Fire and the environment

[SquareSphere }12thVR{]

I don't know much about the Crysis engine but does it support fire affecting the environment?

Man if i could set a forest, where some mechs/troops were hiding, on fire I don't know how happy i'd be 

[Whiplash]

If you mean trees catching on fire and shit, no Cry engine does not support that feature.

[Freyr]

Far Cry 2 will support it, but its not on cryengine 2.

[RangerMoose]

As the two posters above me have stated no, CryEngine 2 doesn't support realistic fire interaction. I wonder, though, what Crytek may think of putting in CryEngine 2 with the next Crysis game. I was really surprised to find that Far Cry 2 wasn't using an engine at the least based off of CryEngine 2, but I bet that CryTek will work at keeping CryEngine 2 ahead, as it is now, in the gaming department.

[Galagher]

Yeah.. Far Cry 2 just set different goals.. Interactive fire will definitely be somewhat unique to FC2, just like the Nano Suit is to Crysis.. So Far Cry 2 will keep gameplay more realistic, I guess. But we'll have to see and find out what is more fun in the end.

I hope the follow-up to Crysis will have some more features like interactive fire and in-game deformable terrain. Would be so cool if you could see real craters where granades, shells and the TAC gun mess up the ground

Although just picking up the interactive fire feature in the next crysis would seem like copying FC2. Crytek will definitely be pushing the limits a bit further to stay on top.

[death_grin]

Everygame is built off the last, thats how progress is made

I can't imagine though how much the "fire feature" in multiplayer would cause lag though- probably alot.  Unless it was controlled client side which in that case the fire would not be synced across all clients resulting in not really any effect other then visually only for the client.  From a gameplay standpoint smoke would have to be made to where it is not effected by system settings or people would take advantage and just get rid of it so they can see through it.  I think a thermal binoculars or scope would be a really cool piece of gear though if this was done.

[Galagher]

You got a point there.. Cant really imagine dynamic fire in MP.. But maybe it works as some kind of dynamic decals that spread and cause damage to players and objects.

Or maybe they just turn off fire in MP.. or they limit fire to high-end servers/clients.. I mean thats the thing Crytek did with DX10 on Crysis MP. Makes me happy to have DX10  yaay

[thezeus18]

So, there's no dynamic deformation of terrain in Crysis? I was hoping to take cover in an Atlas' footprint.

[Masakari]

An atlas would have to leave a 6 foot deep foot print 

[WormSlayer]

Pretty sure CryEngine doesnt support dynamic terrain deformation and while a bump-mapped footprint decal will look cool, isnt going to offer much cover

[thezeus18]

Shucks.

[KorJax]

I wouldn't doubt something like this can be hacked up though.  There was that terrain deformation mod for Supreme Commander, and the engine didn't really support it at all.

And that multiplayer mod for Oblivion (although it's extremely buggy).

I'm sure from using scripts/flowgraphs it's possible to to not only do dynamic fire, but (assuming the terrain is one big voxel object) also deformable terrain, by using some hacky-hacky methods to reproduce the effects.

Then again these effects would look cool mostly as a "Wow you actually did it!" kind of view.  It would probibly be overly-resource intensive for the amount of fire, and would most likely not be perfectly accurate in terms of spreading (see Sims 2 how it determines fire spreading) and damage.  But I still think it can be done.

I mean, hell.  Someone was able to give fully working water physics to happen, and even create a tidal wave effect that sweeps everything up for Crysis.  Granted the engine wasn't built for it so it's not perfect, but still looks great.

[WormSlayer]

I'd also love to see realisitc terrain destruction/deformation in game, but unless there is a switch somewhere to enable it that I havent seen, CryEngine just doesnt support it.

While you can make entire landscapes out of voxels, it's much more efficient to use terrain for the majority, and just do caves and detail with voxels.

It's no doubt possible to hack in spreading fire, but as sothers have pointed out there are all kinds of issues that probably outweigh it's niftyness...

By "fully working water physics" I think your refering to a map I saw on crymod? Not trying to put the guy down but CryEngine's particle system supports physics interation with terrain and dynamic objects by default, even though it isnt used much (if at all?) in Crysis. He just enabled the "collide with terrain" option for a waterfall particle system rather than adding a new fluid dynamics engine or something

[ToeBall]

The biggest problem with "hacking in" either fire or deformable terrain is that it would bring the servers into a crack induced epileptic seizure. As i stands even our lasers are needing work to bring down server load if you want more than a handful of players on at a time. Still, we'll get it like we have everything else.

[thezeus18]

Your lasers butcher the server?

Good heavens why?