Chris Roberts defends CRYENGINE: "I don't look back and say 'I wish I'd gone with Unreal'."

DSOGaming writes: "Star Citizen – and its SP counterpart, Squadron 42 – has been in development for five years. The game is powered by CRYENGINE and is among the most ambitious projects we’ve ever seen. However, the game appears to be nowhere near to completion. Not only that, but Cloud Imperium had to rewrite entire whole sections of the engine so that it could support the specific needs of Star Citizen. Still, Chris Roberts defended CRYENGINE, claiming that these changes had to be made, and that things would not have been better if the team chose Unreal Engine 4 or Unity."

[Pandamobile]

That's not really surprising considering Crytek has been assisting RSI with custom engine modules. Crytek's recent financial woes has probably been super helpful for RSI because they're one of their biggest and most important clients right now. Epic wouldn't have been able to give them the same level of one-on-one support.

[TacticAce]

I think this game will be a game changer no pun. Cant wait to see the finished product!

[R6ex]

Yeah. My PC specs is ready. My Saitek HOTAS is ready. Just waiting for SQ42 to drop!

[warriorcase]

I think I saw somewhere that a fair few of the actual Crytek team now work inhouse hired on at Cloud Imperium aswell

[Pandamobile]

Sean Tracy comes to mind. He's the content technical director at CIG now.

[IanTH]

More than a fair few, in fact. When Crytek couldn't pay employees and massive turnover happened, RSI scooped up huge numbers of these guys. It shifted the dynamic of how things were being developed between the different studios at different locations which caused problems of their own.

Saw the article summary on PC Gamer, then read the source Kotaku UK article. Quite an interesting read. Makes you realize just how far off this game really is, and makes you further question how feasible it will be for them to pull it all off.

[Tech5]

Which ever works better for them. as long as they can make a great game.

[ShadowKnight]

Yes I agree

[OoglyBoogly]

I'm glad they stuck with Cryengine. Something about Unreal and all the games looking slightly the same is off putting to me. It's just over used and recognizable...just like that one male voice actor that you hear in every goddamn anime and video game made in the past 10 years (Steve Blum is his name).

Plus I think Cryengine looks better regardless. While Unreal has made some nice changes in recent years Cryengine just has that extra level of polish or something...

[Jman2]

Most games look the same from unreal or unity due to them useing ubershaders or dynamic branching where you have a single shader to handle every object, this prevents switching shaders in the pipeline multiple times which can slow down the GPU. The problem with this is alot of games end up looking similar or familiar due to the fact the shaders are the same. They also use the same physics system and sound systems unless they implement there own which means things feel very similar.

Most company's don't have the investment or time to scratch build and maintain engines so it's just the trade off.

[WeAreLegion]

To be fair, that's mostly Unreal 3. Unreal 4 is a different beast.

[Jman2]

Yea brdf does make it harder to tell due to it being physically accurate well an approximation. I haven't gotten hold of unreal yet ha.

[NotEvenMyFinalForm]

IMO, Cryengine games have always looked better than Unreal's.

[mahmoods26]

It's nothing new. Developers have been rewriting game engines for ages. Plus, you can complain all you like, the results speak for themselves. It's not like the time they put in was wasted.

[Lamboomington]

They would have had to do the same regardless of which engine they chose. It's not like Unreal had the features they need for their game. No engine would support that. They'd either have to create a custom engine themselves or heavily modify current ones.

[xxjabberxx]

I don't really like the games that use Unreal engine. For some reason they look...well unreal to me. There is something that I can't put my finger on and graphics look fake to me. Cryengine to me looks better. Although rocket league was fun but the graphics made me sick after a hours of playing.

[strayanalog]

"I don't look back and say 'I wish I'd gone with Unreal'." - said Denis Dyack never.

[JEECE]

Well, they say this now, but there will probably be 3-4 new engines to compare cryengine to when Star Citizen actually releases in 4 years.