Chris Roberts Was Right About CryEngine In 2010...

Did Chris Roberts make the right choice when he chose the CryEngine for Star Citizen, all the way back in 2010? Well, time has proven that he made the right decision! Despite major refactors to the engine, a switch to the lumberyard fork and Crytek deciding to sue CIG, the Star Engine is starting to look like very impressive!

#StarCitizen​​ #SpaceSim​​ #PCGaming​ #Squadron42​ #S42

[tenpoundfortytwo]

Still a long way to go to make Star Citizen a good game, but the engine is starting to really take shape in my opinion! What do you think?

[PNGpyro]

People talking about graphics - have you *seen* crysis? Like, the roots of this engine were absolutely jaw-dropping back in the day - there's no reason they can't do better after ten years.

[Nicrosyl]

It is also important to know that Unreal Engine did not support 64-bit coordinates (Large World Coordinates) until recently; even now, the feature is still in Beta. You need 64-bit coordinates to be able to have large worlds that allow for seamless transitions (without scaling) between planet surfaces and space. Without it, you get something like Starfield that is full of loading screens.

[alexanderdooley]

"why don't they change to unreal 5?". Cuz I don't want to waste 10 more years porting the game and fixing those bugs.

[TheOriginalGrib]

For those relatively new backers wondering who the man with the dark hair in the front is, That's Ben Lesnick. He was a huge fan of the Wing Commander franchise when it came out and was an influence on that game back then. He knew almost everything there was to know about that game. When Star Citizen was announced, Ben and Chris got together, and Ben became an employee. Ben was very involved with public facing Star Citizen early on, contributing as host of the numerous videos CIG created, in a similar vein like Jarod.

From what I understand, Ben was having significant health issues and needed to step back. He's still deeply involved with day-to-day game operations. I heard, although this is not confirmed that he's involved with the release publications slated to come out with the game. He loved the Wing Commander publications so much back then and now he is writing them! Talk about a dream come true for Ben.

[Hamisback]

Everyone forgets the reason Crytec sued CiG. Crytec was basically going bankrupt and hadn't been paying their employees for months. CiG started to poach their engineers when they realized this, since they already had to make massive changes to the engine. Crytec sued for copyright infringement, license issues, and theft of proprietary technology. Crytec basically loss the lawsuit, but right before they went under amazon who also had poached some Crytec engineers and were developing an engine decided to partner with Crytec by buying a license to a a new engine co-branded as lumberyard. This saved Crytec. Seeing how much Star Citizen had developed their tools for what they would brand Star Engine, and CiGs desire to use AWS for server infrastructure, they made a technology exchange agreement since fundamentally their engines are built off CryEngine, which was mutually beneficial for them. So anyone currently playing New World, note there is probably a little Star Citizen tech that helped get it developed.

[YourDeletedComments]

Crysis is 17 years old and still looks good today. Even better than some Unreal Engine games being pushed out the door in 2024.

[VoidyVids]

No one could have said all this better, awesome video.

[poprosturobert]

2:55 I'm surprised that Chris's words from 2014 sound like they were from a year ago, explaining why the game is taking so long to develop.
The fact that he talked about seamless landing on planets as a distant plan long after the game's release shows how much this project has grown and changed over the years

[adrianbarreto]

"Seamless transition from ground to space. This is very long term not release". At least he was wrong about that

[aiur]

The concern that they use an old engine is obsolete, the base for their engine might be old but as long as they improve the engine it basically never gets outdated

[festersmith]

Holy crap!
This was so well put together and needed to be explained.
To many unaware opinions on the internet. Like so many other topics.
Thanks for doing this!
Nice work digging up the old media to use for reference!

[arowhedkc]

Pheonmenal video. Might be your best one yet. Love how you are expanding your niche and continuing to do what you do so well: help us understand the tech aspect of this amazing project. Thanks again!!

[Anonymous-mfj]

I’ve said it before a million times when the wide spread greasing of UE5 was a just warning sign.

It’s like webdev and browsers if there is too much centralisation into specific engines we risk ending up in a situation like internet explorer in the early 2000s and to a lesser extent chromium nowadays.

Diversity in the engine space is critical.

[--Nemesis]

I've been waiting for this game for so long that when I saw this video as a suggestion and looked at the time it was released, I thought it said 11 years ago and not 11 hours ago 🤣


Good vid!

[avidian]

Damn I miss Sean Tracy... Great video dude! Even as a long time backer since 2013 I didn't know some of these facts.

[Netsuko]

I'm seriously worried about the Cyberpunk sequel. Yes, the RED Engine apparently was an absolute pain to work with, but it is also absolutely stunning. It's probably still the very best looking engine that is out today. EVERY big game that doesn't use Unreal is a win.

[quarkedupphoton]

It would be interesting to learn more about the back-end network architecture. Server meshing is more than just the number of players per shard per server but includes database and application servers, routers, switches in a global context. The desync and failed arrival or trams, doors, elevators, NPCs seems to relate to bugged, broken, or overworked resources in CIG's network. Be nice to do a vid on that.

[Nobel]

Awesome video, I myself have a couple former CryEngine programmers in my own teams and this is so helpful, cause those are veterans and know the stuff. Many have no idea what is all behind the scenes going on and we still have many saying why are you not using UE5, from now on I prob will send them this video instead of trying to explain it all.

[catbertz]

You videos feel like a channel with 200k+ subs. Hopefully that will happen as SC grows and touches the mainstream crowd.