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)
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It's a fishing exercise. They give it to college students. When one of the students makes a viable game they'll buy it from them or charge them a substantial license fee. They may even be trying to get rid of that pesky learning curve on new hires. Plenty of ways to spin this. I agree...Good business sense. Market exposure is key.
Re:Makes business sense too (Score:5, Informative)
Except this is the CryEngine 1, not CryEngine 2 which is their main engine. While programming is undoubtably similar for both engines, going back to Far Cry it's already begining to look dated, and game made with it would probably make a decent Indie release, but wouldn't do as a commercial release graphics wise.
It would however, as you suggested, float the better programmers on these courses to the surface.
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naaah, FarCry still looks good and it has a broad system support spec. i think a large chunk of the industry is still at that stage. its not bleeding edge but good gameplay doesnt require that. lets face it, a good game written on CryEngine1 would probably do just as well as one written for CryEngine2.
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Note that Emergent has been doing the same for their engine Gamebryo for a few years now: Emergent Academic Partners [emergent.net].
Gives them a good excuse (Score:1)
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.
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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.
I've always wondered if the fact that most Computer Science classes I've come across use source materials fifteen or twenty years old is a hindrance to students going out into the world. Sure, many of the basic principles don't change, but even so... 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?
Re:Nice move by Crytek... (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, many of the basic principles don't change, but even so... 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?
Completing the last 3 years of your degree would probably be a good place to start.
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.)
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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.
AOL, except for Haskell. We used LISP for our functional programming component.
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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
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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.
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Well, to be honest, I'm not sure about the technical term, I might be mis-remembering a drunken conversation at a convention in Germany a few years ago. It's basically that the ground is a 2d surface deformed in the vertical dimension, rather than being a fully 3d object.
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wrong moderation due mouse scroll
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Okay, maybe you have a point, but can you really complain?
I mean after all, if it wasn't for the CryEngine how would you power your WAAHmbulance?
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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.
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I'm not saying I agree with the OP's response, but I don't think your reasoning makes sense. What they've done here isn't "open sourcing a little bit". This isn't open source at all. If a company does action A, and then someone whines that they didn't do B, I don't see how that might put them off doing B. Sure, it might make them less likely to bother with A, but why should the OP or anyone else wanting open source care, since that wasn't what they want anyway?
Repeat after me... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Universities are not intended to provide vocational training."
Why do so many people seem to have forgotten this?
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Sure they are. If your vocation is being an MD, wtf else are you supposed to go? If your vocation is being an engineer, wtf else are you supposed to go? If your vocation is being a molecular biologist, or an archaeologist, or a physicist, or a rocket scientist, where the fuck else are you supposed to go? The International Correspondence School of Rocket Science?
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.
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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.
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Yes, they offer a link. But the primary purpose is an academic treatment of the material, not training in a particular job.
Here in the UK, we have 'vocational training' which is basically training in how to do a particular job. Universities, while getting less purely academic, are still nowhere near as specifically job-training as the vocational courses are. Universities still exist basica
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It's not so much a question of practicality vs. impracticality. It's a question of how we're training people to function. The old idea of a university was to give someone a good set of background data and techniques, and then to teach them to to solve problems, and how to express themselves with clarity and precision. The idea being that if your graduates have that much, then they can learn
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first: there is no time - education doesn't pay the bills, jobs do. most of us need to work in order to survive; I can't spend a semester learning about something I could use but probably won't.
second: innovation is, as oddly as it may seem, speeding up; anyone trying to stay updated about machining and tooling like me should know this by now (I don't program for a living, i'm an engineer - a brazilian one, so don't mind t
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I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't produce graduates with the necessary knowledge to get a job in industry. I'm just saying that it is entirely possible to achieve this without concentrating almost entirely on vendor specific software packages.
I am also suggesting that it's somewhat unwise to let industry dictate the packages we teach at university, since the demands of the private sector have more to do with keeping their competition a
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From the viewpoint of the student, it seems to me to be a uniformly bad deal.
Yes, practical knowledge that will actually help you get a job after you graduate is clearly a bad deal!
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Well, of course. If you're not teaching the specifics of MS Visual Studio 2009, then all you can possibly do is spend all day discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. I mean, it's not like there's a middle ground or anything, is it?
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"Universities are not intended to provide vocational training."
Why do so many people seem to have forgotten this?
On the other hand, CryEngine can be used as an exemplar case-study of the class of 3D world models, allowing study of the capabilities and trade-offs involved in their design and use. That is academically meaningful.
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CryEngine me a river?
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Uhh, because despite original intentions, a little vocational training doesn't go far astray?
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I understand your view but don't agree because this is a special case. University level training in chemical studies provide a lab in which to experiment. The lab is filled with universal tools so your point stands.
What about astrophysicists? Universities don't have more than a standard telescope so they borrow time on other organization's hardware like a radio telescope, orbiting satellite or ground based telescope across the world. Many of these are designed to work in a specific way. Those tools are pro
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In the UK, Polytechnics used to give a more practical, hands-on training vocational training but after the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 they all became called Universities, although in many respects they are the same institutes offering the same courses...
Resource hog proliferation, yay! (Score:1)
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minix (Score:2)
reminds me Tanenbaum's minix which was created as a response to closed Unixes systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MINIX [wikipedia.org]
"MINIX is a Unix-like computer operating system based on a microkernel architecture. Andrew S. Tanenbaum wrote the operating system to be used for educational purposes; MINIX also inspired the creation of the Linux kernel. Its name is a portmanteau of the words minimal and Unix."
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The students, however, will have blown their loans on quad-core Xeon laptops with dual Radeon 9900 graphics cards.
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Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
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Unreal Engine (Score:4, Informative)
Figures... (Score:1)
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I'll send them an email... (Score:2)
And see if I can get a copy here in Canada. Then, I'll have Cry Source, Unreal Source, Source Source engine code and I'll combine them to make... some kinda super engine...
Like you know, the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts.
If Cry engine is the one behind Aion, which is an MMO I believe, then implementing MMO kind of network architecture into a Physics Engine like the source will not only LAG my system to crap, but will totally make a cutting edge game that will be popular when we invent comput
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Then, I'll have Cry Source, Unreal Source, Source Source... ...red source, brown source, barbecue source, hot source...
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Honey mustard source. Delish.
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will totally make a cutting edge game that will be popular when we invent computers that can run it.
More seriously, this is how the industry works already. People develop to the specs of the machines expected at launch time, not the machines that are available now. This requires that the developer produce "target footage" and do pre-rendering for early previews, and generally spend a bucket on the most powerful machines available for testing. It has marketing upsides because the previews blow existing games
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Yes. I do a bit of development at home, with my Beast Rig thats required to run VS2008 while debugging a game in run-time. I figure if I can get something running decently on top of the line stuff now, by the time its released it'll be in the right alignment for the teeming masses.
In the event I fall behind (I can't imagine them releasing ANOTHER direct X after 11 here anytime soon) I'll just have to make things flashier and more graphics intensive.
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