Welcome to the “Crysis Monthly Update #18", the monthly report for our world-wide community. In this last month at Crytek, MyCrysis and Crymod, we've had an exciting time as the community has been as busy ever creating content for the Crysis franchise, as well as official releases and events from Crytek. This update includes a selection of some of the amazing work we've seen, showing just how creative our community is when it comes to Crysis modding. This month we also had two Inside Crytek interviews, the CryENGINE3 developer release, a brand new Review of the Week competition, and the Crysis Live event in the UK. Read on for further information!
Content: Crysis Monthly Update – September 2009
- CryENGINE3 Developer Release
- CryEngine 3 Licensees Update
- Crysis Live
- Community Corner featuring the 'Best of Crymod'
- Review of the Week
- Inside Crytek - Erik Staub and Brittany Leverette
Related Links:
- Forumbeitrag @ Crysis-HQ.com
- Ganze News @ Crysis-HQ.com CryEngine 3 Developer Release
October saw the release of the CryEngine 3 for developer use. This marked a big event for games developers everywhere, no more so than here at Crytek as it is the same engine that will be used by Crysis 2. See below for full details including some videos of CryEngine 3 in action.
| quote: | ||
 Since GDC Europe, we here at Crytek have spent time polishing up CryENGINE3 to release standard, and today we're ready to release the engine to developers! To mark this event we've got a brand new tech demo to show you as well as a new website launch showing off all the features of CryENGINE3. Read below to check out the press release as well as the brand new MyCryENGINE website! Press Release
New Website As well as the official launch, we have a brand new website to mark its release and provide you and developers with all you need to know about the engine. Including a gallery, tech specs and more, this website will be the home of all future news and information on the CryENGINE technology. Visit it at MyCryENGINE.com!  Tech Demo As well as the release, new information and website, we've also got a brand new tech demo showcasing more features of CryENGINE3. We'll be providing a high quality download soon, in the meantime, check out the flash version below! HD Trailer That's all for today's news post. To discuss what you've seen or to find out more information, check out the related links below! Related Links: - Forum Thread: http://www.crymod.com/thread.php?threadid=55176 - Official Website: MyCryENGINE.com - MyCrysis Staff Team |
CryEngine 3 Licensees
Not long after the announcement of CryEngine 3 being available to developers, we are very pleased to announce our first official licensee to be acclaimed developer, OnNet.
| INFO: | ||
|
Welcome to an official Crytek news post regarding the recent license acquirement of CryENGINE3 by acclaimed developer OnNet. Below you can read the official press release from Crytek regarding the license! Official Press Release:
To read more Crytek news and check out the latest updates from the company, remember to visit Crytek.com! Related Links: - Official Website: Crytek.com - MyCrysis Staff Team |
GameCity and Crytek UK Present: Crysis Live!
Crytek UK teams up with GameCity to present a unique event. Read on for more information.
| INFO: | ||
 Crytek UK and GameCity are proud to announce an extraordinary and totally unique collaboration for GameCity Squared, 2009’s iteration of the World’s best loved videogame festival. Not content with allowing players to sample gameplay through the safety of a monitor, for two full days, the entire Festival arena in the Market Square will be transformed into a live, full-scale recreation of the Crysis universe – and you can play it for real! Read below to find out more information on the event. Crysis - Live! Below you can read about the event organisation as well as some of the background information about the event.
  If you'd like to comment on or discuss the event, then head over to the forum thread on Crymod here. Related Links: - Forum Thread: Crysis - Live! - Official Announcement: GameCity - MyCrysis Staff Team |
Community Corner
This month, the Crymod Weekly Roundup continued to surprise the Crytek staff and community, highlighting some of the best work from the community each week. In this CMU, we're going to focus on some of the most impressive work from these roundups. We also introduced a tutorial of the week feature to reward community additions to the ever growing CryWiki.
| INFO: |
| Delapidated Industrial Building This week we're also showing you a great asset update from forum member themodman101, who has been working on more dilapidated buildings. This time he's been creating an industrial model set, screenshots of which you can see below. |
| INFO: |
| MechWarrior: Living Legends - September 2009 Update This week we're also showing you a great mod update from the MechWarrior: Living Legends mod. Sean Tracy and the team have been hard at work polishing up the mod for an imminent release, and some of their best latest work is displayed below. |
| INFO: |
| Not so long ago, we announced the return of the Tutorial of the Week feature. For those who missed the initial announcement, the new system works by having the best tutorial produced in the given week selected by the CryWiki Staff Team, and then this will be recorded on a special CryWiki page located here. Prizes can be won if you manage to get enough tutorials featured as the Tutorial of the Week, including Crysis merchandise and a custom forum title. Today we'll be taking a look at the first winner of the new feature; read on for more. This Week's Winner Bringing the community an excellent tutorial on using solids as physicalised objects, Metroid756! The tutorial covers setting up the solid and the process of making that model ready for acting as a physicalised entity capable of responding to the world around it. To view the full tutorial on CryWiki, simply click the thumbnail below.  The next announcement will be made on the 25th of October, giving you a week to write any tutorials you may be working on. Congratulations to today's winner, and good luck to all the future tutorial writers! Related Links - Tutorial: Physicalised Solids - Awards Page: TotW |
Review of the Week
This month we also kicked off our review of the week feature, where you guys get a chance to win some cool Crysis merchandise by submitting a review to a specific level, asset or mod. Since we introduced the feature we had some great entrants; shown below is the results of this month's latest contest.
| INFO: | ||||
 Introduction The first ever winner of Review of the Week is announced, prizes are distributed, a change to the format and a new name for the event all takes place this week! There was a high amount of interest in Review of the Week from both MyCrysis and CryMod community members but also a general consensus that one week was not enough time for a complete review. For this reason, we will be extending the review period from one week to two weeks for all future events. In addition, we are renaming the competition to a rather more accurate; 'The MyCryMod Review'. So starting today, Monday 26th October you will have two weeks to get your entries in for your chance to win some exclusive Crytek merchandise! All submissions must be made before Monday 9th November. Remember, you are free to submit this review in any format you wish so try to make it creative, constructive and interesting for everyone, good luck to all participants! The Review This time around the featured download is from Cry-[HP], released back in June 2008 for the Intel Crysis Mapping Contest, it is a single player level called Vulcano. Once you have played through the level and are ready to write/submit your review you can do so by following this guide;
Review of the Week #1 Winner The winner from our first week of competition is none other than Vigilante, thanks to a thorough and clear review he has earned himself a Crytek T-Shirt and Mousepad!   Below is an extract from his review, the full post can be found here.
Additional Information Make sure to submit your reviews on time to be in with a chance of winning some Crytek merchandise. If you miss the deadline then your review will not be eligible for winning that week. If you have any questions regarding this event you can either comment on this post or PM a staff member, under no circumstances should you post your queries in the review forum. Good luck to all participants! - MyCrysis Team |
Inside Crytek
As well as formulating review of the weeks, we've had some quality interviews from Eric Staub, a producer on Crysis 2, and Brittany Leverette, a talent co-ordinator here at Crytek. You can check out their interviews below!
Eric's Inside Crytek Article complete with Community Q & A
| INFO: | ||||||
| Cry-Lee Normal 1 0 2009-04-29T12:32:00Z 1 CRYTEK 1 1 11.9999 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
|
||||||
| INFO: |
| Introduction It's now time for the response to Erik's questions set by you, the community. So, you said that you like cooking... What meal is you specialty? Creole Cuisine in general, the secret of cooking is to know your ingredients and blend them together like a painting, ever flavor and color at the right time. Can you give some examples of what your work is? Working on marketing? Things like making commercials etc Well, marketing is to prepare a product for a market, reach out to the customer and give the customer the feeling that the product is “need to have” item. Advertising means to tell the customer what the product is about and create even more of a sense of desire for the product. I start out very unromantic and neutral by analyzing the market the core customers and the competition; then I take those ingredients and cook a fine marketing meal out of it. And for desert, there’s the merchandising :) But No, I don’t make commercials, I see to it that good agencies and Film production companies make then as good as it possibly gets. As a producer, do you have any creative input or hands on creation of things in the game? Yes; to a certain extent, but I try to keep it in the background. My responsibility lies more in controlling quality and enabling artists and directors to achieve the quality. It’s a team effort and a producer tries to reduce the Ego. How many months before releasing a game do you start working on the merchandizing and marketing stuff? This is not bound to a date, you start planning and thinking about merchandising and marketing from the beginning on. It’s just not a huge load of stuff in the beginning of a game production, as the project grows and more elements of the game are being created and the story progresses you try to come up with ways and details to reveal and a timeframe in which this can happen. At some point of course if a release date is set, you start planning to this point. Do you feel the original Crysis could have had more promotional material circulated? I don’t think Crysis was short on promotion. I was not involved in the project back then but I think the hype that was created was to focused on the technical superiority and the fact that you would need a new super computer to play it, well I had a two year old PC at that time, and it played Crysis fine, not on high spec but still looking better than any other game on the market, and most important, IT WAS F***ING AWESOME FUN What's your favorite project you've worked on in the past? Past – Present – Future
CRYSIS 2
Ever thought/were asked to participate in a horror movie? YES, I was involved in a few SF and horror projects, the last time I got in contact with the genre I was asked to direct a Vampire film in France, but the production company didn’t pursue the project further. This happens a lot in the film industry. Do you think sex sells? (even though Crytek have a sex-free history) [GTAIV 18+] I know that Sex sells, but you need a franchise or a story that fits, or sometimes a product isn’t good enough and needs a sales boost. Crysis is a great game, it doesn’t need Sex to sell it. What products did you promote? The list is very long you can check it out on my LinkedIn profile http://www.linkedin.com/pub/erik-staub/10/56a/7b0 COMING SOON Is that a question? If it is, and I guess you just want to know when we release Crysis2 I honestly don’t know an exact date, we are trying to create the best game ever, and this, you can’t just nail to a date and yell it out to everybody, what if we think we need another month to make it even better, everybody would be disappointed by us not keeping the promised date, but no one recognizes the fact that we are doing this to give you fans out there an even better game, once we are certain to what date we can give you guys the best possible Crysis2, we will tell you. What exactly does your job involve? I can only give a few examples, since the job is rather organic in nature and it involves many things and sometime unexpected tasks are added. I produce results, this means I create a framework in which a creative team can go about their creativity and doesn’t need to worry about anything other than creating. I oversee this process and jump in whenever there’s the need for anything the team needs help with. And if I do my job right the team creates a great game, and if not it’s my fault, sometimes life isn’t fair, but that’s the way it is. When working on design, whether it's sound or other, do you ever use a MAC? Or is your work strictly Windows PC based? Basically everything is Windows based, even though some people including me also work on a MAC when necessary, but in a company the size of CRYTEK it is very important to have a consistent network. We have an awesome IT department, and they need to keep the network save and running, and that is much easier with everything on running Windows. Are you going to officially support Windows 7 and fix some issues a fair deal of Windows 7 users have been dealing with? I know Crysis2 will run on Windows 7, but I don’t know what issues you are talking about. I trust our R&D team to take care of these things; I am not involved in the software engineering part. Do you listen to music when working? I listen to music whenever I get the chance to do so, but I have to be in a lot of meeting every day, when I need an acoustic coffee in the morning my favorite wakeup call is a song called COMBUSTION by a Swedish band called MESHUGGAH. If so what type/artist do you prefer to listen to when working? Other than that I like to listen to internet radio, mostly a station called whisperings, solo piano music, to keep me calm. A big thank you to Erik for answering so many questions as in depth as he has. Please check back next week for another Inside Crytek Article! -MyCrysis Team |
Brittany's Inside Crytek Article complete with Community Q & A
| INFO: | ||||||
|
||||||
| INFO: |
| Introduction It's now time for the response to Brittany's questions set by you, the community. Brittany joined us all the way from South Carolina, USA and currently holds the position of Talent Coordinator (Intern). Her responses can be found below and cover a wide range of topics such as being one of the few women around the office, where she sees Crytek in ten years, our relocation process as well as a few more! Where do you come from? (Your name sounds French) I am an American (from South Carolina). Leverette does sound French, but I actually think it is English. I have French and German ancestry, among other nationalities as well. I’m sort of a meshed combination of different cultures. What is it like having to potentially deny someone a position? The first few times I had to reject someone, I did feel a little remorse. No one likes to be the bearer of bad news. But then again, that is part of my job, so you just try to be as polite and courteous as possible. Do you like your job? I love my job. I like to meet all the different candidates that come in, and I love the feeling that what I am doing is actually helping individuals. I am a provider of information, and I like the feeling that I am able to give people answers. I still have a lot to learn, but I am definitely enjoying it! Is Crytek a male dominated company? Absolutely. I’d say there are probably a total of 20-30 women at the Crytek Frankfurt office (out of approx. 250-300 people). It is a very small ratio between women and men here. Most of the women in the Frankfurt office are either in Human Resources or Administration. Where do you see Crytek in 10 years? I definitely see Crytek being even more successful and much more well-known. I think we are going to become much more popular not only in the industry, but with different audiences. We are already quite successful, but I think we are currently getting a little taste of the success to come. I also think our CryEngine will be an extremely successful tool for us, as well as giving us the opportunity to produce relationships with other industries that might use it. As you say you’re not familiar with the video-gaming lingo at the moment, does this make it difficult when interviewing candidates for the jobs? Well, I don’t directly do the interviewing; I just contact the candidate and serve as a messenger between the candidate and the teams. But at times, yes, it is a little challenging to understand the teams’ needs in potential candidates. Since I am in contact with candidates about positions, sometimes the teams use the lingo in order to communicate to me the next steps with the candidate. But I simply just ask them what they mean, and we go on. However, over time, I really start to understand more and “get the hang of it” because I am constantly dealing with it on a daily basis. It’s never bad to ask if you don’t know! Can you explain the “leadership potential "issue a little bit more? Preferably with an example? Leadership potential to me is seizing an opportunity and not letting it pass you by because of fear. If you really feel you are good at something, then take a leap of faith and try to be the best you can in that field. For instance, if you know you are good at what you do, and an opportunity arises (i.e. relocating to another office/position, stepping in to a more challenging position, etc.) do not be afraid to pursue it. You will always regret what you wish you would have done. Your leadership potential is achieving the best for yourself, and allowing yourself to grow and learn, and to be the best you possibly can be. Can you tell us more about the "onboarding program"? What kind of things do the newcomers do at this program? Our On Boarding Program would consist of an introduction to Crytek, as well as information on the surrounding areas (Frankfurt). It serves as an Orientation for new employees, so that they don’t feel overwhelmed their first week of work. We want them to know what is expected of them in relation to their positions and responsibilities, yet also know the value of working for Crytek. We want to make it a fun, welcoming experience, not a scary, intimidating one. We are looking at offering SDK (Software Development Kit) classes to different departments (i.e. Animators, Programmers, etc.). This would cover everything from basics to know-how about complex tools. So, in general, it is a range of information for new employees – from explanations about health coverage to specifics for their particular team. Do you have problems with candidates who have to relocate from different countries or towns? I wouldn’t say there are problems :), just complications. Sometimes we do get strange questions of what kinds of items employees want to move over here. Some countries are much more difficult in acquiring a German work visa, but no matter the circumstance we make it happen smoothly for our new employees. Do you decide what kind of job postings will be posted on the Crytek site? I speak with the different teams and find out which positions they need to fill. Then, I get a job description from them on that particular position and post it on the site. So all in all, I ask them and they send me the necessary information directly. - MyCrysis Team |
