Upgrade from CryEngine 3 to CryEngine 4th generation

I would like to know what difficulties you had to solve regarding upgrade of the engine, what improvements it brings to the game and whether it caused delay of the release. I’m curious how the game could be developed for next-gen consoles since CryEngine 3 does not officially support them. I’ve noticed only a short mention of this in the video. Thanks.

I think they are working with CryEngine 4. The thing is that since there is no such a lap between each generation, versions of engine are much more seamless and don’t demand any dramatical recreation. So they could easily started their development on CryEngine 3 and then transfer to CryEngine 4 without any problems. It is different compare to technological lap between for example Unreal 2 and Unreal 3 engine.

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If they are using cry engine 3, it will be really difficult migrate to cry engine 4. Because they have source of the engine and a lots of custom code (according to blog). But maybe it will be easy or they are using cry engine 4 at this time :slight_smile:

I’d be interested in this, too. CryEngine 4 has PBR (Physically Based Rendering), which I think provides for much improved lighting

Do You have any reference of the technology behind the PBR of CryEngine4? I did not search for it yet, but I would be interested in it as well. A can only imagine that doing a switch from CE3 to CE4 and using this PBR feature requires also some redesign of the assets already made and maybe also including some more resources (meaning additional texture maps, UV sets, etc.). This would mean a lot of reworking of the current state and according to the kickstarter videos, a lot of work has been already done. I also think that now they will swap from prototyping and making proof of concept phase into the second phase which is massive 3D modelling, game designing, scripting storyline, etc. And this means that the main technological pipelines are already set and fixed (e.g. the developers know how to capture and prepare textures, how to design a proper 3D models etc.). But it’s only my personal guess based on the video from the GDS 2013 conference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_EgjlQLu0Y (unfortunately only in Czech language).

i think it won’t be too big a deal. cryengine 4 looks like cryengine 3 with a 4 after it.

Unfortunately, I don’t have proper knowledge about the technical stuff behind PBR, or any “comparison video”

As for now, here are 2 videos of footage that claims the use of PBR in CryEngine 4:

the first video i s awesome!

PBR enables better lightning effects on surfaces since it replaces the specular calculations for reflection based calculations. See this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNwMJeWFr0U

In the Star Citizen Hangar the reflections on the hull of the Constellation seemed to look way more accurate after the recent hangar patch than before (personal opinion). Unfortunately I can’t provide comparison screenshots since the old version is not available anymore to me.

would be nice to get some comparison shots. i think they might already be using cryengine 4? cause in some scenes, the game already looks better than in those cryengine next gen videos.

Wow guys, have you even read my comment? Firstly where have you heart about CryEngine 4? Last version of CryEngine is currently 3.5.7. Even Ryse is not running on CE 4. And as I said before, CryEngine works with minor updates rather than one big update. It is not like there is CryEngine 3 and after 3 years they will release CE4. So according to the date of beginning of the development they probably started on the version 3.4. Now they most likely have the last version of it. The core is still the same so they could easily develop their own tools which will work on the future versions as well. Only thing which they have to decide is whether they will use some new features from the newest version of the engine or not. But remember this. Since this game is not corridor FPS and they are rendering huge living world, they have to decide which effect is worth using and which effect is not necessary. For example AI in RPG is much complex than the AI in average FPS. Therefore the demand on hardware is higher as well. So if you want to have believable behaviour of citizen, you will have to sacrifice some graphic effects. BTW they are using PBR, don’t worry.

[quote=“OmarTheBest, post:11, topic:5884, full:true”]
Firstly where have you heart about CryEngine 4? Last version of CryEngine is currently 3.5.7.[/quote]It is called CryEngine 4th generation and not CryEngine 4. They dropped those generation-like version numbers at all. The latest FreeSDK is 3.5.7, but the FreeSDK is not always up to date with the CE SDK (afaik it never was). The “new” CryEngine was released in August to licensees, e.g. see http://www.crytek.com/news/crytek-announces-the-arrival-of-the-new-cryengine.

[quote=“OmarTheBest, post:11, topic:5884, full:true”]Even Ryse is not running on CE 4.[/quote]I think it is since one “feature” of CE 4th generation is the support for the new consoles.

[quote=“OmarTheBest, post:11, topic:5884, full:true”]And as I said before, CryEngine works with minor updates rather than one big update.[/quote]Yep thats right however not fully true for 1->2/3->4th generation since the support for new hardware platforms are quite big steps.

yeah, that’s what i thought. because the game blows ryse away in terms of visuals. imho.

Sure, so CE SDK is probably 3.6.2 or whatever.

Well by supporting new hardware you mean that average gaming PC with Xbox One or Playstation 4 sign on it? In fact the support of so called new hardware is rather agreement between Crytek, Sony and Microsoft and implementation of several protocols. From the technical perspective it is one of the minor updates.There is no reason for calling it 4th generation other than marketing. In fact I bet that the last version of the “3rd generation” and the first version of the “4th generation” differs just in extended list of all possible platform which you can compile your game for. My point is still that they are not buying version, they’re buying product with support for several years. Doesn’t matter if it was the 3rd generation at the beginning and now it is 4th generation. As I said, those are mere marks for marketing purpose. But the development of the engine itself is so seamless that even though they started creating their game on the 3rd generation, they could end on 5th generation and release it on the last version currently available.

On wikipedia it says that Kingdom Come: deliverance uses CryEngine 4th Gen and also, Crytek says that the next CryEngine would not carry any version number

HERE
On August 21, 2013 Crytek announced that their next CryEngine would not carry any version number. The reason for this decision was the fact that this new engine bears almost no similarity to previous CryEngine versions. The new CryEngine supports next generation platforms such as PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Wii U.

[quote=“OmarTheBest, post:14, topic:5884”]
Well by supporting new hardware you mean that average gaming PC with Xbox One or Playstation 4 sign on it? […] implementation of several protocols. From the technical perspective it is one of the minor updates.[/quote]This statement is very wrong. Consoles have different memory management, different cache sizes and foremost developer can work with a set amount of memory, set amount of registers, shaders etc. So you don’t need an abstraction layer and can write your code in a complete different way (e.g. compare OpenGL to Mantle while Mantle still has to work with a different set of hardware instead to the graphic engines for consoles). Also thats the reason why the performance on consoles is higher than the performance on an equal equipped PC.

True, I simplified it a lot. But still this is mainly work for Crytek, not for the game developers themselves. Of course they have to adjust their game for the next gen consoles on some level and this work is definitely not as easy as to chose the final destination on some list. But still the transfer between consoles generation is the most seamless we have ever seen. It was nearly impossible to start the development on one generation of engine and end on another without complete recreation of the game before. The original question was whether they’re using 3rd or 4th generation of CryEngine. The answer is that they are using the last version of CE, thus 4th generation. KC-D has been developed for the next-gen in mind since the beginning.

Your generalization about superior performance on consoles due to the API handling is not all true tbh. System overhead due to DX or even OpenGL on PC is mainly concentrated on the CPU and memory level, both elements that are no bottlenecks for most of PC core gamers.

As you see with Mantle user mostly profit from increased CPU performance which is quite cool for games with many small elements on the screen like strategy games. But in 3D action games like KCD the graphics hardware usually limits the performance. With a very good graphics card you won’t gain much by better API handling and more effective programming.

Most performance losses on PC are caused by lazy optimization and/or user-centric problems on their local machine.

That being said, I fully agree on your statement above that an engine needs more than just a few protocols to work decently on next-gen consoles. :wink:

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HI!

It’s been confirmed on the Kickstarter comments page that they’re using the latest CryEngine.Let’s also not forget the game is coming out late 2015, so it is likely that an even better version will be used.

On what earth you made conclusion that CE3 doesn’t support XONE and PS4??