CryEngine 3 SDK — Requirements, How To Install, Documentation

Just recently CryEngine 3 SDK finally was released, as it was promised by Crytek early this year. CryEngine 3 SDK is a special, free for non-commercial usage, edition of the newest and most powerful Crytek's game engine. This article supposed to be your starter guide to the CE3 SDK, providing useful information on its system requirements, installation procedure and sources of available engine documentation.

But first I'd like to share my personal view on this SDK. Regardless the pretty large amount of documentation ( for the initial release, of course ) and WYSIWYP editor Sandbox 3, this game engine still isn't suitable for game development beginners, instead targeted at professional developers with some experience and amount of skills, be it small indie studios or hobbyists. CryEngine 3 SDK is not like a game constructor — for productive usage it requires some code writing, scripting, skills in level design and its compositing, etc. Please be aware of this, because after all CryEngine 3 SDK is just a modern and complex technology, that was maked available for us. If you're a novice developer and has some plan on serious usage of CE3 SDK — be prepared that it will be sometime pretty difficult and you'll need to learn much.

On the other hand, it isn't restricted to be curious and have a play with it — not every day game engine that costs thousands of $ become available to everyone, it's a great opportunity to check out modern technologies and workflow involved in AAA game development. Who knows? Maybe CryEngine 3 SDK experience will be helpful for you in some extent in the future and positively affect you as the game developer. I'll encourage you at least to take a look at SDK.

CryEngine 3 SDK — System Requirements

Many PC's for many years will be BSOD'ing when they hear the word "Crysis". Crytek have taken into account their mistake and made Crysis 2 ( and CryEngine 3 ) less demanding in terms of hardware ( cross-platform nature of the engine most likely played its role as well ). Still SDK requires up-to-date PC configuration to be comfortable to work with. For development with CryEngine 3 SDK you will need following configuration ( or better ) :

• Supported OS: Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, Windows 7
• 64-bit CPU ( multicore highly recommended )
• 2 Gb RAM ( 4 Gb recommended )
• Graphics card with support for Shader Model 3.0 ( Nvidia GeForce 6600 or better, or GFX cards from ATI/AMD in the same generation )

Obviously, better hardware is better  . From my side I could recommend having 4-cores CPU, 8 Gb RAM and graphics card GeForce 460GTX / AMD HD4850 ( or better ).

End users ( gamers that will play your game ) have slightly lower requirements:

• Supported OS: Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, Windows 7
• 32-bit or 64-bit CPU ( multicore highly recommended )
• 1 Gb RAM ( 2 Gb recommended )
• Graphics card with support for Shader Model 3.0 ( Nvidia GeForce 6600 or better, or GFX cards from ATI/AMD in the same generation )

Crytek noted that CPU requirements highly dependable on the AI and physics usage by your game. The more AI and physics computation involved into gameplay, the faster CPU required. For original Crysis game minimal system requirements was such: Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (3.2 GHz for Vista) or better, Intel Core 2.0 GHz (2.2 GHz for Vista) or better, AMD Athlon 2800+ (3200+ for Vista) or better.

Thus, CryEngine 3 isn't good solution to stick with for casual game development, because system requirements will be unreasonably high, while for modern 3D games its will be OK.

Also for CE3 SDK you will need additional software:

• DirectX End-User Runtime ( August 2009 or later )
• Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86 and x64)
• Latest gaphics drivers

CryEngine 3 SDK — Online Only? Where Is Offline Mode?

For unknown reason Crytek decided that all CryEngine SDK users should be online and have permanent internet connection to work with it. Yep, that's it — you need to be online and login into your accout before you can access Sandbox 3 editor. Accordingly to official forum members posts, connection to the internet required all the time you're working with Sandbox 3 — if connection is unavailable, you will be unable to even save your work ( oh, that's just great! ).

How to deal with this restriction if you want to work away from the home, on the road, or somewhere without internet access is still unknown. Also there is some frightful theories that online authorization implemented to have control over your usage of CE3 and that Crytek possibly can revoke your access to your project if they decided so ( for example, if you violated EULA ). Will be there offline mode for CryEngine 3 SDK or not still is an open question — as far as I know, Crytek representatives yet didn't answered the questions regarding this issue in the Crydev forums. It's possible that online mode will be the only available legal way to work with SDK.

CryEngine 3 SDK — How To Install?

Now let's take a quick look on how to install CryEngine 3 SDK. Crytek has taken very interesting decision on distribution of the SDK — it's available in form of simple archive instead of classic installer. Thus you just need to download it form Crydev.net, unpack somewhere and there it is — installation is done! Sandbox 3 can be launched from Bin32 or Bin64 folders ( 32-bit and 64-bit versions correspondingly ).

To the point, if you're launched Sandbox 3 for the first time and see empty black screen — it's OK, just the empty scene. From this time you can load into editor demo level called "Forest", which can be accessed from File — Open... menu and СryEngineSDK/Game/Levels/Forest/Forest.cry

CryEngine 3 SDK Documentation

And finally — where to get  documentation about CE3 SDK. Perhaps the most important place for all CE3 developers is the freesdk.crydev.net, which contains all of the officially available docs for engine. Several categories has detailed instructions on how to work with different parts of the SDK, including the Sandbox 3, creating and managing different kinds of assets ( static models, vehicles, weapons ), technical documentation ( for programmers mainly ), and category for scripting in CryEngine 3.

Second source of knowledge about CE3 SDK — Wiki on the crydev.net website. Despite the fact that for now Wiki mainly focused on ModSDK rather that Free SDK, many of its content still can be applied to it. Also it's expected that with the release of Free SDK Wiki will be gradually filled and updated by this CE3 edition as well.

Third place where you can find useful information is the Crydev Forum. Official community of CryEngine 3 users from all over the world is the must-visit place for any CE3 SDK developer. Especially interesting looks section with Tutorials — don't forget to look into it.

The last, four source in our search for info — CryEngine 3 Cookbook, which was written by engine developers and contains over a hundred recipes that are ready-to-use inside of CryEngine 3 SDK. This book has some review on the pages of 3DG.Me, so be sure to check it out — CryEngine 3 Cookbook can be very helpful as the starter companion guide to the CE3 SDK.

I think this is all for now. You can always ask a question about CryEngine 3 SDK in our forum topic — I will try to be helpful as much as I can. Don't forget to check out my article about Sandbox 3 Editor Quick Tips, where gathered a number of tips and useful shortcuts for working inside of Sandbox 3.

And for the conclusion — video from the demo level Forest,which is supplied with SDK: