Crysis
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- For the particle accelerator, see CRYSIS.
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This article or section contains information about an unreleased video game. It is likely to contain information of a speculative nature, and the content may change dramatically as more information becomes available. |
| Crysis | |
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| Developer(s) | Crytek |
| Publisher(s) | Electronic Arts |
| Engine | CryENGINE2 |
| Release date(s) | Q3 2007 |
| Genre(s) | First-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single player, multiplayer |
| Platform(s) | Windows |
| Media | DVD |
| Input | Keyboard, mouse, joystick |
Crysis is an upcoming sci-fi first-person shooter computer game that is currently in production by German developer Crytek. Crytek is best known for the 2004 shooter Far Cry that was released for Windows.
Contents |
[edit] Story
[edit] Plot
Little is currently known about the storyline, although the basic plot was recently revealed by the developers.
Set in 2020, the game focuses on Jake Dunn, a United States Delta Force soldier. Dunn and his team are sent in to investigate a meteorite crash in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The United States is not the only country aware of the crash; North Korea is also investigating the crash site.
The game is planned to be set across three acts.
- Act 1: The meteor hits the island, causing the North Koreans to take up military presence and investigate the meteor crash. As a Delta Force soldier you HALO jump onto the island to also investigate. Act 1 consists of battling through the jungle.
- Act 2: The meteor opens up and flash freezes the entire island. Act 2 consists of battling through the frozen jungle as well as your own aircraft carrier off the coast. As the aliens, who are not yet revealed in the story, use machines to stop what little resistance the North Korean military is offering them, the US, North Korean and Chinese militaries begin to work together to fight them.
- Act 3: Fights on alien ship with so-called zero-G gameplay. It has also been released that you will fight the aliens themselves in this act, and that the animations, as one PC Gamer reporter put it, are some of the best ever seen in gaming.[1]
Crytek has stated the aliens themselves will not be revealed until the end of the game, giving them a certain degree of suspense.
[edit] Gameplay
As with Far Cry, Crysis will be an open-ended game with many ways to meet objectives. An addition to the previous Far Cry formula is that any weapon may be modified with devices such as silencers, targeting scopes, and targeting lasers.
The protagonist, Jake, is also capable of being modified, as he wears a US Military prototype "Nano Muscle Suit." This allows him to carry armor, use heavy weapons, reduce noise output, increase speed, jump higher, and treat wounds on the battlefield. Due to the ability of constantly regenerating health, the game will be completely devoid of first aid kits or medical kits. All of these actions, however, use rechargeable energy reserves that power the suit. The suit can be greatly modified to meet the playing style of the player and further enhance the gameplay experience.
The artificial intelligence in Crysis also aims to be realistic and believable. Enemy soldiers constantly employ tactical maneuvers, work as squads, hide and ambush amongst the scenery, and adapt to changing environments and conditions. Soldiers will also respond to sound and subtle movements triggered by the player's movement. While not engaged in combat, the AI will also exhibit typical and lifelike behavior, such as smoking, yawning, talking, waxing cars, patrolling, saluting superior officers, etc.
[edit] Enemies
- North Koreans: When the player arrives on the island, North Koreans and other armed personnel arrive to secure the crash site. Jake goes through several soldiers to find the alien ship. When it opens up and "flash-freezes" the island, most of the soldiers die. As the story progresses, the North Koreans and the Americans form a mutual agreement to formulate a retaliation effort against the aliens. [1]
- Hunters: The aliens' main battle unit is the Hunter, a large 4-legged mecha which emits terrifying sounds similar to the Tripod from The War of the Worlds, and is armed with huge iceguns. The Hunters can be seen picking up vehicles or nearby aircraft and hurling them at the enemy. They release small tentacled creatures that also possess icicle guns. It has been revealed that despite its size, the Hunter is only the second-largest creature in the game.
- Trooper: The standard alien foe. A flying robotic unit, with no alien pilot.
- Scout: Able to transport Hunters.
- Animals: It's uncertain what animals will be in Crysis and how many will be able to attack you. We've already seen sharks in Crysis and it was revealed a while ago that they'll help prevent the player from swimming a long way out to sea.
[edit] Weapons
14 hand-held weapons are currently known to be included in Crysis
[edit] Delta Force
- Hands: Several videos show the character being able to lift several very heavy objects (like large metal sheets, bins and dumpsters) and hurl them across a distance, if the player increases the strength of his suit. Hand-to-hand combat is also seen, with the strength modifier being used to punch enemies into submission. Another video showed the ability to capture an enemy by the neck and use him as a human shield while still being able to use your weapon. With the strength modifier, it's also possible to punch through different materials (like wood and sheet metal) so going through walls becomes quite easy.
- SCAR: The SCAR (SOF Combat Assault Rifle) in Crysis is the standard assault rifle, which can be modified into a sniper rifle or a CQB rifle. It can also be loaded with special ammunition such as incendiary rounds, "tag" bullets that carry a transmitter to allow you to track the location of an enemy, remotely-triggered tranquilizers that will knock the enemy out instantly, as well as explosive remotely-triggered rounds. It should be noted that the in-game weapon is much closer in appearance to the XM8 than the SCAR-L.
- XM102: This shoulder mounted rocket launcher is able to destroy tanks, helicopters, and vehicles using futuristic targeting technology.
- XM2014: This standard shotgun can be modified to include a reflex sight, targeting laser or tactical flashlight.
- MPXA: This is a short range submachine gun also able to be modified to include a laser targeting system, reflex sight, tactical flashlight, and silencer.
- EM70: This long range electromagnetic rifle fires metal slugs at a speed of 8 times the speed of sound (Mach 8). The developers call this weapon the "Anti-Vehicle Rifle". It can penetrate any wall or object.
- Fragmentation Grenade: Fragmentation grenade that the player carries most of the time.
- Hand-Held Gatling Gun: Heavy weapon which can only be used if the player has a maximum level of strength in his suit.
- Binoculars: Special binoculars that allow you to zoom in on enemies from far away distances or "tag" them so that they show up on your radar.
- Enemy Weapons: As seen in a beta gameplay movie, players will be able to pick up enemy weapons such as the FY-71 (futuristic AK-74) and the Precision Rifle (North Korean Sniper Rifle).
[edit] Aliens
- Molecular Accelerator: Used by the small multi-tentacled aliens, this weapon allows them to freeze the water and humidity from the air into icicles and hurl them at fast speeds. Due to its nature, the weapon has unlimited ammunition.
- Molecular Arrestor: Used by the Hunters. Huge ice guns that fire a freezing ray at the enemy. The frozen target(s) can be shattered easily by bullets.
- Singularity Cannon: Used by the aliens, this weapon shoots a "black hole" creating a large explosion that will attempt to suck anything into it.
[edit] Multiplayer
Up to 32 players will be able to go head-on in Crysis multiplayer. It will be consisted of 3 different modes:
- Tactical Deathmatch
- Tactical Team Deathmatch
- Power Struggle
Tactical Capture The Flag is no longer part of the game mode line up.[2] Crytek employees have commented though that this multiplayer mode could be added in a patch or if not, it will no doubt be developed by the modding community.
The 2 modes are familiar with a twist. Tactical precedes the name due to the dynamics of customizing your suit, weapons, and ammunition. As an example in Tactical Team Deathmatch, you can either shoot down an enemy helicopter or put the pilot to sleep.
Power Struggle: All players start the game on one of two teams with nothing more than a pistol and a basic nano-suit. The two possible teams are the US Delta Force, or the North Korean Army. After the players have joined a team, they will fight to earn points. These points are more than cosmetic; Points are used to purchase weapons, vehicles and even entire manufacturing plants. How one earns points will depend on what type/rank of player they have killed. For example, if a beginner defeats a general, then they will receive more points than if the general had killed the beginner. Weapons may be taken from the corpses of dead opponents and team mates, and vehicles can be stolen from the opposing side with the use of lockpicks, giving underdog players a chance to compete with enemies who are able to buy more advanced equipment.
Each game in "Power Struggle" mode may last over 10 hours (5 simulated days). Players may even crossbreed vehicles with alien technology, if they bring the technology back to their base from one of several alien crash sites randomly generated on the map. Thus, one can create an invisible tank or a jeep that has a mounted freeze gun rather than a standard machine gun. Players can buy weapons from where you spawn or at certain control points amongst the map. However, should the player die, they will lose their guns and any of their vehicles, assuming their vehicle had been destroyed when they perished.
[edit] Sandbox Editor
Crysis will contain its own sandbox editor, much like Far Cry in which you can edit and create new levels. Created levels will have full support in all multiplayer modes.
[edit] Crysis Modifications
Crytek selected two modification teams to work with a Crysis Pre SDK before the games release. These mod teams are receiving Crytek support during development and the mods are to be released shortly after Crysis launches. Details on one of the modifications: Obsidian Edge 2 can be found here: Crytek selects Obsidian Edge 2 for Crysis Pre-SDKand here Obsidian Edge 2 news update with the OE2 website here www.ObsidianEdge.net The announcement for the other team is here Navy Seals Mod
[edit] Technical
[edit] Game engine
Crysis will use an all new engine that is the successor to Far Cry's CryENGINE. CryENGINE2 is to be among the first to use the Direct3D 10 framework of Windows Vista.
The engine features many graphical, physical and animation technologies as well as many gameplay enhancements, some of which include:
- Volumetric 3D Clouds
- Real time Ambient Maps with dynamic lighting and no premade shadows
- 3D Ocean Technology dynamically modifies the ocean surface based on wind and wave direction and creates moving shadows and highlights underwater
- Depth of field to focus on certain objects while blurring out the edges and far away places
- Vector Motion blur on both camera movement and individual objects
- Dynamic Soft shadows with objects casting realistic shadows in real time
- Realistic Facial Animation that can be captured from an actor's face
- Subsurface scattering
- Parallax mapping
- Breakable Buildings allowing more tactical preplanning on the player's side
- Breakable Vegetation enabling players and enemy AI to level entire forests as a tactical maneuver or other purposes
- Advanced Rope Physics showcasing bendable vegetation responding to wind, rain or character movement and realistically interactive rope bridges
- Component Vehicle Damage giving vehicles different destroyable parts, such as tires on jeeps or helicopter blades
- HDR lighting
- Fully interactive and destructible environments
- Advanced Particle system with fire or rain being affected by forces such as wind
- Time of Day Lighting, with sunrise, and sunset effects ensuring realistic transition between daytime and nighttime
- Lightbeams and Shafts when light intersects with solid or highly detailed geometry, and can generate "Godray" effects underwater
- Parallax Occlusion Mapping giving a greater sense of depth to a surface texture, realistically emphasizing the relief surface structure of objects
- Long Range View Distance of up to 16km from ingame measurements
- Parametric Skeletal Animation System
- Procedural Motion Warping
As well as supporting Shader Model 2.0, 3.0 (Direct3D 9) and 4.0 (Direct3D 10), the engine will be multi-threaded to take advantage of SMP or hyper-threading capable systems. The game will also come in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Crytek claims that running the 64-bit version will give a performance increase of up to 10-15% per thread.[2] Crytek does not intend to support any sort of Physics Processor such as the AGEIA PhysX [3] . Crytek has developed their own inhouse physics system which is arguably more advanced than any real-time hardware based physics system available (such as AGEIA).
[edit] References
- ^ Smektała, Tymon (June 2006). "Crysis". CD-Action (126): 38-42. ISSN 1426-2916.
- ^ GameSpot.com
- ^ GameSpot.com
[edit] External Links
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Far Cry • Crysis |
