Preface
The complexity and difficulty involved in making current generation games is increasing. Even the games industry itself is becoming a more competitive and demanding industry to work, than it has been in the past. Project budgets are smaller, production times are shorter, and milestones seem to come more often, especially when working with a publisher. With the increased time and expertise required to engineer these games, many professional and hobbyist developers alike have turned to middleware game engines, such as the CryENGINE, to save them time, money, and frustration, while manifesting their ideas into releasable games.
The CryENGINE is a comfortable fit for most developers, because it allows users to create their content quickly, iterate on that content, and to finalize it without leaving the comfort of the CryENGINE's Sandbox Editor. I often refer to the CryENGINE as a force multiplier, since its tools make it possible for smaller teams to accomplish what used to take an entire development studio, full of people. This book is an introduction to the CryENGINE technology, and is comprised of achievable, small-scale examples, which can be applied in almost any game genre. This book is not designed to cover exhaustively every feature and function in the CryENGINE, but rather is designed to give you the knowledge and tools needed to get you of to a smooth and painless start when making your own games with the CryENGINE 3.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Introducing the CryENGINE 3 Free SDK, covers the beginning to developing your own games of any scale by learning to harness the power of the award-winning CryENGINE® 3 game engine. In this chapter, you will learn to navigate and interface within the CryENGINE® 3 Sandbox, the tool used to create AAA games, such as Crysis 1 and 2, as well as the soon to be released Crysis 3.
Chapter 2, Breaking Ground with Sandbox, covers building 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. In this chapter, you will learn how to create your own worlds by following straightforward examples that use some of the important fundamental features available to developers of the CryENGINE®. This includes tools and techniques related to sculpting, molding the terrain, and placing vegetation.
Chapter 3, Playable Levels in No Time, covers more advanced level design tools, which are discussed in the chapter, as well as simple modeling techniques using the integrated CryENGINE solids system.
Chapter 4, I'm a Scripter, Not a Coder, covers learning the method of visual scripting used to create amazingly complex scripted events.
Chapter 5, C++ and Compiling Your Own Game Code, follows along with in-depth C++ programming examples, designed to expose powerful game customization opportunities available to game programmers.
Chapter 6, User Interface and HUD Creation with Flash, covers how to use Autodesk Scaleform in conjunction with the CryENGINE® 3 to create high fidelity 3D heads up displays and menus for the player.
Chapter 7, Creating Assets for the CryENGINE 3, covers how to create your own custom characters and objects for use within the examples.
Chapter 8, Creating Real-time Cutscenes and Cinematic Events, covers how to create your own cutscenes, animations, and videos using the power of the CryENGINE 3 engine to maximize the output.
Chapter 9, Immersion through Audio Design, covers how to use the FMOD designer along with the CryENGINE 3, to add sound and music to your game.
Chapter 10, Preparing to Share Your Content, helps you explore some of the key performance and optimization strategies for levels, and helps you learn to share your content with others.
What you need for this book
CryENGINE 3 Free SDK v 3.4
Autodesk 3D Studio Max 2010
Adobe Photoshop CS4
Notepad++
Visual Studio Express 2010
Adobe Flash CS 5.5
Who this book is for
This book has been written with the beginner and casual developer in mind. That being said, however, the professional developer will still find valuable knowledge related to other specialties within the examples of this book. For some of the examples in this book, the reader should have some fundamental knowledge of some Digital Content Creation tools, which include Photoshop and 3D Studio Max. Though not a fundamental requirement, having some basic knowledge of real-time graphics software and, consequently, the terminology used, will make the goal of these tutorials more clear. The freely available version of the CryENGINE® 3 has been used for all the examples in this book, and Chapter 1, Introducing the CryENGINE 3 Free SDK will guide the reader to download and install the CryENGINE® 3 Free SDK.
Conventions
In this book, you will find several headings appearing frequently.
To give clear instructions of how to complete a procedure or task, we use:
Time for action – heading
Action 1
Action 2
Action 3
Instructions often need some extra explanation so that they make sense, so they are followed with:
What just happened?
This heading explains the working of tasks or instructions that you have just completed.
You will also find some other learning aids in the book, including:
Pop quiz – heading
These are short multiple choice questions intended to help you test your own understanding
Have a go hero – heading
These set practical challenges and give you ideas for experimenting with what you have learned.
You will also find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: " If you now navigate to the level directory using Windows Explorer, you will notice a new folder called Layers. Inside that folder, you will see a file named SpawnPoints.lyr."
A block of code is set as follows:
<Constraints>
<Align mode="fixed" />
<Position top="100" left="100" width="800" height="600" />
</Constraints>New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Look in the UI:Functons:MainMenu:AddButton node of the mm_main UI Action that creates the button with the @ui_SoundSettings caption".
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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