That's real nice to know. However, I'm happily suited to CryEngine as I am, as I'm only sixteen and I reason and have pleasant and productive discussions with people who aren't completely confound to actually resorting to ageism. Is the fact that we have many younger members somehow a bad thing? It almost sounds as if you're trying to demote youngers in the indie scene, which really gives us a bad impression of the entire C4 community. I'm sorry, but if you want to represent a group, you're doing it completely wrong.

Now the reason I did not answer your question - this is my fourth time explaining this - is because you're asking me why I'm criticizing the artwork when I was clearly criticizing the engine itself, so honest to hell, what am I supposed to say? It's like walking up to a random person on the street and asking them where your own pet left the bird they killed. Do you expect an answer? Coming from you, I wouldn't want to be that random person on the street. Not even someone with a PhD in computer science or a masters in mathematics can break the laws of neuro-physics like that.


Wow! Seriously, you really hate kids don't you? As far as I reckon otherwise, C++ is not even required to make a game in CryEngine, it's just comes in very handy here and there. I've fared just fine so far.


...Right after you're asking me to compare the technology. Good lord.



Really? A third shot at age?

I totally don't know as much as you in this area, you needn't be arrogant about it; I was being vague because - now referring to a fifth time, I can't possibly answer your question, and I was merely pointing out obvious observation. I've seen many screenshots of this engine in its supposed 'glory,' and it looks five years old. There's nothing more to it. If you want to now go and tell me every developer using this engine are terrible artists in excuse for its lacking graphics, then do so, but you'll have completely fallen out of the category of people that can reason logically.



Nononononononononono, none of those things are FPS specific. How you could create a game without Artificial Intelligence is beyond me, since everything that happens in the game, from a switch you flick that turns on a light to a full-fledged enemy is AI. Besides, how many games in the action genre or anything where there are opponents, aside from only multiplayer games have no AI? As far as I know, and I know this very well, games like Mario Party don't relate in any way to FPSs, yet even they are packed full of AI.



Very easily. The only times I ever think about the source code are when people who aren't native to the engine complain about us not having access to it. I really can't think of one reason why I would or when I would ever need to touch the source code.

Wow! Triple post!

Holy crap, that must have been a signal glitch. They all seem to be at different times too.

Everyone take a breather, step away from the keyboards and walk slowly towards to rear of the chair!

@Benji - Please don't start a thread off with the tone "Crytek take notes". You're automatically putting people into a defensive stance by making comments like this.

Regarding the topic i have nothing to add or comment on but please don't abuse our policy on allowing "other engine" threads to be made on CryDev. We're happy for people to discuss other engines and technologies here but most of the time these threads end up in biased, never-ending arguments and we don't want to have to pull back on this policy.

Spread the love. It's Friday!

No really, my brother's having his 20th birthday with like 50 people over right now. It truly is party time.

I might add, for those who don't know, that the Cryengine 3 SDK does provide source code access in C++. The CryGame interface is flexible enough for most developers to be able to fully utilize its features without the need to touch the engine source code.

Regarding the rendering technology, what's really apparent in all the screenshots on the C4 engine site is the lack of post-processing effects or advanced shaders. Maybe it's just that the devs are really poor at promoting the graphical capabilities of their engine - the "features" page mentions all kinds of stuff about advanced shaders but no specific rendering features. What's visible in the screenshots is a really basic set of features that have been the mainstream of 3D engines since 2004 or so. Basic normal mapping, shadowmapping (some screenshots even look like they have stencil shadows) and in some pictures what appears to be baked lightmaps.

For comparison, Cryengine 2 (2007) has ambient occlusion, sub-surface scattering, translucency, parallax occlusion mapping (this is mentioned in the C4 features but is not visible in the media), colour grading and other post-processing effects. In addition, Cryengine 3 (2011) has real-time global illumination, deferred shading, a linear lighting model, filmic tone mapping, and since the latest update, real time reflections and tessellation with displacement mapping. These are the sort of thing that are glaringly obviously lacking in the C4 engine media - and that has nothing to do with art asset quality.



Of course none of these graphical features are essential for a game - Minecraft should be proof enough that in the end it's the gameplay that makes a successful game, not graphics.

It isn't a bad demo/editor etc in the trial, i'm sure the engine is quite well suited if you're after an engine for cross-platform commercial development and don't mind an old school map editor. I wonder how much it'd cost crytek to get transgaming or codeweavers to make a wrapper for the sdk to run properly under other OS'.

However, once you WYSIWYP you don't WNAGOBK.

Indeed... but I'm trying to figure out that second acronym... nothing's coming.

WNAGOBK. ????

Hi,

C4 does not yet support custom post processing, but Terathon has noted an interest to implement it by this summer.

C4's material visual shader editor supports an immensely wide variety of shaders ranging from a simple diffuse phong shader to the complex, like sub surface scattering or parallax mapping. You just have to assemble the pieces. Here is a rock wall that utilizes C4's horizon mapping that I made for testing : http://www.terathon.com/forums/download ... &mode=view I think it looks great - and each face on the wall is only 2 triangles. Whomp Whomp. It's like black magic.

So, you see it's just as powerful as any other shader editor. Custom light and atmosphere shaders are coming soon too. Which would allow C4 and CryEngine to be feature compatible graphically, more or less. Geometry shaders are coming to C4 sometime.

I agree it's somewhat normal to suspect that "what you see is what you get". But in this case, in a case of engineering and design, it's not always what meets the eye that is important. I bet that if a few of CryTek's artists ported their artwork into C4, and set up the materials in the same way, that anyone, and specifically anyone on this board would have a difficult time determining which is which. All this to say is that artists create good artwork, not programmers. Terathon has hired more artists recently, and I've seen some good stuff come through them. Maybe this will be a moot point a year from now.

--
I've noticed a few criticisms on C4's editor and lacking of specific features like pathfinding, or time of day.

If you haven't used the editor, your opinion doesn't matter. It's that easy. It doesn't adhere to the standards that are typical in the industry, but for good reason - the industry's standards are low and mostly illogical. While the World Editor in C4 doesn't LOOK pretty, that isn't its job. Its job is to facilitate creating worlds, and for the most part it's very well assembled and logically organised. It's only not intuitive, I argue, because we've all been taught on how to deal with NON-intuitive designs in the past. Now, I'm not saying the World Editor is perfect, or better than CryTeks, but there exists very good reasons as to why it behaves and looks the way it does. I wouldn't mind a little UI-sparkle, but I'd much rather functionality over aesthetics, at least initially.

Pathfinding - while I agree that the IDEA of pathfinding is used heavily in games, the exact method is typically tailor suited for exactly the type of game you're producing. So it's a complicated set of features, not just a feature. The same goes for Artificial Intelligence. In this way, Terathon hasn't officially designed their own algorithm, because it would only work for a fraction of their customers. That's arguably bad business. If you're using CryEngine, I bet you're modding or creating a FPS. But what if you wanted to make an RTS? Or a simulation engine like Sim-City? The pathfinding / navigation system would now likely be working against you!

Time of day - It's cool but not for every type of game, so the same logic applies. There was a shader contest at Terathon's community forums awhile ago, and the winner had made a Time of day system. It's doable already; it just isn't officially supported or included.

C4, like CryEngine is just another tool in the tool box. You don't need every tool to create a chair, but you do need a different set of tools to make an airplane than a car. These tools are neither worse or better than each other independently, but they do offer differing measures of usefulness, dependent on the task. Up is down to our friends in Australia. Remember that.

Good day.

Jesse Meyer

I know it might sound crazy since I'm not that active(haven't had enough time) on the forums and didn't post until now on this thread but this should really end.

Every engine has its own strong and weak points and I'm just saying CryEngine 3 stands for versatility and it helps people without that much money to get a head start.Get a indie license pay the damn 20% if you got people to buy your game then expand.It's just that easy.

C4 while not having post-processing and some of the WYSIWYG features of the CryEngine 3 should be ok for most people with knowledge of game-development and it should be enough for a company/indie company to get a quick preview of what they can do without having strings pulled to another company.

Now that's just fine and I believe both are of use.But the thing is you come over at CE3 you get flamed for saying C4 is better because you are actually talking about a completely different company with a completely different engine.These guys have made amazing stuff with CE1,CE2 and CE3.It's just wonderful.Now, about C4 I'm saying that Eric Lengyel did a great job..heck it's hard to be on your own or have a couple of programmers to help you develop a fully-fledged 3d engine but he made it and I'm saying BRAVO to him.It's got most of the features you want but then again it's you choice.

Some people choose stuff because of impressions:screenshots,videos or friends.Other test multiple software and come up with the one who has impressed them the most.

So just please stop throwing stuff at each other.
Each engine is in their own league and every person has the opportunity to pick one.
Now you can call me damned but I love CE3 because it's simplicity and versatility (as I said earlier),also real-time possibilities.But I cannot afford for myself C4 Engine as I am myself almost 17 so all I'm trying to say is I have this in my grasp,I like it and it'll work,it's for me.

Pick something...it's really not worth wasting your time on juvenile flame wars.

I hope this concludes everything and just for the record I really like to be an pacifist as many times as I can and so should you!

Now just enjoy a great weekend!
Greetings!

First off - I would like to sincerely apologize to both the C4 Community and the Crytek Community. I should have never made this thread. I am really regretting it right now.

My only intention was to spread the word about the C4 Engine. NOT to get on peoples nerves and cause a heated discussion/Debate/whatever you want to call it. C4 and Cryengine do what they do best make games but in their own ways but at the end of the day they make games.

C4 engine just does it a bit differently.
Same with the Cry engine.
Once again i am terribly sorry for starting this topic and opening up a can of worms.

Benji385

I'm posting to clear up some speculation and assumptions made about the C4 engine features. I'm not here to argue, but just to list some facts. The following have been confirmed as correct with the engine's creator.

1. All lighting and shadows in C4 are 100% dynamic. There is no internal limit to the number of lights in a scene. How many the engine can actually handle depends on the area of influence of each light, whether they cast shadows, and how complex the materials are on the illuminated surroundings.
2. C4 uses both cascaded shadow maps (with smooth cascade transitions) and stencil shadows. They can be mixed in the same scene however you want. All shadows are 100% dynamic, and there are no baked light maps.
3. Built-in standard per-pixel shading capabilities include tangent-space normal mapping, parallax mapping, microfacet shading, environment mapping, gloss, specular, emission, etc. These are part of the "basic" mode of material creation where you just specify colors and texture maps in some pre-defined slots. By using the shader editor instead of basic mode, you are able to use any shader effect you want. Things like normal mapping and parallax mapping end up being a single node in your shader graph.
4. The engine has a unique feature called horizon mapping that casts dynamic shadows from the bumps in the normal map. It's very inexpensive and really nice looking, but uses more memory.
5. The terrain in C4 is 100% voxel-based. The engine does not render directly from voxel data, but precomputes a polygon mesh using an algorithm called marching cubes. This conversion is done in real-time in the editor when you use the sculpting tools on the terrain.
6. The sound system in C4 supports streaming, reverberation, reflections, obstructions, atmospheric attenuation, doppler shift, and room-to-room path tracing (so sounds go around corners instead of straight through walls).
7. Skinning is done using a SIMD algorithm that runs on all available CPU cores. For processors with 4 cores or more, this has higher performance than GPU skinning, especially in multi-pass lighting situations or on lower-end GPUs.

I'm not very familiar with CryEngine, but here's a list of features in C4 that I believe are not available in CryEngine (since some people were asking for them). Correct me if I'm wrong.

1. The transvoxel algorithm. This is used to create seamless transitions between different levels of detail on the voxel terrain, a problem that any engine programmer could tell you is very difficult to solve. It was invented by the creator of C4 (just google it). If you see it in another engine, then know that it came from him.
2. Blobby particle systems like the goo/paint in Portal 2. These are also based on voxels.
3. Horizon mapping, as mentioned above. CryEngine may have something that achieves a similar effect, but "parallax occlusion" mapping shaders tend so be much more expensive because they contain complex looping structures. The horizon mapping technique trades memory for performance and runs extremely quickly without any shader requirements beyond DX9.
4. Giant water volumes with full wave simulation. When an object creates a disturbance in the water, the engine actually propagates waves over the entire water surface (which could be an ocean around an island, for example), as opposed to generating all the waves randomly but in a way that looks natural. In C4, if a boat creates a wake a mile offshore, then those waves eventually wash up on the beach.
5. In-game fully interactive GUI panels, with editor. I'm not sure if CryEngine has something like this, but they are like the panels in Doom 3.

@Benji385: If you don't open a can of worms, how will you ever catch a nice fish for dinner? Don't take it too much to heart - the thread was valid, and it probably didn't go as out of control as it would have done on other forums out there.

Also:

WNA-GO-BK - WaNna GO BacK. - didn't wanna make it too easy

Very true!

And now I present to you a magicarp which i caught with the can of worms