Far Cry; What you all thinking? Thread

So, with the release of the Far Cry demo, what do you all think about this upcoming FPS? Personally, I think it's better than Half-Life 2. Seriously. It pretty much has the same feature set as HL2, and then some. The sandbox editor sounds fairly flexible. It is also a good choice for a mod, too, because of the flexibility of all aspects of the engine. I had a look at the code included with the demo, and the scripts for sequences AND AI are all external, meaning you can edit them any time you want.

Also, if ModDB is anything to go by, you're far more likely to not get lost in the crowd when using Far Cry as the engine for your mod. Registered at ModDB are:

Half-Life 2 [Mod Listing of 280]
Far Cry [Mod Listing of 9]

It's ridiculous! And Half-Life 2 doesn't even have system requirements, a release date or even a demo. Far Cry is fantastic, I suggest you go to the website and download the demo now!

Farcry-thegame.com
Personal.inet.fi

CryEngine

Real-time editing, bump-mapping, static lights, network system, integrated physics system, shaders, shadows and a dynamic music system are just some of the state of-the-art features that the CryENGINE™ offers. The CryENGINE™ comes complete with it's a bevy of internal tools and also includes the CryEDIT world editing system. Licensees receive full source code and documentation for the engine and tools. Support is provided directly from the R & D Team, and teaching workshops can be arranged for your team to increase the learning process as ongoing improvements to the engine are made. The engine supports all video and hardware currently on the market, and new hardware support will be constantly added as it becomes available.

CryEDIT: A real-time game editor offering instantaneous "What you see is what you PLAY" feedback.

Renderer: Integrates indoor and outdoor technology seamlessly while offering rendering support for OpenGL & DirectX 8/9, XBox using latest HW features, PS2 and GameCube.

Physics System: Supports character inverse kinematics, vehicles, rigid bodies, liquid, rag doll, cloth and soft body effects. This system is directly integrated with the game and tools.

Character Inverse Kinematics & Animation Blending: Allows a character model to have multiple animations that blend in believable ways.

AI System: Enables team-based AI as well as AI behaviors defined by scripts. This features affords you the ability to create custom enemies and behaviors without even touching the C++ code.

Interactive Dynamic Music System: This system dynamically tracks and responds to the player's actions and current situation while offering CD Quality playback in full 5.1 surround sound.

Environmental Audio & SFS Engine: Accurately reproduce sounds from nature with seamless blending between environments and interior/exterior locations in 5.1 audio. Includes EAX 2.0 audio support.

Network Client and Server System: Manages all network connections for the multiplayer mode. It is a low-latency network system based on client/server architecture.

Shaders: A script system used to combine textures & produce visual effects in different ways. Supports real-time per-pixel lighting, bumpy reflections, refractions, volumetric glow effects, animated textures, transparent computer displays, windows, bullet holes, and shiny surfaces.

Terrain: Uses an advanced heightmap system and polygon reduction to create massive, realistic environments. The view distance can maximized to an unprecedented 2km when converted from game units.

Lighting and Shadows: Combines pre-calculated, real-time shadows, stencil shadows and lightmaps to produce a dynamic environment. Includes high-resolution, correct perspective, and volumetric smooth-shadow implementations for dramatic and realistic indoor shadowing. Also supports advanced particles technology and any kind of volumetric lighting effects on particles.

Fog: Includes volumetric, layer and view distance fogging to enhance atmosphere and tension.

Tools Integration: Objects and buildings created using 3ds max™ or Maya® are easily integrated within the game and editor.

Polybump™: Standalone or fully-integrated with other tools including 3ds max™.

Scripting system: Based on the popular LUA language. This easy to use system allows the setup and tweaking of weapon/game parameters, playing of sounds and loading of graphics without touching the C++ code.

Modularity: Entirely written in modular C++, with comments, documentation and subdivisions into multiple DLLs.

Polybump™

Polybump is a new technology developed by Crytek to enhance 3D-rendering quality without increasing the overhead in real-time rendering. Polybump offers huge benefits for real-time 3D games for the PC, Xbox and Game Cube game systems. It allows users to create and render an extremely low-poly model using an ultra high-poly model while displaying virtually no visible difference between the two. Rendering time is greatly decreased. Polybump is the first commercial package, which allows users to do all this with just a few clicks.

Reduces polygon numbers in real-time 3D graphics.

Increases image quality combining Polybump and self-shadowing technology.

Ability to add more characters on the screen.

Decreases memory usage.

Increases rendering speed by applying the calculation for skinning to less bones/vertices and for stencil shadow volume to fewer polygons.

Quickly embed Polybump Technology in your real-time 3D-Engine with 'Copy & Paste' from our easy-to-use source code.

Increases your image quality with rendered high-quality 3D graphics.

Uses an industrial-strength algorithm, which accepts input of two models - a low and high poly model. It then generates a normal map, and then maps the high poly model onto the low poly model.

Works as a separate process so users can continue to use 3ds max™ or Maya® while Polybump is working in the background. It saves Polybump normal maps in any format supported by 3ds max™ or Maya®.

Includes additional features such as support for merging an additional bump map onto a normal map and creating "accessibility maps to improve the visual quality of a model.

The algorithm does not recognize if objects are not self-contained (as required by existing papers on the subject).

Have you watched the video of the engine? It shows the CryEdit program for level editing. You can test your maps IN the editor. Hows that for flexibility?

i also read its mod capability will be unriveled

So I'm not the only one who'll be making their mod for Far Cry?

There's people already making mods!

I think its pretty awesome,
but I am going to wait till the full game is released
(Check it out and see if the online play is good enough for something to be coop on)

If it is.. then I might switch my mod over to it.

but ill see what others have to say and then make a decision from there.

Still want to toy with the engine some more and see where others stand.

Well, I have done some toying with the engine, and it's pretty spectacular. Mods are appearing already for the demo! I toyed around and discovered that the game itself already has five different rendering methods built in! You thought XIII was a one-trick pony. Well guess what? Far Cry has cell shading rendering support BUILT IN!

Multiplayer demo is coming out a week or two before the release.

yeh itll be cool but i will be lcuky if it actually runs on my computer

I hope the MP demo runs fine for me

o btw frosty_theaussie or whatever when u said it will be easy to mod thats why i said it will be unrivelled

demo beats crap outta everything i saw in my life the AI just ROCKS, graphics are awesome, SUPER gameplay.... what else do we need?;)

btw its "cry-tek" not "cryENGINE", i remember an old tech-demo named dinosaur isle or something like that which was based on it

this'll be great

yeah its a good game

altho ill still get HL2

and far cry

and doom3

although i find it strange , ive only played the far cry demo twice :/ cant be arsed to play it more

- Edited By cHIs-wK On Sun 1st, Feb 2004 @ 3:15:21pm

i have completed the demo nearly 10 times:D and i'm still playing it:D

i cant be bothered to download it... so i played it at a friends.

That demo runs like shit on my pc. Not to mention crashing every now and then.

whats the exact problem?

Sigh... I guess I'll check out the demo...

it runs something like 15-20 fps at 800x600x32 and medium details...

Yeah, it's got impressive graphics, but wasn't really that fun. Running around forests killing idiot people is kind of stupid. Plus the fact that you can't save when you want sucks

btw its "cry-tek" not "cryENGINE", i remember an old tech-demo named dinosaur isle or something like that which was based on it

No sorry, CryTek is the company making the game, CryENGINE is the name of the engine. Source: Farcry-thegame.com

me sings: "Oh I loves being right, yes precio-us!"

Also, don't make brash judgments based on the demo. The saving is a temporary issue, and will be implemented in the full version. If you really want to save your game, there's a console command that'll do it for you. Also, if you're getting 20 FPS at 800 x 600 details, I think you need an upgrade, seeing as I can get 35 FPS (which is more or less the maximum that the human eye can register) on this setup:

AMD Athlon XP 1800+
GeForce 4 Ti4200 128 MB
PC2700 DDR333 512 MB RAM
Windows 98SE

Tonight I'm going to test it on this:

AMD Athlon XP 1600+
Radeon 9600 Pro EZ 256 MB
PC2700 DDR333 512 MB RAM
Windows 98SE

For those of you who care, yes, I am fond of Athlons and PC2700!

- Edited By frosty_theaussie On Mon 2nd, Feb 2004 @ 12:27:30am

You've never noticed a difference between 35 fps and 100 fps?
I wish I could have one of those smooth mouse filters for Far Cry...
Please don't make overhyped judgments based on the mediocre demo. Although I admit it was fun in parts (it could've been a lot better though) (driving boats and blowing up helicopters was fun)

!!! i loved the demo and im definatly looking forward to far cry more than hl 2 !

Oh yes, a mouse filter most definitely. So I wasn't the only one who found the mouse movements to be jerky and unsatisfactory?