6 ms·

It's interesting that Unreal releases end up always on the front page, but when Crytek released the source code of Cryengine 5 for free ~3 weeks ago [1] (with D

It's interesting that Unreal releases end up always on the front page, but when Crytek released the source code of Cryengine 5 for free ~3 weeks ago [1] (with DX12, official C# bindings, volumetric clouds, no royalties, even better renderer, VR support for all major VR headsets, Python scriptable editor based on QT, a humble bundle including Ryse assets etc.) it didn't even scratch the front page. I know most people prefer Unreal for ease of use, documentation etc. but I also read often that they like the technology of Cryengine better (real time GI (SVOTI), better performance, better skin and eye shader for example), so I would have thought that the free source code release would stir things up. Yes, Unreal released the full source code long ago, so they (Crytek) are late to the party, and the marketing of Crytek is... not the best (to put it kindly), but why is it that the Cryengine 5 release was not really discussed on HN? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11294763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11294763 [1 comment --> I myself] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11300017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11300017 [0 comments] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11313695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11313695 [0 comments] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11295419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11295419 [0 comments] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11297215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11297215 [0 comments]

stesch 11y ago
I'm guessing it's more an inherit problem of how Hacker News works. Good posts get ignored all the time. Just take a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/newest https://news.ycombinator.com/newest And not every Unreal post gets to the front page. The exact same link was submitted way earlier and if the dupe check would have worked this wouldn't be on the front page because nobody would have seen it.
- redtuesday 11y ago
  Ok, I should have made that clearer. What I meant was that at least one post on a minor release of Unreal gets to the front page (at least when I'm browsing HN, maybe later or earlier in the day the postings are not on the front page). Out of curiosity I checked my above claim and it was wrong (hehe), but many releases hit the front page: 4.11 - now 4.10 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10548139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10548139 [75 comments] 4.9 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10147368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10147368 [50 comments] 4.8 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9694885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9694885 [98 comments] 4.7 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9103050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9103050 [88 comments] ??? (when they released UE4 for free) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9132815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9132815 [240 comments] 4.0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7429774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7429774 [163 comments] But it's probably as you say. Not every interesting post (which also depends on the readers interests, of course) get's to the front page. Coupled with the bigger mindshare of Unreal, and the not so interesting Cryengine releases in the past (especially compared to Unreal) we get more Unreal postings on HN.
  - dang 11y ago
    The best way to affect this is to post more good stories yourself. You can also add a first comment to the thread explaining what you think is good or important about the story.
- TrevorJ 11y ago
  Tech isn't the only important factor with software, community matters a lot. I've used Unity, Cryengine and Unreal. Crytek has some great tech but they are very deficient in supporting the community and Epic has invested a huge amount of resources into training, content, tools and even no-strings attached grants for devs working in Unreal. I'm not surprised at all that this has translated to more goodwill for Ue4 on HN than other engines.
  - potatolicious 11y ago
    Not to mention the focus of the game industry (and game players) has shifted towards mobile in the last few years. UE and Unity both support, and are heavily used, for mobile games, while CryEngine is behind on that front. Even strictly just on the PC gaming side of things, Unreal's adoption rate among game devs is miles and miles ahead of CryEngine. Is it really that hard to imagine why the community cares more about Unreal Engine than CryEngine? This has been true for years, idTech, while being arguably technically more impressive, was being written about far less because while it's ostensibly licensable, nobody actually did it.
tinco 11y ago
I just registered at CryEngine because of your comment. Unfortunately, I can't find out how I can get the source after registering for an account. There's only a link to a 'launcher', but it's a .exe and doesn't seem to run on Linux. Googling lands me in their manual that does have a page on compiling for linux, but nowhere does it say how to get the source. Maybe I'm not a typical game developer, as I don't like to do my actual developing on Windows, but in UE4 I've always felt as a well-loved second class citizen.
- maccard 11y ago
  Afaik the editor is Windows only for cry engine. You get the source code as part of the launcher download, and you use that to compile for linux
Aoyagi 11y ago
Thank you! I hate this massive imbalance in the publicity. UE4 gets almost everything. When a game is in UE4, you can be sure it will be mention in every article about the game, likely even in the title. But CryEngine? Nothing. CE5 was released and the only thing that's happened was that a few people found out CE(4) existed.
- trendnet 11y ago
  How many games were released on CryEngine? How many on UE 3/4? How many devs are there from the UE 3 days when a lot of AAA titles were some in-house UE 3 variants. I love Crytek products, but I don't see any problems with the upvote distribution. Don't forget that every minor release of UE 4 contains an enormous list of new features and bug fixes which is impressive in its own way considering the release cycle is 3-4 months.
- krisdol 11y ago
  As a Linux user, most other engines, including CryEngine, have nothing to offer me. Unreal was also the first "free" open source release of that class of engine.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Well, it's not Linux is the primary target for commercial game engines (Unreal included) in the first place. Desktop Linux is a tiny niche (measured to below 2%), and Linux gaming even smaller part of that. Heck, even OS X which got around 10% doesn't get much love, gaming wise...
    - mixedCase 11y ago
      >Desktop Linux is a tiny niche (measured to below 2%), Not for developers. And both Unreal and Unity have Linux editors and support compiling for Linux.
      - coldtea 11y ago
        Not for web/server/backend developers, but YES for game developers.
zanny 11y ago
I personally at least cannot care much about CryEngine as long as its DX only. What is interesting about UE4 is how it is effectively a universal engine for all platforms, including the web.
- kitsunesoba 11y ago
  While I don't particularly care about web support, I agree. Cryengine being chained to DirectX is a problem for me as well. Windows is not my development platform of choice and the possibility of releasing for non-Windows platforms is important - I'm willing to take a cut in graphical capabilities for it.
coldtea 11y ago
>It's interesting that Unreal releases end up always on the front page, but when Crytek released the source code of Cryengine 5 for free ~3 weeks ago [1] (with DX12, official C# bindings, volumetric clouds, no royalties, even better renderer, VR support for all major VR headsets, Python scriptable editor based on QT, a humble bundle including Ryse assets etc.) it didn't even scratch the front page. Maybe the fact that I, a random dev, know Unreal from 100 other sources and sites, but have seldom heard about Cryengine explains that?
magicalist 11y ago
In addition to the other responses you got, don't underestimate the power of presentation of content. Even as someone who is stuck at the "I should really do something with Unreal one of these days" level, there's a ton in this post for me to read and easily grasp about the changes they made. Even smaller features have enough about them I can speculate about the changes that had to be made under the hood to enable them, and what I could do with them if I ever actually followed through on trying Unreal out. The screenshots are particularly nice. Another great example of this sort of thing is the Dolphin progress reports. It seems a little silly (it's just extended descriptions and some screenshots), but the effect is real and the effort needed is just often not made because those closest to a project either don't see the need because they're so close, or are exhausted from pushing a major release of the project so just don't have the time or energy to put into a good post about the release. So, for example, the Cryengine 5 release post is about a major development and there's plenty to discuss there, but there's not a ton of substance to the post, and it's certainly not very engaging for anyone not in the thick of the industry (and maybe not even for them).

stesch 11y ago

I'm guessing it's more an inherit problem of how Hacker News works. Good posts get ignored all the time. Just take a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/newest https://news.ycombinator.com/newest And not every Unreal post gets to the front page. The exact same link was submitted way earlier and if the dupe check would have worked this wouldn't be on the front page because nobody would have seen it.

redtuesday 11y ago
Ok, I should have made that clearer. What I meant was that at least one post on a minor release of Unreal gets to the front page (at least when I'm browsing HN, maybe later or earlier in the day the postings are not on the front page). Out of curiosity I checked my above claim and it was wrong (hehe), but many releases hit the front page: 4.11 - now 4.10 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10548139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10548139 [75 comments] 4.9 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10147368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10147368 [50 comments] 4.8 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9694885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9694885 [98 comments] 4.7 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9103050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9103050 [88 comments] ??? (when they released UE4 for free) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9132815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9132815 [240 comments] 4.0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7429774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7429774 [163 comments] But it's probably as you say. Not every interesting post (which also depends on the readers interests, of course) get's to the front page. Coupled with the bigger mindshare of Unreal, and the not so interesting Cryengine releases in the past (especially compared to Unreal) we get more Unreal postings on HN.
- dang 11y ago
  The best way to affect this is to post more good stories yourself. You can also add a first comment to the thread explaining what you think is good or important about the story.
TrevorJ 11y ago
Tech isn't the only important factor with software, community matters a lot. I've used Unity, Cryengine and Unreal. Crytek has some great tech but they are very deficient in supporting the community and Epic has invested a huge amount of resources into training, content, tools and even no-strings attached grants for devs working in Unreal. I'm not surprised at all that this has translated to more goodwill for Ue4 on HN than other engines.
- potatolicious 11y ago
  Not to mention the focus of the game industry (and game players) has shifted towards mobile in the last few years. UE and Unity both support, and are heavily used, for mobile games, while CryEngine is behind on that front. Even strictly just on the PC gaming side of things, Unreal's adoption rate among game devs is miles and miles ahead of CryEngine. Is it really that hard to imagine why the community cares more about Unreal Engine than CryEngine? This has been true for years, idTech, while being arguably technically more impressive, was being written about far less because while it's ostensibly licensable, nobody actually did it.

tinco 11y ago

I just registered at CryEngine because of your comment. Unfortunately, I can't find out how I can get the source after registering for an account. There's only a link to a 'launcher', but it's a .exe and doesn't seem to run on Linux. Googling lands me in their manual that does have a page on compiling for linux, but nowhere does it say how to get the source. Maybe I'm not a typical game developer, as I don't like to do my actual developing on Windows, but in UE4 I've always felt as a well-loved second class citizen.

maccard 11y ago
Afaik the editor is Windows only for cry engine. You get the source code as part of the launcher download, and you use that to compile for linux

Aoyagi 11y ago

Thank you! I hate this massive imbalance in the publicity. UE4 gets almost everything. When a game is in UE4, you can be sure it will be mention in every article about the game, likely even in the title. But CryEngine? Nothing. CE5 was released and the only thing that's happened was that a few people found out CE(4) existed.

trendnet 11y ago
How many games were released on CryEngine? How many on UE 3/4? How many devs are there from the UE 3 days when a lot of AAA titles were some in-house UE 3 variants. I love Crytek products, but I don't see any problems with the upvote distribution. Don't forget that every minor release of UE 4 contains an enormous list of new features and bug fixes which is impressive in its own way considering the release cycle is 3-4 months.
krisdol 11y ago
As a Linux user, most other engines, including CryEngine, have nothing to offer me. Unreal was also the first "free" open source release of that class of engine.
- coldtea 11y ago
  Well, it's not Linux is the primary target for commercial game engines (Unreal included) in the first place. Desktop Linux is a tiny niche (measured to below 2%), and Linux gaming even smaller part of that. Heck, even OS X which got around 10% doesn't get much love, gaming wise...
  - mixedCase 11y ago
    >Desktop Linux is a tiny niche (measured to below 2%), Not for developers. And both Unreal and Unity have Linux editors and support compiling for Linux.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      Not for web/server/backend developers, but YES for game developers.

zanny 11y ago

I personally at least cannot care much about CryEngine as long as its DX only. What is interesting about UE4 is how it is effectively a universal engine for all platforms, including the web.

kitsunesoba 11y ago
While I don't particularly care about web support, I agree. Cryengine being chained to DirectX is a problem for me as well. Windows is not my development platform of choice and the possibility of releasing for non-Windows platforms is important - I'm willing to take a cut in graphical capabilities for it.

coldtea 11y ago

>It's interesting that Unreal releases end up always on the front page, but when Crytek released the source code of Cryengine 5 for free ~3 weeks ago [1] (with DX12, official C# bindings, volumetric clouds, no royalties, even better renderer, VR support for all major VR headsets, Python scriptable editor based on QT, a humble bundle including Ryse assets etc.) it didn't even scratch the front page. Maybe the fact that I, a random dev, know Unreal from 100 other sources and sites, but have seldom heard about Cryengine explains that?

magicalist 11y ago

In addition to the other responses you got, don't underestimate the power of presentation of content. Even as someone who is stuck at the "I should really do something with Unreal one of these days" level, there's a ton in this post for me to read and easily grasp about the changes they made. Even smaller features have enough about them I can speculate about the changes that had to be made under the hood to enable them, and what I could do with them if I ever actually followed through on trying Unreal out. The screenshots are particularly nice. Another great example of this sort of thing is the Dolphin progress reports. It seems a little silly (it's just extended descriptions and some screenshots), but the effect is real and the effort needed is just often not made because those closest to a project either don't see the need because they're so close, or are exhausted from pushing a major release of the project so just don't have the time or energy to put into a good post about the release. So, for example, the Cryengine 5 release post is about a major development and there's plenty to discuss there, but there's not a ton of substance to the post, and it's certainly not very engaging for anyone not in the thick of the industry (and maybe not even for them).