Crytek Giving Away CryEngine To UK Universities 67
GamesIndustry reports that German game developer Crytek will be making CryEngine, the game engine behind Far Cry and Aion, available to universities in the UK for free. They're doing so because they want new college grads to get hands-on experience with the technology that runs real games. Crytek's Karl Hilton said, "Universities are looking to foster creativity and send people out into the industry who have lots of ideas, but it's also about that practical hands-on training so that they know what the limitations are. It's very easy for students to come out of the academic world and not have a grasp on the realities of making a videogame. The more we can get involved with them and give them feedback and access to the tools involved, the more accurate the course will become in training people up."
Makes business sense too (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice move by Crytek... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd rather have universities focus on using a -real- open engine though, such as id's Tech3 (Quake 3) GPL'ed engine: More documentation, bigger community, and an, imo, better engine overall.
Nonetheless, nice move by Crytek.
Repeat after me... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Universities are not intended to provide vocational training."
Why do so many people seem to have forgotten this?
Re:Repeat after me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Universities provide academic training that is in line with your prospective vocation.
Universities do not teach you how to be an Engineer or an archaeologist, they teach you engineering or archeology.
They teach you the academic side of the above, and then release you into the real world to make it your vocation.
Re:Not Open Source (Score:3, Insightful)
Presumably it would have been fine, though, if they'd not done this.
This is how you're encouraging business to not open source. While it's 'normally' licensed, no-one complains. If you only open it a little bit, you become a bad guy. If I was in the business of producing commercial software, it's sentiment like yours that'd put me off.
Re:Nice move by Crytek... (Score:4, Insightful)
What Computer Science courses are these?
Languages used in mine were Java, Haskell, C, C++, and Prolog. All are up-to-date modern languages, and it was similar for all the students I've met from other universities.
(Having said that, we weren't really taught languages after first year. We were taught principles, told what languages used them, then told to go implement something in one of them.)
Re:Nice move by Crytek... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd rather that universities had access to multiple engines so they can study the different approaches to different problems. Tech3 is an enclosed-spaces engine, you don't get that many Quake levels that are open, rolling hills. If you do, it's a hack and you are actually in a cave with a sky-texture flag on the ceiling. CryEngine and Halo are ground-folding engines, so they can do the big open spaces thing but have to use hacks to have cliffs and caves and overhangs.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Repeat after me... (Score:2, Insightful)
release you into the real world to make it your vocation.
I would feel like a fucking dove if I understood universities like you do.
Re:Nice move by Crytek... (Score:3, Insightful)
how do you get your head around writing multi-threaded code for a modern game, when the last thing you learned was Hello World in Fortran?
Studying programming instead of Computer Science would probably be a better start