Crytek announced today the release of a preview version for CRYENGINE that comes with a suite of major new features that will help developers achieve their vision more easily and make the engine even more accessible. The update is available today on Github where users can also find the full update notes and the development roadmap, which is shaped in conjunction with the CRYENGINE community.
CRYENGINE 5.4 Preview includes a beta version of the Vulkan renderer to accompany the DX12 implementation from last year. Vulkan is a cross-platform 3D graphics and compute API which enables developers to take advantage of high-performance real-time 3D graphics with balanced CPU / GPU usage. For the preview release, Vulkan support in CRYENGINE will be compatible for projects on PC, and the aim is to deploy additional Android support in future.
With CRYENGINE 5.4, users can now use Substance Archive files (*.sbsar) to create Substance Graph instances for texture generation. This is a workflow which was used by Crytek’s development team during the production of the award-winning Robinson: The Journey as well as the current production Hunt: Showdown, and is now available to all users within the Sandbox Editor.
Moreover, CRYENGINE 5.4 comes with a new component entity system, aiming to provide a modular and intuitive way to create games. This system will allow level designers to place standard prefabs into the game which can be used via Schematyc for event updating. This expands the ways in which non-coders can simply and rapidly create entire games with CRYENGINE.
Last but not least, CRYENGINE 5.4 expands the terrain system with upgrades to further raise the fidelity for landscapes. Objects may now be marked to become part of a terrain mesh, allowing a much higher level of detail and dramatically extending the capabilities and flexibility of CRYENGINE’s terrain editing tools. Developers can also take advantage of an improved terrain shader to support terrain object blending for blends between objects and the terrain with material falloff.
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.”
Contact: Email