Thursday, August 18th, 2011 Posted by Jim Thacker

Crytek releases free CryEngine 3 SDK

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJEL9Kipuw4
The GDC 2011 demo for CryEngine 3. Crytek’s new SDK makes the engine accessible for free in non-commercial and educational projects.

Crytek has released the SDK for CryEngine 3 as a free download from the MyCryEngine site.

The SDK, first announced earlier this year, enables non-commercial developers and educational institutions to incorporate the leading game engine into their own projects for free.

For use in commercial releases, Crytek charges 20% of royalties, with no fees payable before launch. A range of “attractive” options (less than 20%, we imagine) are available for indie developers and free-to-play games.

By contrast, the Unreal Engine is free to use for games with revenues under $50,000, after which Epic Games takes 25% of the royalties.

According to the FAQs, the free version is almost identical to the engine used in Crytek’s own Crysis 2, although “some features, such as DirectX11 [supported in the Crysis 2 Ultra Upgrade patch] have not been implemented, but will be coming very soon”.

Better still, CryEngine’s legendarily demanding system requirements look positively lightweight when considered in the context of a graphics workstation rather than a games machine: a Core Duo 2GHz processor or better, 4GB of RAM and a GPU with 512MB of on-board memory will suffice.

Download the SDK from MyCryEngine.com (registration required)

Visit Crytek’s developer website