What if CryEngine was used as Arma 3 future engine?

[TheDecline 10]

DaSquade is spot on! i dont think the Arma 2 engine is past early stages of course its come along way but it can go a lot further but it has its restrictions becuase of the military etc. And since there is no real competition with Arma 2 anywhere there is no need for BIS to go all hardcore and bring this engine up to standards of todays world although we did see with the coming of OFP:DR BIS did take a step forward to match this threat and added some features which should of been in from the start. Now if OFP:DR was never to be would we be getting the features that we will see in Arrowhead? Who knows

By the time of Arma 3 if there is ever such a title im sure it will be a lot more advanced than arma 2

Does not Arma 2 use the same engine as Arma 1, which in turn uses the same engine as OFP? Which came out in 2001?

[derk yall 0]

No,

OFP - Real Virtuality engine

ArmA - Real Virtuality 2 engine

ArmA II - Real Virtuality 3 engine

It's the same way like it is with the Unreal III engine wich is evolution of the original Unreal engine (1998).

[DaSquade 0]

@MattXR

but it has its restrictions becuase of the military

Don't see what the military has to do with BIS approche. Two seperate things and afaik neither of the two prevents the other from doing something. I would even say it is more the oposite, althought it took time and it apperently had to open some eyes...but in the end, there is an understandable reason behind that.

@TheDecline: Yup all the same enigne, just improved versions. From what 'experts' have been telling me, the BIS engine is very outdated in the way it works. On the other hand, it isn't something you change or even delete to start over. Something like that is only possible by mayor game developers and even then it holds many risks. A risk that in these days often isn't picked and maybe for the best.

Anyway, yes the current version of the engine is far from good and i suppose it is one of the reasons why new features are harder to implant then it looks for non-experts.

Button-line is, i think this engine will be the one that will have to do it for as long as BIS decides to make games in this genre.

If you can't life with that, i suggest you start to open a paypal account and invest in BIS future.

[Wolfish King 0]

Gotta love the fanboys in here, or buttmates or whatever you wanna call them, always defending the ARMA games...

A lot of things are wack, which were possible 10 years ago. Breaking glass? Oh man thats so hard to code...

[Flash Thunder 10]

Nobody would be able to run the damn game if it had CryEngine 3.

Sure its a nice engine but its mainly for eye-candy, when they state Advanced AI what is there AI compared too, absolutely nothing of course its Rhetoric :bounce3:, Crytek said Crysis would have "Advanced AI" and those AI were complete idiots, you could walk up to them and punch them and they wouldn't do anything! :mad:

BIS wouldn't spend a couple thousand dollars to license this engine alright I think they should just spend more money on RV engines to make them rival Crytek, BIS could add Physics and better destruction they need to invest the money and the R&D and also they would be compromising alot of sales since that would boost up the minimum requirements that requires a 900+ USD computer, Dual Core and all.

Its nice but its not realistic for what BIS wants in there game experience, notice you could never have HUGE AI battles in Crysis, you can have huge numbers of Barrels though :dancehead:

[Alex72 1]

Gotta love the fanboys in here, or buttmates or whatever you wanna call them, always defending the ARMA games...

A lot of things are wack, which were possible 10 years ago. Breaking glass? Oh man thats so hard to code...

Yeah breaking glass is super important... (eye candy) And exploding barrels is very important too.

[Heatseeker 0]

Gotta love the fanboys in here, or buttmates or whatever you wanna call them, always defending the ARMA games...

A lot of things are wack, which were possible 10 years ago. Breaking glass? Oh man thats so hard to code...

And you gotta love the hords of noobs and idiots who come here sugesting BIS to make their games with UE3, CE3 or whatever they are led to think is the greatest thing out there.

It just takes very little comon sense to understand that a game like A2 has very specific requirements, wich no other graphics engine is able to meet.. not even the failed atempt called Ego, wich took many years to make.

If Cry engine 3 really was that capable you wouldnt be playing a game made of 12 small, linear levels..

Is it really so hard? To just think?

[Steakslim 1]

Isn't CE3 Crytek's move to bringing the tech to consols anyways? It's nothing new from CE2 other than it's optimised for PS3 and Xbox360 compatability.

As for ArmA under any Crytek Engine, you need to remember the ordial with Crysis, that someone else brought up. It was extremely difficult on a server to run a MP session with full phyiscs turned on, hense why they restricted it to DX10 mode (which turned into BS anyways). Very few used it because very few players ran Vista on their servers or anything that would allow DX10 to begin with. And when you did find one, once you get enough players destroying half the destructable objects (palm trees, shacks, etc) servers would start struggling because it's a lot of information to process and bouce back and forth between players.

Hell in ArmA2, you leave a Domination mission running long enough online, eventually it'll need a restart from the amount of collected scripts and shit gathered over time (spawned in reinforcements that don't despawn and such). Imagine if ArmA2 was built on Cryengine 2. You'd have several pieces of pine trees, grass and small leafy plant life that moved in reactin to you brushing against them (rope physics), dynamically destructable small buildings and structures, fences, vehicles, animals, dead bodies (with ragdolls, though german laws prevented dead bodies from being moved once they fell to the ground in Crysis, I doubt BIS would care), dropped weapons, small loose objects ranging from tables, bottles, books, barrels, boxes that are wooden, metal, and cardboard, most of which can be broken into smaller parts, and more, all reactive to the physics engine in the game, all moving to any stimuli at any given point in the game. I currently do not think the idea is feasible, especially ontop of the realtime lighting effects, particle effects (which are better than ArmA2's engine, and more demanding), which are reactive to stimuli as well, and then you add in ArmA2's features of bullet logistics and AI scripts, modules, and all the other wonderful things that can already slow the game down if it wanted to. All of this in a 225sqkm world. This is why I believe there's something like a 8sqkm map size limit (though it has a 16km view distance), and an entity limit mentioned earlier (for CE3, CE2 had no such limit if i recall as you could spawn hundreds in the editor if you wanted to, it's just your pc would crash once you did), for Crysis thus far. The hardware issues involved in increasing those numbers would only harm the game's enjoyment, though someone could increase it if they wanted too.

Would I like to see a game like ArmA2 with the graphical and technical fidelity of something like Cryengine2? Oh hell yes I would, but only if it was actually playable without having to take things away from the player that makes ArmA2 so fun (for those of us that enjoy it at least). Maybe in 7 years or so we'll think differently when things advance.

Edited October 15, 2009 by Steakslim

[dmarkwick 261]

Hell in ArmA2, you leave a Domination mission running long enough online, eventually it'll need a restart from the amount of collected scripts and shit gathered over time (spawned in reinforcements that don't despawn and such). Imagine if ArmA2 was built on Cryengine 2. You'd have several pieces of pine trees, grass and small leafy plant life that moved in reactin to you brushing against them (rope physics), dynamically destructable small buildings and structures, fences, vehicles, animals, dead bodies (with ragdolls, though german laws prevented dead bodies from being moved once they fell to the ground in Crysis, I doubt BIS would care), dropped weapons, small loose objects ranging from tables, bottles, books, barrels, boxes that are wooden, metal, and cardboard, most of which can be broken into smaller parts, and more, all reactive to the physics engine in the game, all moving to any stimuli at any given point in the game. I currently do not think the idea is feasible, especially ontop of the realtime lighting effects, particle effects (which are better than ArmA2's engine, and more demanding), which are reactive to stimuli as well, and then you add in ArmA2's features of bullet logistics and AI scripts, modules, and all the other wonderful things that can already slow the game down if it wanted to. All of this in a 225sqkm world. This is why I believe there's something like a 8sqkm map size limit (though it has a 16km view distance), and an entity limit mentioned earlier (for CE3, CE2 had no such limit if i recall as you could spawn hundreds in the editor if you wanted to, it's just your pc would crash once you did), for Crysis thus far. The hardware issues involved in increasing those numbers would only harm the game's enjoyment, though someone could increase it if they wanted too.

Would I like to see a game like ArmA2 with the graphical and technical fidelity of something like Cryengine2? Oh hell yes I would, but only if it was actually playable without having to take things away from the player that makes ArmA2 so fun (for those of us that enjoy it at least). Maybe in 7 years or so we'll think differently when things advance.

Very valid points & opinions :)

I think it could be done sooner, with a little optimisation. You don't need to sync every little thing in the game, just every little thing relevant to the player. i.e. things around the player, and things the player can see. AI stuff that is out of player visibility (which as you know happens all the time in ArmA) can be simplified to process gross objects only (which I will bet ArmA2 already does in any case) and all AI processing can be reduced to a more statistical nature with distance, with intelligent "filling in" as the player gets closer. I believe it can be done this way, but bandwidth needs to be universally high.

There is one engine that I know of that has implemented what I believe could be a real processor-saving measure, it blocks off the game world into nested areas. So a room in a building might be one element of a building. If you cannot see the building, you definitely cannot see the room. If you CAN see the building, the building is processed but you still might not be able to see the room, but the processing saving measure is obvious, not seeing the building automatically discounts anything to do with the room whatsoever. Extend this idea to street, town area, entire town, countryside segment, larger countryside segment, quarter of the map, entire map etc. All these nested areas can be immediately processed in the first instance via their bounding box, and the first bounding box outside the player experience automatically culls all processing for all the sub-elements etc.

I think this sort of geometry processing can be extended to other kinds of processing, AI, physics, tactical, the lot. If a 12-unit group on the other side of an island meet and fight another 12-unit group, and fight it out, you can process this encounter by using only gross approximations and maybe even statistical processing, by the time you get there you will find an apparently realistic scene of battle, and you have no idea whether it happened in 100% fidelity simulation or processor-saving grosser simulation. It might even be said to be a philosophical point whether there is even any actual difference between the two :)

[jonneymendoza 10]

But you can destroy parts of the building and all of the building.

What are you talking of? Not about Arma2 are you?

Destruction of buildings got NOTHING to do with "taken over a town or something."

What are you talking of? Not about Arma2 are you?

There is a lot of debris, explosions and smoke ...

I don't find Arma2 engine to be buggy. My friends and I can do community made multiplayer games for hours?

"Looks" solid - yeah, from afar. Cannot take this arguement for serious.

Codemasters DR look solid from afar too ...

That's easily said. But you don't know how "easy" it indeed is.

LOL - the seeming possibilities are always endless if you trust advertising.

This is quite an advertising!

At least (!) 33 % of the text is PURE quoting, the rest is helpless dramatization - without any deeper arguements just sayings. Do we believe advertisings?

Didn't Codemaster advertise Dragon Rising like hell? What's the outcome?

And, at last me :eek:, I can destroy buildings nicely in Arma2.

I can shoot windows, I can run over trees ... etc. etc.

You want to open another thread - like the DR-rising thread - with thousands of posts: One side believing the marketing shit from Codemasters the others not?

Sure you can have it, but there are better things to discuss than advertisings of competitors of BI.

And that's the most important thing:

You want BI to pay a direct competitor in the area of modable FPS.

Sorry - can you imagine BMW asking Mercedes to build an engine for them?

How much would that cost? :o

i'l reply to this later but in a nutshell. what arma 2 are you playing? most of what you said about the destruction is false:rolleyes:

[AAD10 Pete 10]

I guess BIS are knowing what they do.

Of course. CEngine3 is quite a masterpiece but its expensive and a completely new world you have to close up first.

Lets wait on Operation Arrowhead to get a closer look first, if BIS is on good ways to egalise the actual limitations of the Arma2 engine. Generally, I think the Arma2 engine still has a lot of potential.

[maddogx 13]

i'l reply to this later but in a nutshell. what arma 2 are you playing? most of what you said about the destruction is false:rolleyes:

You think? Let me see...

you can destroy parts of the building and all of the building.

True.

Destruction of buildings got NOTHING to do with "taken over a town or something."

True.

There is a lot of debris, explosions and smoke ...

True. (Although the debris are not ejected as separate physics objects.)

I can destroy buildings nicely in Arma2.

I can shoot windows, I can run over trees ... etc. etc.

True. Buildings can be destroyed, windows can be shot, trees can be run over.

So what exactly is false about any of the above statements?

[CarlGustaffa 4]

There is one thing people tend to forget when comparing other engines, and that is how little of the world is seen at any given way, by means of level/landscape design. Afaik the only decent engines in this respect is the RV engine that Arma uses and whatever engine Flight Simulator uses. Although you can see "forever" in Flight Sim, there is not a lot of ground detail, objects etc that is needed in a shooter. I'm not sure if Flight Sim matches Arma DEM resolutions, but OFDR has much better, together with most shooters. There is always a tradeoff.

Examples:

* Tall buildings preventing you for seeing as far as you'd like, i.e. GTA. Remember that in GTA SA there was a difference in the rendering when you were in the landside and when you were in the cities.

* Many shooter still restrict to very corridor like maps. Unreal Engine. "Open" maps are not really open. Even Crysis gave you a limiting corridor game.

* Artificial landscape "protrusions" preventing you from seeing very far. FarCry2.

* Size down the size of the islands. FarCry1/Crysis.

* Add so much vegetation/debris/stuff, that you cant see very far (never much microdetail in the same scene). Crysis. I would disagree on FarCry1 here since you have those mountains you can go to.

* Reduced DEM resolution. I'd say maybe BIS games belong here.

And as already mentioned. Great physics (well, much better than Armas anyway) have this nasty tendency of being completely turned off in multiplayer. I wonder why that is :)

Would it be worth much better physics in singleplayer if it had to be turned off in multiplayer or a separate physics engine (more bugs, which we like so much) for multiplayer (the current one)? An important aspect in Arma is that much physics would have to be synchronized. You can't have a player hiding behind a knocked off cinder block that doesn't show up on the other players machines. The overhead/bandwitdh needed is simply not present and won't be in a long time. Physics uses a lot of random numbers in its approximations, preventing the use of any kind of client calculated effects.

All engines have limitations. I guess we've just learned some of OFDR more horrid ones. Do you think these limitations were mentioned in their brochure?

Try imagining Arma in about any other engine, and please add some deep thought to it ("it would look good" is not deep). You'll quickly see that its not that easy or fast to come up with solutions. If BIS tried changing into another engine at this stage, i.e. CryEngine3, they wouldn't be finished implementing the needed changes to make it work with the intended game before the next version was out. And everyone would complain on outdated engine again :)

Although VR have some rotten limitations especially for the addon community, there is no reason to change engine. It's better to keep improving on it even though it may not yet support all the fancy stuff we would like. Graphics and physics is not everything. Gameplay is (at least for me).

[Reverend Crast 10]

Am i a game developer? do own a games company?

No you obviously aren't. My adivce for you would be to stop talking about things you completely do not understand, because you just make a fool of yourself.

[ziiip 1]

It would definately be awesome if Arrowhead had a neat physics engine like the one in Crysis.

[nyran125 10]

if they are making an engine that is cross platform from Consoles to PS3 and pc, wouldnt it be downgraded slightly from the original Crysis engine to handle consoles? as opposed to being better graphics because it has to take consoles into consideration whereas crysis was ONLY pc. So it was for hardcore hardware. That video that was shown some of the indoor environments looked way downgraded than the original Crysis indoor environments.

[Steakslim 1]

You think? Let me see...

True.

True.

True. (Although the debris are not ejected as separate physics objects.)

True. Buildings can be destroyed, windows can be shot, trees can be run over.

So what exactly is false about any of the above statements?

I think he ment in relation when comparing to CryEngine2/3. Of course I'd hope everyone would already know this. However I already stated what I wanted to state so I'm just going to stay the hell out of this argument.

---------- Post added at 11:37 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:31 AM ----------

if they are making an engine that is cross platform from Consoles to PS3 and pc, wouldnt it be downgraded slightly from the original Crysis engine to handle consoles? as opposed to being better graphics because it has to take consoles into consideration whereas crysis was ONLY pc. So it was for hardcore hardware. That video that was shown some of the indoor environments looked way downgraded than the original Crysis indoor environments.

I doubt it. All the footage you saw was for PS3 and Xbox360. Quite a few of those scenes were from the original Daybreak area of the first map where you can see the biggest difference from the original PC game. If they were to make a new game using what they've learned from their engine, I doubt they would be stingy on the graphics for the PC version of said game, they do have a reputation to maintain in that field.

[DieterWeber 0]

Lol at arma Fanboys defending it's shitty engine.

[doogerie 10]

that cry 3 engen loks really good and easy on the eye

[hoot 0]

Lol at arma Fanboys defending it's shitty engine.

What is your qualification to judge those things? Guess you are one of those millions of computer scientists out there, who can judge from outside the box whether an engine sucks or not by just staring at the screen. So LOL indeed...

[dm 9]

Lol at arma Fanboys defending it's shitty engine.

I thought we'd got over the fanboy thing?

For BIS to move to the cryengine over their own would be a massive departure from their established procedures.

I guess a reasonable analogy would be Microsoft switiching from Windows to Linux.

[hoot 0]

[...]Microsoft switiching from Windows to Linux.

Finally. I mean WINE with OFP:CWC/RH/R runs damn fine, except for this shadow flickering :D

Edit@CryEngine3: Iirc Crytek is selling their engine for a neat value since FarCry, and I also think that they have not sold so many licenses this far. Of course I don't know any numbers for sure, but i remember some discussions on Gamasutra or GameDev.Net that were whispering it. However, i find it important that some studios are tossing such nicely done engines onto the market from time to time. Not only for telling competitors what they can do, but to also get those frickin' Siggraph papers applied finally.

Edited October 16, 2009 by Hoot

[hotel 10]

I don't find Arma2 engine to be buggy :o

That is without a doubt the most rediculous statement I have heard.

[bonchie 39]

The current engine does have it's limits..no doubt.

For the next true game I'm sure they'll have to design a new engine or heavily edit the current one. Something like the CryEngine 3 would be well out of their price range I'd think though.

Whatever they do will be in house I'd guess.

---------- Post added at 12:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:18 PM ----------

That is without a doubt the most rediculous statement I have heard.

I play it. I haven't ran into any major bugs. Now I have ran into dozens of scripting errors in the campaign, but that's another issue.

[W0lle 1042]

Lol at arma Fanboys defending it's shitty engine.

+1 infraction point for that.