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

Introducing the entity system


The entity system exists to spawn and manage entities in the game world. Entities are logical containers, allowing drastic changes in behavior at runtime. For example, an entity can change its model, position, and orientation at any point in the game.

Consider this; every item, weapon, vehicle, and even player that you have interacted with in the engine is an entity. The entity system is one of the most important modules present in the engine, and is dealt regularly by programmers.

The entity system, accessible via the IEntitySystem interface, manages all entities in the game. Entities are referenced to using the entityId type definition, which allows 65536 unique entities at any given time.

If an entity is marked for deletion, for example, IEntity::Remove(bool bNow = false), the entity system will delete this prior to updating at the start of the next frame. If the bNow parameter is set to true, the entity will be removed right away.

Entity classes

Entities are...