“Where were you when the war began, Daddy?”
“Well, little Ignatius H. Meer III, I was at my PC, staring vacantly at Twitter. Probably eating some crisps as I did. I’ll never forget that dark, terrible day. The day that EA decided they could fight Steam.”
“Daddy? Why are you crying, Daddy?”>
Crysis 2 has disappeared from Steam, and is now described as being “Origin only.”
Quite a lot of mod news this week, apparently, even though there’s very little for you to actually play. There’s a long-awaited update from Jurrassic Life, as well as plenty of other gubbins related to Half-Life 2, Crysis, Stalker: Clear Sky, Portal 2 and Dirt 3. That’s a lot of games! Read on to find out what’s what.
Crytek's CryEngine 3 technology, which we've seen most recently in the company's own Crysis 2, is the driving force behind a $57 million project from the US Army aimed at teaching its soldiers how to fight.
While virtual battlefields have long been a staple of military training, the new Dismounted Soldier Training System (DSTS) looks to blow previous efforts out of the water, using the latest in gaming tech to give soldiers one hell of a realistic video game experience training ground run.
The DSTS isn't a simple game played on a PC or console. It's a full virtual experience, with soldiers donning a vest and helmet (both lined with cameras, vibrators and sensors) and then standing on a 10x10 foot pad, which is also full of sensors.
This means the experience is almost fully motion-controlled, and instead of being projected on a screen, the program's visuals are displayed on a pair of virtual reality goggles attached to the soldier's helmet.
CryEngine 3 comes into it with its ability to model not just infantry combat but vehicle and aircraft controls as well, and also display wildly different terrain and weather conditions.
The DSTS is expected to go into service next year, with around 100 units available for training.
[via GamePro]
Where were you all last week? I turned up and no one was here, honest! What’s that? No, I’m not crossing my fingers behind my back, and you definitely didn’t see him heading off on holiday. What nonsense. Anyway, to make up for it, here’s an extra-long edition of Mod News to cover the past two weeks. This time: Crash Bandicoot, a Warcraft III art mod, a surprising number of trailers and a bizarre remake of Deus Ex…
For about a year, Crytek has offered universities a free license to its CryEngine 3, the guts of this month's big release, Crysis 2. Since it made the offer more than 250 universities have asked for the code, the studio reports.
That's a pretty significant indicator of the mainstream utility of gaming code in a college classroom, if not of the mainstream presence of games design in their curricula.
"From its very first days, Crytek aimed to strongly support students and educators by sharing the CryEngine tools with universities," Avni Yerli, managing director at Crytek, said in a statement. "Thousands of students now have access to the same cutting-edge technology that the world's best developers are using for their ongoing projects. With our CryEngine 3 educational SDK we want to enable them to achieve their vision and create their very own innovation to become the next generation of developers."
You don't have to be a university department head or a bigtime developer to get your hands on Crysis' development tools. A modkit will release to all users sometime in early summer, Crytek has said.
Over 250 Universities Worldwide Signed Up For CryEngine 3 Educational License [Gamasutra]
A new splashpage at
In the week of Portal 2′s release, it seems apt that Valve’s games should dominate the mod scene’s output. While the range of titles you can mod these days is impressive, and so many of the tools are easy to learn, I’ve still yet to come across a moddable engine that’s quite as intuitive and flexible as Source. I can’t wait to see what people can do with Portal 2 when we’re able to mod that. It’s going to be very interesting to see the results. Onwards, then…
This is Crash Bandicoot Return, the closest we'll get to the classic PlayStation platformer looking as good as a Crysis game. This Crash Bandicoot game is actually running on the Crysis engine, because it's a fan-made mod that pays homage to Naughty Dog's 15-year-old series.
Crash Bandicoot Return is a Crysis mod from Anonym-Art Productions, which only recently announced the game's existence. In the above video, featuring very early gameplay, we see the oldest of Crash levels, N. Sanity Beach from the original PlayStation game. It may not have the polish of a complete Crash game at this stage, but it's already one of the prettiest games to star a bandicoot that we've seen.
Read more about the mod at ModDB, but hope that the people who hold onto those Crash Bandicoot rights—you know who—let this PC mod enjoy its fan-made, fan-loved existence.
Crash Bandicoot Return [ModDB]
