Joining the likes of Unity and Epic's Unreal Development Kit, Crytek has announced that version 3.4 of their highly praised and critically acclaimed game engine SDK, the CryEngine, is now available...for free.
As stated on the official website...
Further increasing the creative power at developers' fingertips, Crytek today announced the arrival of a feature-filled update to its award-winning game development solution, CryENGINE 3. The CryENGINE 3 SDK now presents users with brand new tools to tap into, including revamped DirectX 11 tessellation, advanced character rendering options, improved AI system and much more.
For those of you who don't know, this is amazing news for game developers and software engineers the world around. While Epic and Unity are catering to millions of game designers both indie and from AAA studios, Crytek has long held the position of keeping their engine in the corner of large scale projects and big budget endeavors. Well, now they're taking their efforts and focusing it on helping up-and-coming game developers engage and delve into the CryEngine with all the necessary tools to build groundbreaking games and visually stunning projects.
The SDK comes complete with DX11 support, high-end tessellation, multi-layer navigation meshes for AI routines, top of the line shaders so you can make stuff that puts the iCEnhancer to shame, skin rendering, all those fancy volumetric effects we loved so much in the original Crysis as well as advanced physics support.
While indie devs have taken the UDK and ran with it, creating some drop-dead amazing titles like Dungeon Defenders, I can't wait to see what comes out of the CryEngine. This is good news indeed.
You can get a complete rundown of all the specs, assets and tools available in version 3.4 over at the Official CryEngine Website. I'm definitely excited to see what the community comes up with.
Core Updates in 3.4 Features:
•Improved glass rendering.
•Geometric light beams.
•Point light shafts.
•Time of day based filmic HDR tone mapping.
•Curves and key tangents for time of day.
•User controlled per cascade shadow bias through time of day.
•Improved transitions between levels of detail.
•Volumetric fog features extended and improved.
•Improved distance cloud shading.
