Book Image

CryENGINE 3 Cookbook

By : Dan Tracy, Sean P Tracy (USD)
Book Image

CryENGINE 3 Cookbook

By: Dan Tracy, Sean P Tracy (USD)

Overview of this book

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.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
CryENGINE 3 Cookbook
Credits
About the Authors
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Ragdoll and physics for characters


In CryENGINE3, characters have realistic physics applied to them. When a character is reacting only physically to the world and not playing a specific animation, we typically call them ragdolls. Ragdolls are usually used to make every death of an AI character look unique and exciting; this can be very rewarding and fun for the player!

Working with and editing ragdolls can be a lot of fun. This recipe will take you through the setup and theory of using ragdolls in CryENGINE3.

Getting ready

As mentioned previously, characters are stored in multiple Max files.

In the SDK, the default character is located in Game\objects\Characters\neutral_male.

In this case, we are interested in the SDK_character_male_LOD1.max file.

How to do it...

Let's begin by getting accustomed with the sample ragdoll file:

  1. Open the SDK_character_male_LOD1.max file.

    Note

    You will notice similarities with the main character file mentioned in the previous recipes. The deforming skeleton in this scene...