[QUOTE]The team has been hard at work for years now to bring the TimeSplitters games back to life in glorious high-definition after they got blessing from the owner of the IP, Crytek. There is a catch, however, as the game has to be made using CryEngine. Releasing a statement on Facebook, Environment Artist Ibanez explains the difficulties of using the engine, claiming “What takes a few minutes in another engine took up to four days in CryEngine.”[/QUOTE]
[URL="https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/damien-cox/cryengine-is-holding-back-timesplitters-rewind/"]https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/damien-cox/cryengine-is-holding-back-timesplitters-rewind/[/URL]
[URL="http://uk.ign.com/articles/2017/07/11/timesplitters-fan-project-stalls-due-to-cryengine-problems"]http://uk.ign.com/articles/2017/07/11/timesplitters-fan-project-stalls-due-to-cryengine-problems[/URL]
[QUOTE=Thomo;52458593]Isn't CryEngine notoriously hard and often poorly documented? That's the last thing I remember reading about the engine, I could be wrong though.[/QUOTE]
Yep. The documentation is really incomplete. It's almost impossible to figure out how to use the engine properly.
please don't let this be the death of rewind, It's one of those projects i've been super excited for since the very start and it would be awful if the project would die because of cryengine and and crytek's reliance on it
[QUOTE=Thomo;52458593]Isn't CryEngine notoriously hard and often poorly documented? That's the last thing I remember reading about the engine, I could be wrong though.[/QUOTE]
The latest gig is Amazon Lumberyard trying harder than ever to get down with the cool kids around the block.
[QUOTE=IntenseBarney;52458561][URL="https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/damien-cox/cryengine-is-holding-back-timesplitters-rewind/"]https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/damien-cox/cryengine-is-holding-back-timesplitters-rewind/[/URL]
As a programmer on Rewind, I can confirm that this article pretty much hits the nail on the head. It isn't looking great but we are trying to get better communication going with Crytek.[/QUOTE]
Do you care to delve into any particular issues you or any other people you work with are having with Cryengine?
From a technical standpoint, I've always been curious about Cryengine, and I toyed around with it some back in the Cryengine 2 and 3 days (just with the free SDKs/editors though). I know, or at least heard, that documentation in general is very lacking compared to other 3rd party engines, so I'm kind of curious as to what some issues are and how someone would get around them outside of constantly being in contact with Crytek.
I[QUOTE=Rahu X;52458612]Do you care to delve into any particular issues you or any other people you work with are having with Cryengine?
From a technical standpoint, I've always been curious about Cryengine, and I toyed around with it some back in the Cryengine 2 and 3 days (just with the free SDKs/editors though). I know, or at least heard, that documentation in general is very lacking compared to other 3rd party engines, so I'm kind of curious as to what some issues are and how someone would get around them outside of constantly being in contact with Crytek.[/QUOTE]
The main issue is seems to be lack of proper, well written documentation and the team's inexperience with the engine. All of the team seems more comfortable working in something like UE4.
[QUOTE=AtomiCal;52458602]The latest gig is Amazon Lumberyard trying harder than ever to get down with the cool kids around the block.[/QUOTE]
I seriously don't get why they don't focus on fixing the docs.
The engine seems to be easily superior to Unity from a purely technical point of view already from everything I've seen, but it's all for naught because you can't quickly use the thing well if you try to.
It's especially baffling when you consider that any at least decent-ish programmer [I]will[/I] know the difference good documentation makes.
Unity's documentation isn't very good either, but at least that one covers the basic use cases of their engine fairly well. It shouldn't be that hard to make something workable if you focus on it at least to [I]some[/I] extent.
[QUOTE=IntenseBarney;52458618]I
The main issue is the lack of proper, well written documentation and the team's inexperience with the engine. All of our team is much more comfortable working in something like UE4. We've seen examples where Crytek's own support are extremely unhelpful and it seems like the only way to work with the engine is having constant communication with Crytek and having them directly help us. Unfortunately they've been really closed up when we ask them for help
Our difficulties with the engine hitting the news and now being public seems to have scared them slightly though and we're currently going to be talking to them about the issues we have.[/QUOTE]
At the very least, I hope this results in your burdens being lightened. Part of me also hopes this scare results in Cryengine becoming a better and more accessible engine as well. It's always seemed like a super impressive and even ambitious engine that's been held back by so many negative factors.
Either way, whether you choose to stick it out with Cryengine, or spin off your game into a new IP via UE4, you guys definitely have my full support. The transparency you've demonstrated regarding this whole situation is admirable, and gives me faith that, no matter what happens, you're more than eager to just make a great and enjoyable game. I wish you guys the best of luck.
-snip-
I'm really glad you guys are speaking out about this - and not just going dark. I wish we had more like you
I remember when people on twitter made fun of the code quality of their physics engine:
[URL="https://github.com/CRYTEK/CRYENGINE/blob/release/Code/CryEngine/CryPhysics/rigidbody.cpp#L689"]https://github.com/CRYTEK/CRYENGINE/blob/release/Code/CryEngine/CryPhysics/rigidbody.cpp#L689[/URL]
(Keep in mind that this is just one particular system of the engine and probably/hopefully doesn't represent the rest of the code)
Prey 2017 is on cryeninge, and it's very impressive from a coding standpoint, with the quest progression and many branching paths which affect the environment
how did arkane do it if documentation is bad?
While I'll love to see Rewind, I think CryEngine is going to kill it due to the difficulty to use it compare to other engines. The best they can do, in my opinion, is to make it a non-Time splitter game but still keep everything that made those games fun, if they continue to have problems with CryEngine.
[QUOTE=Egevened;52458983]Prey 2017 is on cryeninge, and it's very impressive from a coding standpoint, with the quest progression and many branching paths which affect the environment
how did arkane do it if documentation is bad?[/QUOTE]
Arkane is a game studio. The Rewind team is a small group of volunteering fans.
[QUOTE=KnightRider25;52458993]While I'll love to see Rewind, I think CryEngine is going to kill it due to the difficulty to use it compare to other engines. The best they can do, in my opinion, is to make it a non-Time splitter game but still keep everything that made those games fun, if they continue to have problems with CryEngine.[/QUOTE]
That's the plan if nothing comes along to help.
[QUOTE=Thomo;52458593]Isn't CryEngine notoriously hard and often poorly documented? That's the last thing I remember reading about the engine, I could be wrong though.[/QUOTE]
Star Citizen had a lot of trouble and ended rewriting large parts and then switched to the Amazon fork over frustration after they poached a bunch of the employees CryTek layed off.
-snip-
I can't read.
[QUOTE=chunkymonkey;52459186]If CryEngine is such a pain in the ass why not switch?[/QUOTE]
You didn't read the op. The quote there is just 3 sentences.
[QUOTE=Sini;52459194]You didn't read the op[/QUOTE]
I missed that part.
[QUOTE=chunkymonkey;52459186]If CryEngine is such a pain in the ass why not switch?[/QUOTE]
As of right now Crytek will not grant them IP access if they don't use cryengine.
Why does Crytek not help people develop on Cryengine? Incompetence? They don't care?
With how popular Unreal Engine is you'd think they'd want to try to compete with that.
[QUOTE=Egevened;52458983]Prey 2017 is on cryeninge, and it's very impressive from a coding standpoint, with the quest progression and many branching paths which affect the environment
how did arkane do it if documentation is bad?[/QUOTE]
Arkane have Bethesdabucks backing them, they could likely contract some CryEngine experts from Crytek if needed.
But they're also wizards anyway so they probably just locked an intern in a cupboard with the engine, and by the time he left, with a binder of documentation, he'd earned his place at Arkane.
[QUOTE=PaChIrA;52459216]Why does Crytek not help people develop on Cryengine? Incompetence? They don't care?
With how popular Unreal Engine is you'd think they'd want to try to compete with that.[/QUOTE]
Its a pretty mismanaged company, they've been on the verge of dissolving a few times at one point they started selling everything (except Time Splitters go figure). It doesn't surprise me to hear that people can't get into contact with them.
It's a shame. I think Cryengine has a lot of potential. The engine is really being held back by things like the poor documentation and slow to respond support (and even when they do respond their not always helpful). I hope that things like this will give Crytek enough of a scare that they actually start making higher quality more complete documentation. Hopefully that 5.4 update will help improve things on the development side (otherwise OP and the rest of the dev team for Timesplitters Rewind will likely have to switch engines in order to be more productive). I heard the biggest reason(s) for the delay in the 5.4 update was the Vulkan API implementation and the modernizing of the entity system.
[QUOTE=Saxon;52459228]Its a pretty mismanaged company, they've been on the verge of dissolving a few times at one point they started selling everything (except Time Splitters go figure). It doesn't surprise me to hear that people can't get into contact with them.[/QUOTE]
They could probably make a lot of money from selling the TS IP. I'd love it if NightDive studios got hold of it.
At this point what does cryengine have that unreal 4 doesn't. Cryengine was originally impressive for having open environments with beautiful graphics, but those bulletpoints are more easily achieved on unreal nowadays. Is the renderer better or something like that, because I really can't think of anything.
I hope nothing bad happens to Rewind. Spent a lot of time playing Timesplitters with my brother and friends back in the day. Would be great to see a modern Timesplitters come to life.
[QUOTE=PaChIrA;52459216]Why does Crytek not help people develop on Cryengine? Incompetence? They don't care?
With how popular Unreal Engine is you'd think they'd want to try to compete with that.[/QUOTE]
CryTek representatives will promise you the moon, but in practice they're only interested if you can cough up $500,000, otherwise they'll tell you to fuck off.
I don't know why people waste time with CryEngine, you're so much better off using Unreal or Unity.
Not to mention as far as Timesplitters is concerned, the only open environments started to emerge in Future Perfect.
It may seem a simple game, but the arcade and league modes had amazing complexity, not to mention the 80+ characters and 50+ weapons each game had.
[QUOTE=zoox;52458754]I remember when people on twitter made fun of the code quality of their physics engine:
[URL="https://github.com/CRYTEK/CRYENGINE/blob/release/Code/CryEngine/CryPhysics/rigidbody.cpp#L689"]https://github.com/CRYTEK/CRYENGINE/blob/release/Code/CryEngine/CryPhysics/rigidbody.cpp#L689[/URL]
(Keep in mind that this is just one particular system of the engine and probably/hopefully doesn't represent the rest of the code)[/QUOTE]
Physics code is always extremely maths-heavy, and maths-heavy code is (almost) always going to look kinda spaghetti-ish. To me at least, it's perfectly readable as-is (but I have some physics background :cool:).
There's some debate to be had about their use of magic numbers instead of constants where they're enum-like, though. It's properly documented above that section (search for 'sort contacts for the current iteration in the following way'), but that's still more error-prone than letting the compiler handle the translation.
I had a quick look at some other part of the engine and it seems a lot more approachable if you're not familiar with maths like this.
This is giving me PTSD from my final year project.
I scraped a 2:2 just because my project tutor recommend cryengine over anything else. It was an absolute nightmare, things like decals not working, light bleeding from under walls. The documentation was pure piss, a simple lab environment was total hell to make and it put me off game dev for two years nearly.
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