It seems we have more Crysis 2 / CryEngine 3 news to share today. Crytek revealed that a new version of its CE3 SDK is coming real soon. When a fan asked Crytek when will we be getting CryEngine 3.4.1, the company responded and said that they’ ve gotten over “a few hurdles these last few days and are testing recent builds now” and that the new build of the SDK is coming “real soon.”
Moreover, according to Crytek’s Community Manager, Cry-Adam, this new SDK will support Maya 2013 and 3D Studio Max 2013. Crytek is currently sorting the exporter for 3DSM 2013 and promised to release a separate download if this exporter doesn’t make it into the upcoming build.
Cry-Adam has also revealed that CryEngine 3 supports geometry instancing in SDK. However, this feature is not working in DX9, but it’s working in DX11 on NVIDIA cards. Crytek has also done a brief tests and this feature is not crashing on the AMD cards that were tested (we can assume that geometry instancing was not stable on AMD’s cards in previous builds).
A while back, we’ve discussed about CryEngine 3 PLUS. This version of CryEngine 3 is the one that will be used in Crysis 3 and according to Cry-Adam, the features that are supported by this ‘PLUS’ version will come to the free CE3 SDK at a later date, probably after the release of Crysis 3. This means that modders won’t be able to experiment with Pixel Accurate Displacement Mapping, Composite 3D Lens Flares, Procedural HDR Flares and Shapes and Real Time Area Lights. Well, at least for now.
Cry-Ruan, Crytek’s Community Representative, explained why these features won’t come on the 3.4.1 version of the CryEngine 3 SDK:
“It’s not as simple as ‘adding’ features. Builds are branched, versions differ and merging is a complex process for any given non-trivial piece of software, let alone for a codebase on the scale of the CryENGINE. To reiterate what Adam said, these features will come later. “
Cry-Adam added:
“Licencee/FreeSDK branches aren’t different. Game branches are different because games are at different stages and in order to implement new features and functionality for games, the build can often go unstable, something we can’t give to licencees or Free SDK users. Implement tech -> stabilise tech -> release. I’ve mentioned in the other thread regarding that tech document that it won’t be making its way into the SDK any time soon”
CryEngine 3 SDK 3.4.1 is currently planned for release this week or shortly after GDC Europe!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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