Book Image

CryENGINE Game Programming with C++, C#, and Lua

Book Image

CryENGINE Game Programming with C++, C#, and Lua

Overview of this book

CryENGINE is a complete 3D game development solution that can run on multiple platforms. It is orientated around giving intuitive tools to the developer. A variety of interactive video games can be created using CryENGINE. CryENGINE is one of the most beginner-friendly engines out there to learn. If you are interested in diving into the various systems and understanding their workings in a way that is easily understood, then this book is for you. This book provides you with the knowledge to tame the powerful but hard-to-master CryENGINE. CryENGINE Game Programming with C++, C#, and Lua dives into the various systems and explains their workings in a way that can be easily understood by developers of all levels. It provides knowledge on the engine along with step-by-step exercises and detailed information on the backend implementation of the subsystems, giving you an excellent foundation to build upon when developing your own CryENGINE games. Written by developers with years of CryENGINE experience, this book breaks down the common confusion that encompasses the CryENGINE engine code, guiding you through a series of chapters aimed towards giving you the ability to create your own games in a rapid yet productive fashion. You will learn everything you need to know in order to create your own CryENGINE-powered games as well as detailed information on how to use the engine to your advantage. By teaching systems such as audio, particle effects, rendering, AI, networking, and more, we'll be exposing the most inner parts of CryENGINE that commonly confuse programmers. If you want to quickly gain the knowledge required to create your own CryENGINE game title, then this book is for you.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
CryENGINE Game Programming with C++, C#, and Lua
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Shaders


Creating a custom shader in CryENGINE is relatively easy, and can be done simply by copying an existing shader (.cfx) and its extension file (.ext). For the sake of this example, copy Illum.ext from Engine/Shaders and name it MyShader.ext. Then copy Engine/Shaders/HWScripts/CryFX/Illum.cfx and rename it to MyShader.cfx.

Note that creating custom shaders should be thought out properly; if it is possible to simply use an existing shader, that would be the best option. This is due to the fact that CryENGINE is already reaching the viable limit of the number of shader permutations.

Note

As stated earlier in the chapter, custom shader authoring was not enabled in the CryENGINE Free SDK at the time this book was written.

The shader description

Each shader needs to define a description, which sets its options. Options are set in the global Script variable, as shown in the following code:

float Script : STANDARDSGLOBAL
<
  string Script =        
           "Public;"
           "SupportsDeferredShading...