Crytek has announced that a new version of its CryEngine 3 free SDK is currently available. This new version comes with Dedicated Server support, revamped Launcher menu, a Sandbox Welcome screen, improvements to Terrain precision/smoothing, Maya 2013 Exporter, as well as many tweaks/fixes/cleanups to the Sandbox UI.

Those interested can download it from here.

Here is the changelog for the 3.4.3 version of the SDK:

Fixed:
• Thread stays locked on editor exit.
• Fixed particle targeting bugs: bShrink behavior, bIgnore flag.
• Potential crash due to wrong checks for MAX_SUB_MATERIALS array size.
• Fixed ParticleEffect entity Kill event, no longer requires Disable before Enable.
• Fixed the vehicleBurnPos was rotated 90 degrees wrong. The effect was pointing forward not up, now fixed.
• Fixed lifetime of emitters with ParticleLifeTime = 0: particles last through life of emitter, then die instantly.
• Fixed and optimized some bounding box computations.
• Clouds don’t render correctly.
• Launcher crashed on exit. Now shutdown game before renderer.
• Animation Graph Layout loading.
• Fixed crash when voxel objects flag “ComputeAO” is getting disabled.
• Moved Glow pass before Transparent pass, to not occlude particles.
• Fixed UISettings to work if some CVars are not defined.
• Fixed invalid CVar being called on PerfHUD ().
• Sandbox start position at 1024, should be 0.
• Ocean height not reset on new level.
• Tick render mesh only on the render thread.
• Fixed positioning and texture coords of newest particle in ConnectToOrigin mode.
• Fixed inefficient repetition of lookahead collision checks when turbulence enabled.
• Initialize EmitParticleData fields to fix FPE in debug.
• Save/load setting for AlwaysShowAdvancedHelpers in sandbox.
• Added fatal error in case Scaleform memory limit exceeded.
• Crashfix for Scaleform colorMatrixFilter.
• Sending ESYSTEM_EVENT_LEVEL_LOAD_START event twice in Sandbox.
• Proper fix for fog volume sorting: Set valid Distance value for RenderObjects for fog volumes and other render types. Fixed FogVolumeRenderNode distance function to return correct distance.
• Fixed crash on exit by preventing duplicate D3DSurface frees. Fixed a couple of other on-exit errors.
• Panning around in the Preview window cause key-repeat noise.
• Fixed RendParams.fDistance < 0 bug in particle geom rendering.
• Fix the fog volume render order bug.
• Switching away from a weapon with scope_mode = 1 without zooming in will always set your DrawNearFov to 60.
• Check against faulty gravity.
• Editor startup viewport rendering.
• Fixed programmatic EmitParticle function, e.g. muzzle flashes, sometimes ignored first emission. Now always emit in regular update thread, no longer special case in main thread.
• Crash: Entity:Attachment flownode doesn’t unregister itself as an entity event listener ().
• Tessellated object LODs cast shadow on next highest LOD.
• The raycast could have failed if the ray was passing through the intersection of several triangles.
• The raycast could fail if the start point is exactly on the edge of one triangle. This will make the first intersection returning a distance of 0 that should be excluded.
• Fixed level loading error handling.
• Potential Crash when drawing number of shadow frustums and allocs (r_displayinfo).
• Creating GravityVolume flowgraph node causes crash when going in-game.
• Fixed vehicle enter in profile build.
• Fixed “Runaway thread” log spam during voxel triangulation.
• Voxel editing log spam disabled.
• Fixed bugs with moving particle effects between parents; names were wrong, or effects disappeared. Simplified re-parenting APIs.
• Library Manager no longer adds unneeded 0 to new item names.
• Water is brown in the ‘Terrain Editor’ Preview window.
• Incorrect entity locator position when using animation blending.
• Fixed black polygons on Connected particles with ConnectToOrigin (prevent 0 axes).
• Corrected calculation of e_ParticlesMinDrawPixels check.
• Minimap generation / X-Axis bug.
• Problems with chain-linked physicalized entities.
• Fixed particle iteration infinite looping – inconsistent checking of sliding state. Removed unneeded ParticleUpdateContext.bHasDeviation.
• The else case of PushPointInsideTriangle was still using the locationToCenter instead of triangleCenter value.
• (Voxels causes very long surface generation times) disabled too precise computation of terrain normals.
• HMMWV Major overhaul damage/health levels and wheels/axle configs. Increased friction mod on the wheels and back/front differences. Reset the max dmg levels back to standard levels and also reduced the bullet dmg modifier back to 0.1
• Fix precision issue in ClosestPtPointTriangle (used by navigation system).
• Fixing the “canShoot” TPS test. The vWeaponDelta was wrongly calculated.
• Car reset broken for clients.
• Fix dynamic frozen shader, unify dynamic and static paths.
• Fixed some particle pulsing and initialization bugs.
• Fixes to emitter lifetime and priming computations.
• Fixed array bounds crash in tail rendering.
• Support for high resolution environment probes in DX9.

Optimization:
• Streamlined effect serialization functions, removed FStringConversion aggregated struct.
• Simplified application of MinPixels particle param. Param now also prevents distance culling.

Refactored:
• Cleaned up IParticles API: Replaced Manager.DeleteEmitter() with Emitter.Kill(); Emitter.GetParticleEffect() with GetEffect(). Removed duplicate and unused functions, fixed const.
• Renamed CParticleLocEmitter to more descriptive CParticleSource. Renamed LifeTime and StopAge members to EndAge, for consistency.
• Refactoring, saves struct memory and 100 lines of code. ParticleLocEmitter inherits from SParticleMoveState and SParticleTimeState, uses standard QuatTS composite type for location. Particle and Emitter now inherit directly from ParticleLocEmitter, for SubEmitter creation, saving duplicate code. Removed Particle.pChildEmitter.
• Simplified vortex and target movement functions.
• Changed separate location members in CParticle to standard QuatTS, for better interoperability and simplicity.

Tweak:
• Updated mine entity to use new asset.
• Added constants for globally tweaking particle lighting values (= 1 by default). Changed ambient lighting gradient to start at bottom, not horizontal.
• Using MNM by default for AI navigation.
• Added all rain entity properties to the flowevents + triggering Enabled and Disabled output ports.
• Updated advanced door.lua to point to existing asset. Updated localization text to reference “use_door” text.
• Enable r_ssdo 2 by default instead of 1, for sys_spec 4. 2 provides additional AO at no performance hit.
• Updated localization folder.
• Debug tool – v_debugsounds 1 – need modifying.
• Updated fan entity to use new model and updated explosion settings.
• Updated e_ParticlesDebug help. Made obsolete cvar e_ParticlesEmitterPoolSize invisible.
• Particle DebugBounds code now colors particle red when out of static bounds.
• Removed duplicate CVars from sys_spec 4.

New Feature:
• Game will wait for entered players.
• Read XML files from LUA.
• Added checkAmmo flownode.
• Added gravityInAirMult to arcadeWheeled.
• Arcadewheel improvements for stability.
• Coop Animation FG node now has a button to directly bring up a dialog with the available animations for the entities. This works the same way as the PlayAnimation and the SynchronizeAnimations FG node. (usability improvement).
• New FlowGraph node to set an AnimationGraph Variation Input via FG.
• IK FlowGraph Nodes: All IKTarget FG nodes now dynamically update the rotation and position offset – this allows for moving an IKTarget in local space at runtime.
• Update macro tooltips / target buttons on file changes.
• Ability to rename vegetation groups.
• Added “Remove Category” functionality to vegetation panel menu.
• Switch consoles to binary xml file format.
• Added a FG node to playback facial sequences on an entity.
• Added example macros.ini.
• Replaced SecondGeneration and SpawnOnParentCollision params with SpawnIndirection, with enums for Direct, ParentStart, ParentCollision, and (new) ParentDeath. Refactored parent container particle allocation, and ParticleCollection freelist management, to support emitting from expired parent particles. Freelist now cycles as a queue, keeping expired data longer.
• Added flag to set damage on flipped.
• Being able to disable devmode in non-release builds (-nodevmode command line pre-argument) – NON EDITOR ONLY.
• Added GlassShards screen effect.
• Render 3D model in HUD.
• Multiplayer map can be start with gamerules of choice.
• Coop FG Node allows optionally for an entity to be set as a target location instead of having to specify position and rotation individually (convenience)
• Converted tail history to also use QuatTS, now incorporate size history in tail rendering.

John Papadopoulos

John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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