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Game engines of tomorrow
So Mack sent me this video of the new CryTek engine, CryEngine 3 (ok, not the most original name for an engine) and I was blown away. The last time I was this impressed with a tech video was back when Source was debuted and they showed off the new G-Man. Which got me to thinking about game engines in general. The last excellent engine was Source, and looking at the visuals of L4D2 it’s still a top notch engine. I feel like this is the first engine to challenge that supremacy, though I’m not sure it will in the end. Granted I have no clue what the specs on this are at this point, but if we consider that Valve’s technology is modular, which allows Source games to still look great with each new iteration and keeping the base of the software intact, I think Source wins overall. As it is, CryTek had to make a whole new engine to make these impressive visuals. Valve’s next game will be the deciding factor I suppose, but let’s face facts: it took the industry about 5 years to finally catch up to, and possibly surpass Source. Notch up another epic win for Valve.
I can’t wait to see Serious Sam 3. SS: HD will not be a good showcase of the Serious 3 engine. Croteam did a really good job with the Serious 1 engine. There is still no engine except the Serious line that does infinite horizons (you can run at the horizon and never run into a bounding box). Tight code and a ton of features has always been a hallmark of that line. Too bad Serious Sam 1 & 2 were not better games.
The CryTek 1 engine was also feature rich and tight code. CryTek 2 blew. It required way too much machine. It looks like they’ve decided to go back to creating an engine that can produce amazing effects without needing a beowulf cluster to run. Still, you can definitely tell when they switch to PC hardware in the tech video and which are console.