of the internet.
Game making is challenging enough and I for one will not spend countless hours looking undocumented or poor excuse for a manual. I’ll take the spaceship to the stars and get there in a fraction of the time. Life is too short.
Yea even if the engine was super good…the fact there’s pretty much no community, no tutorials, no documentation makes it not appealing at all to me.
I saw in an article that it has a login and stuff on the engine launcher, but I didn’t see an offline option. Does it have one? Because not having it is a huge turnoff.
CryEngine is locked under DRM; you can’t use it offline.
In first versions you coudn’t even PACKAGE your project before running after CryTek first and begging for a business contract… If you’re lucky you’d be able to publish your game… . . They are full of non-senses.
and that’s when you’d run into Cry-Adam 
Only with CryEngine LOL