Why you should not stop at CryEngine when choosing a tool for game development — especially for App2Top.ru Sergey Korolev, General Director of Magisterion Studio, told us.
Sergey KorolevDisadvantages of CryEngine
Me and my team on CryEngine 5 created a multiplayer shooter. And we remember that time as a terrible dream. Now, of course, all our projects are based on other solutions.
Here is a far from complete list of problems that you will face when using CryEngine:
1) An ocean of bugs on the client, on the server, in the editor — everywhere in general. Get ready to refine the engine at least 50% of the development time, and not just make a game on it.
2) Lack of adequate support (even paid). With many difficulties you will have to fight alone. At the same time, there are a great many of them. Even in the case of reports, they can be corrected for years.
3) Outdated documentation or lack of it for many modules.
4) A small and not the most active community.
5) A very modest asset store
6) A complex build process (there is no Build button, building a new version is a time—consuming process, it is often impossible to build a release build from current sources).
7) Antediluvian approaches to working with assets, for example, UI is still compiled on Flash version 2.0 (ScaleForm).
8) The engine out of the box does not support more than 32 players over the network (hard limits prescribed in the code, in the types of variables, and so on).
9) Well, and most importantly — difficulties in finding personnel. Even if someone has worked with the engine before and has experience, it will be difficult to convince them to return to work with this “tractor” again.
For example, for some time we collaborated with a developer who worked on Warface at Crytek in the past. One day he came and said that he did not want and could not continue working with this engine anymore, since over the years the CryEngine code had turned into a multi-layered mess and almost everything had to be rewritten in it.
Imaginary advantages when working with CryEngine
But then why do some companies still use it?
He has a great realtime render — that’s one time.
Included is GameSDK — that’s two.
GameSDK is a full—fledged shooter that can be modified to suit your needs. An analogue of the good old Source Engine, on the basis of which many excellent games were born.
GameSDK
But there is a problem.
Last year, Crytek officially announced the rejection of further development of GameSDK. And now the engine is in an intermediate stage of development, which is not a fact that it will survive. Many old tools are removed, the code is totally rewritten. Now a new Shooter Game is ready, but it is still at a very early stage of development.
The third reason why, until recently, it was possible to appreciate the engine was that it was free. But with the version of the engine number 5.5, Crytek will have to give 5% of sales.
That’s what we all bought into at the time. When it became clear that the engine did not meet our requirements, development had been going on for several months — it was too late to turn back (although it would have been worth it).
By the way, the Miscreated development team from Entrada Interactive stepped on the same rake. In their Steam community at the end of 2016, they wrote an appeal to users, according to which the engine network and a number of other modules require complete replacement and do not meet modern requirements. They make their new project on a different solution.
Conclusion
In the current state against the background of competitors (Unity, UE4), the engine is uncompetitive.
This does not prevent many enthusiasts from praying for a “stable and good version” of CryEngine 3. But there is a problem with this. The rights to the troika have been sold to Amazon and the official license can no longer be bought.
As for Lumberyard, the GameSDK is very broken in it (the sound does not work, the network is buggy as much as possible, and so on). Amazon specialists added, of course, an example instead, but it is not comparable in functionality with the original.
The most powerful side of Lumberyard today is PR (some stands at GDC are worth a lot). The main approach is to show beautiful pictures, renderers, as well as a level editor. When it comes to functionality, everything is sad there.
Lumberyard
Don’t be confused by the transition of Star Citizen to Lumberyard.
I’m sure this is also marketing, they have been sawing their engine branch for a long time and are unlikely to ever launch at all.
In general, using both CryEngine 5 and Lumberyard today is a big risk. If you have nothing to justify it with, then it’s better to look at the competitors. Or wait at least another year before at least one of the branches is brought to mind. This, however, is hard to believe. In order to understand how slowly they are developing, just look at their changelog.