
So my "No Offense" warning heard loud and clear ? Good
https://www.cryengine.com/roadmap
- I don't know the manpower capacity of, or what is going in Crytek but judging from Roadmap it is completely off the target.
- What is considered as a standard future for other engines today such as Visual Graph Editors for Animation, AI and UI, Animation Retargeting and Mirroring, Multiplatform and Multi-OS support are only depicted under R&D, meaning they are nowhere in sight. Even Lumberyard, which was just an old CryEngine version has these futures today.
Now why is this ? I would say problem is twofold. One is that instead of "directly" starting to build new systems for the above-mentioned topics, Crytek is trying to revamp/clear/refactor old ones and then will try to build a graph editor (possibly Schemtyc integration) on it later. This choice is obviously wrong, it should be done in reverse order. The systems should have a visual, intuitive graph based editor, and then later as time goes on the underlying system should be wholely revamped, without the users noticing it.
The other one is confusion in the upper decision making levels possibly. CryEngine is "still" almost presenting itself as "that other free choice" and versions reflect this approach, such as I mentioned above, trying to refactor old systems with bad UI's and usage, dependency to outside DCC to still some degree etc. This would be acceptable if engine was free. However the business model is based on percentage income sharing, meaning I am actually "paying you" to use this software. Any decent, straightforward logic dictates that everyday game developer must be considered first for new versions and the "reverse order" I mentioned up must be followed.
Part 2
- Many followers of CryEngine are actually here because they like the graphics and fast render times. Fast compile times are also a factor. But there is a fundamental misunderstanding here. Advancement in graphic by no means imply the neglect of other systems. Heck, the people who are working on graphics and subsystems are different people and they are working on simultaneously on the engine independent of each other anyway. It is not "every engine has strong and weak points", it is simply "you are doing this wrong". Good graphics and easy to use systems are not fundamentally non-inclusive. They are independent.
This is understood wrong and taken as "haters gonna hate". Nope. Common logic of the great percentage of the game developers simply asking the obvious: "There is no reason for this engine to be like that. So why ? "
Remember, Lumberyard was under development for 2 years and it has all these futures. They actually didn't touch the graphics and related systems because they were quite good to begin with. Why invest resources there ?
Part 3
- The community "support" . There is no such thing as "taking a ticket" and wait for 4 days to get an answer for a forum or discord community. It is only acceptable if I am a working memeber of a big company which is a paying licensee of Crytek and that waiting time is under 2 hours.
This is another part of "Corporate Identity" approach "of upper decision making levels".
Example. I wanted to make an MOD SDK for my future project and wondered if I was allowed to do it for each engine. UE4 was already supporting this by default and people answered what I can include or not with links in a day. With Lumberyard forum, community manager just said give me a second. Replied to topic with a "Big good OK" and said if there is anything else I wonder I can write there and he will ask the team and answer.
CryEngine: Asked on forums (found several other threads with same question with no answer) Insisted. Directed to mail address. Sent a mail, got a ticket, explained the situation in detail. Days passed (I don't even remember how many). A mail pops up . 3-4 short lines: "No you can not make a MOD SDK. For further information please....."
This is 1999s era system. Not even gonna explain further.
So I wanted to leave this here as a note. Neither CryEngine nor Crytek is not facing a good future if decisions are not changed. Because no company can survive without a decent regular income and licensing engine to other companies, selling of source code to other willing parties (like Amazon) and bank credits only lasts so long.
Thanks and best of Regards.