CryENGINE 3 Game Development: Beginner's Guide

Discover how to use the CryENGINE 3 free SDK, the next-generation, real-time game development tool

• Begin developing your own games of any scale by learning to harness the power of the Award Winning CryENGINE® 3 game engine
• Build your game worlds in real-time with CryENGINE® 3 Sandbox as we share insights into some of the tools and features useable right out of the box.
• Harness your imagination by learning how to create customized content for use within your own custom games through the detailed asset creation examples within the book.
• Contains C++ programming examples designed to expose powerful game customization opportunities available to game programmers.
• Translate your game design into a functioning game by following the easy step by step examples exploring level building, visual scripting, and many of the other tools within CryENGINE® 3.

In Detail

CryENGINE is a complete game development environment used by AAA game development studio Crytek to produce blockbuster games such as Crysis 1, 2 and 3. This complete Beginner's Guide takes the would be game developer through the steps required to create a game world complete with event scripting, user interface and 3D environment in the free CryENGINE SDK.

Learn to create game worlds with the CryENGINE 3 Sandbox, the tool used to create AAA games like the soon to be released Crysis 3. Follow straightforward examples to sculpt the terrain, place vegetation, set up lighting, create game sounds, script with Lua and code with C++.

Learn to navigate the interface within the CryENGINE 3 Sandbox, the tool used to create AAA games like Crysis 1 and 2, as well as the soon to be released Crysis 3. Learn to create your own worlds by following straight forward examples to sculpt the terrain, place vegetation, set up lighting, create game sounds, and script with the Lua language. The book covers all beginner aspects of game development including an introduction to C++ for non- coders.

What will you learn from this book

• Learn to navigate within the CryENGINE® 3 Sandbox.
• Learn to create your own worlds by following straightforward examples to sculpt and mould the terrain and place vegetation.
• Learn to model with the integrated tools available to designers and artist in the CryENGINE3 Sandbox.
• Learn methods of visual scripting used to create amazingly complex scripted events
• Learn how to start creating and compile C++ game code to create your own custom game.
• Learn to use Autodesk Scaleform to create high fidelity 3d heads up displays and menus for the player.
• Learn how to create your own custom characters and objects for use within the examples.
• Learn to create your own cut scenes, animations and videos using the power of the CryENGINE3 engine to maximize the output.
• Learn to use FMOD designer along with the CryENGINE 3 to add sound and music to your game.
• Explore some of the key performance and optimization strategies for levels and learn to share your content with others.

Approach

A step by step beginner's tutorial to creating AAA style games with the complete game creation tool, CryENGINE 3.

Who this book is written for

This book is written with the beginner and casual developer in mind. The freely available version of the CryENGINE® 3 is used for all examples in this book.

Sean Tracy

Sean Tracy is Crytek's Senior Field Application Engineer for the award-wining CryENGINE. He is responsible for adapting the engine and its features to individual licensees, as well as developing full technical and 'vertical slice' demos for prospective and existing clients. Describing himself as a 'generalizing specialist', he also gives support directly to CryENGINE licensees, while designing and maintaining their workflows, pipelines and development techniques. Sean was recruited by Crytek in 2008 after working as an electronics technician for the Canadian Military. He was recruited due to his role in founding and leading development on the award winning total conversion project 'MechWarrior:Living Legends'. Since then, he has been featured in numerous gaming magazines and has been invited to speak at many game related trade shows, conferences and seminars. He is an avid gamer with extensive modding experience on titles including Never Winter Nights, Battlefield, Doom and Quake.

Paul Reindell

Paul Reindell has been an Engine Programmer in the SDK Team since June 2010. He is responsible for UI programming, next generation features and development of new tools for the CryENGINE 3 Sandbox, as well as forum support for CryENGINE licensees. He also worked on projects for licensees or evaluators. During his diploma theses Paul started as an Intern at Crytek in March 2010. He finished his diploma thesis successfully in June and started directly as a Junior Programmer in the SDK team. During his academic studies he created a mod prototype with CryENGINE 2 (GarbageWarz) and during his diploma thesis he was able to connect CryENGINE 3 successfully with a Headtracking API. Before working at Crytek he worked for three years as a programmer at DENSO, in Germany, beside his studies.