Preface

The complexity and difficulty involved in making current generation games is increasing. Even the games industry itself is becoming a more competitive and demanding industry to work, than it has been in the past. Project budgets are smaller, production times are shorter, and milestones seem to come more often, especially when working with a publisher. With the increased time and expertise required to engineer these games, many professional and hobbyist developers alike have turned to middleware game engines, such as the CryENGINE, to save them time, money, and frustration, while manifesting their ideas into releasable games.

The CryENGINE is a comfortable fit for most developers, because it allows users to create their content quickly, iterate on that content, and to finalize it without leaving the comfort of the CryENGINE's Sandbox Editor. I often refer to the CryENGINE as a force multiplier, since its tools make it possible for smaller teams to accomplish what used to take an entire development studio, full of people. This book is an introduction to the CryENGINE technology, and is comprised of achievable, small-scale examples, which can be applied in almost any game genre. This book is not designed to cover exhaustively every feature and function in the CryENGINE, but rather is designed to give you the knowledge and tools needed to get you of to a smooth and painless start when making your own games with the CryENGINE 3.