CryENGINE 3 Cookbook  (English, Electronic book text, Tracy Dan)

With every successive console generation, the cost, time, and complexity of developing games has grown. Meet CryENGINE3, a middleware engine that is the perfect fit for most developers allowing users to exceed current generation quality standards while using less people and time than ever thought possible.

The CryENGINE3 CookBook is packed full of recipes for junior and senior developers alike. It covers everything from creating photo realistic architectural visualizations to implementing advanced physics such as ragdoll and tornado effects. Topics covered include the sandbox, level layout, environment creation, AI, character creation, creating vehicles, and game logic. Every recipe is designed to add AAA quality to your games.

The CryENGINE3 SDK has many tools immediately available to developers of all disciplines. For designers the book has recipes for building up your own levels and populating your levels with intelligent AI and photo realistic assets. For artists we have recipes for practical workflow tools and techniques used when working with the advanced CryENGINE shaders and materials. For animators we have recipes that will bring your creations to life using skinned characters and advanced animation systems like locomotion groups. Finally for programmers we have recipes that show how to employ the core mechanics behind entities such as vehicles and weapons while also utilizing the strengths of the physics engine to create a unique and exciting game.

Get to grips with CryENGINE 3 and use the CryENGINE Sandbox editor a production-proven real-time game compositing tool suite designed and built by AAA developers.

What you will learn from this book :

• Navigate and interface within the CryENGINE Sandbox, the tool used to create AAA games like Crysis 2.
• Create your own levels and even entire worlds using recipes for sculpting and molding terrain.
• Model with the integrated tools available to designers and artists in the CryENGINE3 Sandbox.
• Use the cutting edge real time lighting technology of the CryENGINE to bring light to your worlds and explore the use of atmospherics and effects used for today’s newest games.
• Create and animate AAA characters and other objects for use with the CryENGINE Sandbox.
• Manipulate the advanced AI available to game designers in the CryENGINE3.
• Create your own cut scenes and videos using the power of the CryENGINE3 engine to maximize the output.
• Optimize your creations for optimal performance with maximum visual impact.
• Have fun following interesting game changing physical simulation recipes that can add unique game play opportunities to your levels.
• Use visual scripting to create amazingly complex events as seen in Crysis2.

Approach
Written in a cookbook style, this book offers solutions using a recipe based approach. Each recipe contains step-by-step instructions followed by an analysis of what was done in each task and other useful information. The cookbook approach means you can dive into whatever recipes you want in no particular order. The CryENGINE3 Cookbook is written to be accessible to all developers currently using the CryENGINE3. It also explores the depth and power of the CryENGINE3 and is a useful guide to follow when becoming familiar with this award winning middle-ware game engine.

Who this book is written for
This book is written with the casual and professional developer in mind. Fundamental knowledge of some Digital Content Creation Tools, like Photoshop and 3d Studio Max is required. The Software Development Kit version of the CryENGINE is used for all examples, so the reader should have a version of the development kit to follow the recipes contained in this book

About the Author
Dan Tracy is Crytek’s Technical Level Designer for the award-winning CryENGINE and Crysis 2. He is responsible for the creation and maintenance of numerous technical features and external applications used for telemetry and optimization. Viewed as more than a level designer, Dan prides himself on pushing the envelope when it comes to improving both technical and game related designs across multiple production disciplines. Dan was recruited by Crytek in 2009 after the previous year working as a Quality Assurance Technician for BioWare. He was recruited due to his pivotal role in co-founding and leading development on the award winning total conversion project ‘Mech Warrior: Living Legends’. Since then, he has been featured in numerous gaming magazines and has been interviewed by multiple media outlets. Dan is a passionate gamer, but an even more passionate modder and game designer with vast knowledge and experience with multiple engines and titles including Never Winter Nights’ “Aurora”, Battlefield’s engine “Frostbite”, Unreal 3, and CryENGINE.

Sean Tracy is Crytek’s Senior Field Application Engineer for the award-wining CryENGINE. He is responsible for adapting the engine and its features to individual licensees, as well as developing full technical and ‘vertical slice’ demos for prospective and existing clients. Describing himself as a ‘generalizing specialist’, he also gives support directly to CryENGINE licensees, while designing and maintaining their workflows, pipelines and development techniques. Sean was recruited by Crytek in 2008 after working as an electronics technician for the Canadian Military. He was recruited due to his role in founding and leading the development on the award winning total conversion project ‘Mech Warrior: Living Legends’. Since then, he has been featured in numerous gaming magazines and has been invited to speak at many game related trade shows and seminars. He is an avid gamer with extensive modding experience on titles including Never Winter Nights, The Battlefield engine “Frostbite” , Doom and Quake.

Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1: CryENGINE 3: Getting Started

• Introduction
• Opening a level in the CryENGINE 3 Sandbox
• Navigating a level with the Sandbox Camera
• Setting up a personalized toolset layout
• How to customize toolbars and menus
• Using the Rollup Bar
• Selecting and browsing level objects
• Restoring the CryENGINE 3 default settings

Chapter 2: Sandbox Basics

• Introduction
• Creating a new level
• Generating a procedural terrain
• Terrain sculpting
• Setting up the terrain texture
• Placing the objects in the world
• Refining the object placement
• Utilizing the layers for multiple developer collaboration
• Switching to game mode
• Saving your level
• Exporting to an engine
• Essential game objects
• Running a map from the Launcher

Chapter 3: Basic Level Layout

• Introduction
• Making basic shapes with the Solids tool
• Editing and merging solids
• Grouping the objects
• Utilizing the Geom entities instead of brushes
• Road construction
• Painting vegetation
• Breaking up tiling with Decals
• Making caves with Voxels
• Creating Prefabs to store in external libraries

Chapter 4: Environment Creation

• Introduction
• Creating your first time of day using the basic parameters
• Adjusting the terrain lighting
• Using the real-time Global Illumination
• Editing HDR lighting and the effects for flares
• Creating a global volumetric fog
• Creating a night scene with time of day parameters
• Color grading your level
• Creating a photo realistic ocean
• Improving your sky with clouds
• Making it rain in your level

Chapter 5: Basic Artificial Intelligence

• Introduction
• Placing the enemy AI
• Generating the AI navigation
• Forbidden boundaries
• Forbidden areas
• Setting up the interior navigation
• Debugging the AI triangulation
• Narrowing the AI's FOV to allow attacks from behind
• Respawning AI

Chapter 6: Asset Creation

• Introduction
• Installing the CryENGINE 3 plugin for 3D Studio Max
• Creating textures using CryTIF
• Setting up units to match CryENGINE in 3ds
• Basic material setup in 3ds
• Creating and exporting static objects
• Creating and exporting destroyable objects
• Using advanced material editor parameters to create animation
• Creating new material effects
• Creating image-based lighting

Chapter 7: Characters and Animation

• Introduction
• Creating skinned characters for the CryENGINE
• Ragdoll and physics for characters
• Creating animation for your character
• Previewing animations and characters for Sandbox
• Creating upper body only animations
• Creating locomotion animations
• Animating rigid body geometry data

Chapter 8: Creating Vehicles

• Introduction
• Creating a new car mesh (CGA)
• Creating a new car XML
• Giving more speed to the car
• Increasing the mass to push objects with the car
• Defining a sitting location
• Setting up multiple cameras for the car
• Need for a machine gun
• Giving the car a weak spot

Chapter 9: Game Logic

• Introduction
• How to beam the player to a tag point from a trigger
• Making the AI go to a location when the player enters a proximity trigger
• Debugging the Flow Graph
• Creating a kill counter
• Rewarding the player for reaching a kill goal
• Displaying the player's health through a Flow Graph
• Changing the player camera through key input
• Creating a countdown timer

Chapter 10: Track View and Cut-Scenes

• Introduction
• Creating a new Track View sequence
• Animating a camera in the Track View
• Triggering a sequence using the Flow Graph
• Animating entities in the Track View
• Playing animations on entities in the Track View
• Using console variables (CVars) in the Track View
• Using track events

Chapter 11: Fun Physics

• Introduction
• Low gravity
• Hangman on a rope
• Tornadoes
• Constraints
• Wrecking ball
• Rock slide

Chapter 12: Profiling and Improving Performance

• Introduction
• Profiling performance in the Sandbox
• Saving level statics
• Enabling the debug draw modes
• Optimizing the levels with VisAreas and portals
• Using light boxes and light areas
• Activating and deactivating the layers

Index