Cryengine VS The World: Is it a good platform for indies?

    There was a lot of buzz recently about the upcoming engine war. Epic, Unity, even Valve seem to have something to say about it.


    One company remains pretty quiet about it - Crytek. It does have CryEngine, and it's constantly being updated, but it doesn't feel like the company really want to push it and sell it to the growing indie community.


    The developers themselves seem to be pretty vocal about the advantages of CryEngine. Some guys, behind a very pretty RPG (it's a Russian company, but the game looks cool (see the images attached) even published a whole article about the engine's advantages and disadvantages. They strongly believe like it's a great tool for indie developers: it's got tools, it's nice to programm to, it's nice for animators and it allows to creat great open spaces with lush vegetation (can't argue about that really).


    This article gathered mixed response in one of the indie community. Some people really stood in support of this tech, but there were those who were really sceptical about the Cryengine's future. People were mentioning the lack of consumer support, poor online help section, no tutorials, closed code, and incredible difficulty for programmers.


    While I think there's no simple way out of it, I was wondering what do you guys think? Is CryEngine really a tech for the indies? Does it stand a chance before UE4 or Unity?


    The article: Is CryEngine Good For Indies?

    Big discussion thread at Facebook


    PS,


    Sorry if I chose the wrong section. I'm a newbie here, sorry for mistakes as well.

    Nope, I wouldn't recommend making an indie game in cryengine. Wouldn't even recommend making a regular game unless it is first person.


    The tools and pipelines are just terribly out of date. Everything is a struggle.

    Quote from Vilham

    Nope, I wouldn't recommend making an indie game in cryengine. Wouldn't even recommend making a regular game unless it is first person.


    The tools and pipelines are just terribly out of date. Everything is a struggle.

    Why do developers choose it then? What is it good for now? Especially with UE4 making all those strides like Big World Demo and VR?

    It's great for level designers and making art, but unfortunately that's where it's pros end. It's a beast of a codebase that requires a lot of work to make simple features, it's bloated out of control. To be fair though, it's still a good choice for a first person shooter game if you have a decent sized team. That being said, I've seen the advantages to UE4 and would use that now, blueprints is just too powerful to ignore.


    Honestly, there are tons of engines that look as good now, so I would never evaluate an engine for that aspect anymore, but rather how efficient it is to get features prototyped and running asap, the final implementation of a feature will take considerable effort no matter the engine.


    This is just my opinion

    I would say it depends on the project. Every engine has it's advantages and disadvantages and that includes cryengine. For example, if I were to make a photorealistic outdoor fps, I'd probably go for cryengine. However, for a indoor 3rd person stealth game, I would probably use UE4.


    Visuals:

    I think for indoor, UE4 wins here. As you can bake Lighting here, CE can't keep up with this, as it has only IBL and SSDO for indirect Lighting (plus a large-scale AO approximation iirc). However, that doesn't mean that CE can't still look very good indoors.


    For outdoors, UE4's kite demo proved that it can look and perform quite well. They've showed some neat tech like DFGI/DFAO & RTDS along with a special GI approximation for terrain.

    However I would argue that CE ,with it's proven track of outdoor titles and tech, is still ahead of unreal in terms of quality and perfomance.


    Talking about shaders, UE4 offers a very flexible Shader Node editor. CE has pre-built shaders where you just plug your maps in and it (usually) looks good. Trading flexibility vs perfomance here, I would argue.


    Particles are better in UE4, CE has yet to get GPUShaders and other advanced things.


    Workflow

    UE4 has a better Terrain system than CE.


    The static/animated geometry export process of UE4 is more streamlined (fbx) than Crytek's with its own custom exporting tools. Crytek is working on fbx support, but UE4 has this in place already and wins here for ease of use.

    However, UE4 has an integrated Asset browser, while CE uses Windows explorer, which I find more convenient.


    UE4 has Blueprint which allows for rapid *prototyping*. CE has a similar system called Flowgraph, which is more limited than Blueprint though.


    UE4 has a more up-to-date and organized UI than CE.


    Other

    Epic invested a lot into the indie market. There's answer hub, youtube tutorials, live streams, many, many devs on the forums, a marketplace and very frequent updates with lots of content. CE hasn't seen such a big investment into that direction yet. Although there are things coming.


    UE4 has no monthly suscription costs but takes 5% royalties. CE takes 10 euros a month but doesn't take any royalties. So If you're seriously making a game, UE4 is going to be more expensive for you. However, UE4 also offers complete source code. Whether that's needed, depends on your project.


    CE seems to be more optimised in terms of perfomance in many cases. Sandbox takes less ressources than UnrealEd for me, although that is no indication of the perfomance in the final game. That depends on the specific use-case and scene, so I would encourage anyone to do tests beforehand in both engines.


    Conclusion

    So yeah, I've tried to list some of the major aspects, but there's obviously tons more to it, as engines are very complex systems. Feel free to correct me , if I got anything wrong. Personally, I think that both engines are awesome. And I would be happy to choose either one, which fits my project needs best. Also taking into account the different business/license terms of course.

    Ultimately, it depends on your project's need and it probably makes sense to evaluate both. However, there are at least 2 indie games that are looking very nice on Cryengine's indie business model:

    Umbra:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SQUhLaTugM


    Miscreated:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKuwsqhvBOQ


    Also sorry for all the errors, really tired atm :)

    It might not be the best looking engine in all circumstances, but the visual quality/performance ratio is most likely better than that of UE4 or Unity or whatever else (the Screen Space Reflections, and Motion Blur solutions are better than those offered by UE and Unity, the Kite demo for Ue showed that they are catching up though). Granted, only when you know what you are doing.

    Of course I haven't worked with it, but my impression is that until now CryEngine was the only easy accessible engine with the best looks at the best performances (seems very scalable to me).

    I haven't seen the implementation of terrain in UE4, just watched bsp making videos, but guess until now CryEngine had the best tools for making large environments.

    People had started to adopt it since UE3 was aging, now they are out with a superior package.

    I'm sure CryTek is working to bring the tools up to standards. Keep in mind they also catered specifically for non-gaming solutions as well.

    Quote from Vilham


    I would question that.


    Which games on commercially available engines look better than Crysis 3/Ryse?


    You mean look better or are more technically advanced. Looks are pretty subjective. I think the opening level to Bioshock Infinite opening level looks better than most of the Ryse content. And it's like an old game. Infinite that is. But technically it is no doubt inferior to Crysis 3, for example.

    Quote from alexsm


    I would question that.


    Which games on commercially available engines look better than Crysis 3/Ryse?


    You mean look better or are more technically advanced. Looks are pretty subjective. I think the opening level to Bioshock Infinite opening level looks better than most of the Ryse content. And it's like an old game. Infinite that is. But technically it is no doubt inferior to Crysis 3, for example.


    Quite obviously talking tech, not aesthetic which is nothing to do with the engine you pick.

    There are more indie developers on UE4 than on CE, no doubt. Although there are also some really nice indie projects on CE.

    In the AAA space, CE can compete.


    As I've said before, each engine has its advantages and disadvantages.


    Edit: Any Cry-corians care to comment ?

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