Today’s article comes from a guest publisher. In this article he will be talking about the, relatively, newly released SDK for the game Crysis.
On the 21st February, Crytek released the Software Development Kit (SDK) for the Cryengine2 (Game engine for Crysis) and a month after its release, many of the Crysis total game conversions (modifications) have grown into beautiful and extremely anticipated projects.
I’m Matt (Or more commonly known online as FireDragon04) and I’ve used multiple game engines to create level environments such as: Halo Custom Edition, Source (Half-Life 2) and Unreal Engine 3 to name a few.
When Crysis was released it had the best graphics I’d seen, and still holds that title. Leading up to its release, the community highly anticipated modding for the Cryengine2; while it has a good Editor on release, the custom content aspect of modding was “poor”. With the release of the SDK that’s all changed. Mod creators are able to import custom textures and completely custom models from popular 3d program “3D Studio Max” with others also supported or with support coming soon.
One of the more helpful tools, in SDK, is the ability to export models from “3DS Max” like I just said; this means we (modders) can now bring in new weapons, characters, vehicles and even complete levels. This has already started to be incorporated into many mod teams.
Another useful tool to come with the SDK, one of my favourites, is unfortunately slightly overlooked: The “Polybump” tool. It automatically creates detailed normal maps for your models. Using this tool, you could create an extremely high polygon model, and then create a much lower polygon replica and use the “Polybump” tool to create an extremely detailed normal map for the lower poly model in order to bring it to life; much like the high poly model.
So with mod teams working day in, day out, I thought an honourable mention to these mod teams was in order:
-Lost World Returns [Website] [Forum Topic]
-Lara Croft: Lost Dimensions [Forum Topic]
-The Legend of Zelda: Project Light [Website]
-CryRecon [Forum Topic]
-Crygate [Forum Topic]
Those are just a few. There are a lot of mods in the works at the moment and listing them all would take some time.
I believe that this engine, and game, will be the big in the modding scene for some time. With superior graphics and possibilities, the community will continue to grow with lots of supporting teams and members already. I’m sure that in little, to no, time we’ll see some large mods being released and taking over Crysis its self.
Mods such as TLZ:Project Light update weekly and you can find lots and lots of Mods and levels for Crysis over at Crymod and inCrysis (along with many more).
Thanks for reading and thanks to all those in the Crysis Modding Community.
-Matt. (Alias FireDragon04)