What this book covers

This book covers a wide range of topics that are closely related to making games with CryENGINE at a professional level. Basic elements such as setting up the engine, building simple environments, or other topics that might be of interest for beginners might be touched upon, but they will not be covered in too much depth. Instead, this book focuses on arming you with in-depth knowledge of the core systems of CryENGINE that are necessary to build high-quality content.

Chapter 1, Setting Up the Perfect Pipeline, focuses on one of the most important aspects of game production: a stable and flexible pipeline. This chapter covers the tailoring of the perfect pipeline for your project as well as the important aspects of setting up a new pipeline.

Chapter 2, Using the CryENGINE Input System – Keyboard, Mouse, and Game Controller, provides an overview of the CryENGINE input systems. You will learn how to create new action maps and handle user profiles as well as how to react to input events in code and flow graphs.

Chapter 3, Building Complex Flow Graph Logic, focuses on the more advanced features of the flow graph system. Nested flow graphs as well as graph tokens will be explained in detail and will be used to build a practical game example.

Chapter 4, Morphs and Bones – Creating a Facial Setup for Your Character, covers all the steps necessary to create a complete facial setup for a character. You will learn about facial libraries as well as how to get a character ready for lip syncing and procedural blinking.

Chapter 5, Mastering Sandbox, focuses on increasing your production speed, efficiency, and productivity when working with CryENGINE. Hidden features, important shortcuts, and relevant engine settings will be discussed in this chapter.

Chapter 6, Utilizing Lua Script in CryENGINE, teaches you how to use the Lua scripting language to build more sophisticated gameplay elements. The creation of new script binds and modification of the existing entities will be covered here.

Chapter 7, Animating Characters, will explain the principles of CryMannequin, the high-level animation system of CryENGINE. You will also learn how to extend the state machine to trigger your own mannequin animation sequences. The chapter will also cover other methods of triggering animations.

Chapter 8, Mastering the Smart Objects System, will provide an insight on how to use the SmartObject system. This system will be used to build a gameplay example of a security guard AI behavior. Furthermore, navigational SmartObject systems will be used to set up AI characters that can climb over walls.

Chapter 9, Eye Candy – Particles, Lens Flares, and More, focuses on adding some eye candy to your game. The setup and usage of particle effects as well as the brand new Lens Flare editor will be covered.

Chapter 10, Shipping the Build, focuses on getting your game ready to ship. It will cover how to prepare the build for release, remove unwanted source files, and reduce the overall build size.