GDC Europe 2013 - "Crafting the World of Crysis" (Crytek)

During my time at GDC Europe 2013, I had the possibility to attend one of the sessions. I decided to visit one of Crytek's presentations, regarding their "visual arts" and the process of creating the world of "Crysis" (1-3).  I personally think that the presentation was totally interesting, and so I want to share some information I got there with you :)

[[Attention: This entry will be ONLY about Crytek's "Crysis"-series and their CryEngine 3. So if you're not interested in either one of these, I recommend to skip this entry :') ]]

The presentation took place on Tuesday, 19th of August at 11:00 a.m. in congress hall 2 at the 4th level of "Congress-Center Ost" (Eastern Congress Center) and was held by Felix Leyendecker, who's working for Crytek's 3D-Artist team.

Crysis (1) took place in a kinda tropical environment (including frozen areas and an alien spaceship), Crytek decided to change the setting to a more urban style, since several critics argued that the CryEngine was only able to put a good look on tropical and more natural settings - so they wanted to prove and show what their artists were able to achieve with their engine.
Anyway, Crytek didn't want to drop the image of a "jungle" as such, what's the main reason for their decision to launch an "urban jungle" which was inspired by the city of New York.

(Screenshot by www.cinemablend.com)

(Screenshot taken from vg247.com)

Since both of those titles were a huge success, they directly started developing Crysis 3 - just right after Crysis 2 was released. Crysis 3 was inspired by nature, by NYC (again) and - of course - by Crysis 2. In the following picture (I hope you can see it properly...? D: ?) you can see both, the inspiration (nature, left) and what they managed to create out of that (right).

Even though Crytek was open minded regarding some new settings, they tried to fulfill their fans' wish to obtain another "jungle" for their new Crysis. While they were already working on the game, they set up an own team to arrange new patches and to optimize their engine (and so, their games as well) for consoles, because it was obvious that their main storage differs a lot compared to a computer's one.

Crytek benefit from using their own level-editors and their own engine, since it allows to "see what you're working at". The engine works in real-time, which means that you can actually already see what it will look like in the game, just from that moment when someone starts to create it. Additionally, the art team, which was responsible for both the design and the textures, was completely involved in the level design as well, to provide the best results. Crytek Ukraine worked on the levels in small groups of 2-4 people, while the multiplayer scenarios were created in England. And again, there was a special team to optimize the main storage problems caused by hi-end graphics and the so-called "statoscope" (a special effect reflecting light, creating lights shining through canopies of leaves and adjusting the color of 'dark' and 'light' areas automatically without any additional work for the artists (see example below)).

Anyway, there also were several problems within the process of creating the game. For example, they were lacking of senior artists, which meant they needed to adjust their working plan to their capabilities. That said, you can probably imagine that it was hard to finish the game like they wanted it to be in time. Not every level had its own so-called 'level owner' (this shouldn't be someone who acts like a director, but more likely someone who tries to bundles the team's ideas and to organize it), but 5 out of 7 levels were just passed to each other group member. Crytek decided to work with this leaderless stucture because they hoped to achieve a more agile development. 

However, "the next gen"-consoles are coming up soon, and Leyendecker indicated that the Crysis team still is interested in working on that series. Nevertheless it's still unleaked if (and if yes, when) we can expect another game.

By the way - as a bonus, Leyendecker explained that they were totally inspired by "Jurassic Park" when they came up with the aliens hiding in the long grass ... ;) 

(Screenshot taken from games.on.net)

Last but not least, here's the tech trailer for "CryEngine 3", which is - of course - already kind of old, since they built "Crysis 3" with this engine and presented it already on last year's GDC. Anyway I want to share it with you on here. It's just amazing. (Please watch in HD!)