Crytek announces its CryEngine-as-a-Service Program | Hacker News Reader

Crytek announces its CryEngine-as-a-Service Program

cryengine.com

81 pointsace22b29 comments

Sounds good until you notice that they are stopping development of the free CRYENGINE SDK that allowed people to make non-profit games and making them move to the service subscription if they want new features.

nothing wrong with trying to monetize their software.

Half the price per month of UE4 and zero royalty? That can't be right. What's the catch?

No source code

And no word on future WebGL / SteamOS support.

I thought they were showing the Linux version at GDC?

Yes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7379813

Of course, the kicker is how they define "indies". Still, it seems like an irresistible deal, especially considering they have a free version as well. No source code like you get with Unreal Engine 4, but also no 5% royalty.

Anyone have experience using CryEngine?

I do, and, honestly, I'm not a huge fan. The editor is fairly slick but the code base is an absolute rat's nest. If I want the power of a full-blown this-gen engine, I'd turn to Unreal; if I want rapid iteration and relatively painless development while sacrificing some (not all!) power, I'd turn to Unity.

But that's just me! Your mileage may certainly vary depending on what your project needs.

If you want the best graphics, you're still better off with CryEngine, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H8u4NbDRxI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHGCkgaCZM0

I think Frosbite 2 beats Cryengine in terms of realistic graphics, but too bad they're not licensing that to 3rd parties. Frostbite 2's color seems a little off/too light in those demos, though, but UE4's color is way off. Why does everything look like it was put through an orange filter?

If you want the best graphics, you probably can afford the engine already.

I'm sure cryengine is great, but the methodology in those videos looks pretty dodgy... It appears that they're comparing random completely different scenes in each engine, whose only similarity is their general subject ("scene with palm tree!").

There are a lot of variables that go into how the end result looks, only some of which have to do with the capability of the underlying engine, and they don't even seem to be trying to account/adjust for such factors....

> If you want the best graphics

graphics is a very small part of a good game. If a game relied solely on the graphics prowess to draw in the audience, it's a failed game in my books.

Is Unreal Engine really as bad as it seems? It looks like something from 10 years ago compared to the others.

Anyone have experience using CryEngine?

Not personally, but I know people who have. On the whole the artist tools are pretty good, those who actually have to code against it and dig into the source tended to end up hating it.

Crytek is totally making this up on the fly to respond to Unreal. They may have had something like this in the works, but they were totally caught off guard by this. They have no site and no idea what the licensing will be.

Competition is good. Things should only get prettier from here. Can't wait for the 2048 port.

Royalty free? So i wont be charged for Shipping the commercial game? Only the developer fees?

I dont get it. Am i missing something?

I'm guessing the hint is in their wording, CryEngine as a service. They're looking to shift to making money off the engine from services they provide to developers (eg a marketplace for assets, or any number of a dozen other possibilities).

It's a binary blob, you get no source code, no assets, and arguably lacking documentation.

It's only for "indies" without definition of what indie means. It might mean that you have revenue under 10k for example and after that you will have to pay 30%, they haven't told any additional details yet.

After all this engine race to mass adoption, I'd focus on, 1. Developing assets (textures, sprites, sounds). 2. Developing gameplay. 3. Developing game engine plugins. 4. Hire all of the above and profit (I'm at 2). But, if you're insisting in developing a new engine, please first read all the code that's been released, and if you can, send them patches until they hire you.

So if i make my game in one month , release it . Then does that mean that i will only have to pay them ~10 $ for that month right. I won't have to pay them anything else right ?

$10/month, per user. Steeper than it sounds, unless the "user" is the indie dev and not all of the indie dev's app users... or is it each developer who works with the engine at the Indie dev shop? Not entirely clear in the article.

$10 per user per month would be nuts, you'd pass the full sticker price of even AAA titles in half a year, and makes no sense for 'one time cost' products, how long do you pay a monthly fee for? The lead in sentence is "indie developers will be able to use..." so I would interpret this as a "per designer/developer seat per month" license fee.

It's really vague who the 'user' is, you're right. Am I paying them $10 for every copy of a game I ship?

Well then it wouldn't be "royalty free" :) - agreed the sentence is poorly written though. But yeah, it's per dev

It's per dev.

I'm guessing it's something like Xamarin: https://store.xamarin.com/

(Albeit way cheaper)

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