Uru, MOUL, and CryEngine

So a few days ago, Aloys from the GoW directed my attention to the release of the CryEngine 3.0 SDK.

I watched the Demo version and my jaw dropped into my lap! The demo level that the SDK comes with, looks like a Myst type game from Cyan, hehehehe.

Of course I got really excited about this. I made sure to email Mark (aka Chogon) with the links to it, as Rand was talking about the new game idea during Mysterium, even though funding is lacking, hey, it doesn't hurt to look at options still.

Then I started looking at trying to use CryEngine and importing a Uru Age into it. Unlike the Unreal SDK, CryEngine is a bit more difficult to import things into. So far as I know, you can only import things from Max or Maya (this leaves Blender people out in the cold). Still, you can create everything in the SDK itself too.

The folks over at the forum for CryEngine have been very helpful and friendly. I've learned a lot in the last couple of days, and mostly what I have learned is just how frustrating doing this is! Exporting the models from Max is not hard, however, you have to export the materials too. You have to use "Standard" or "Multi/Sub" which was not too surprising, but you also have to change the Shader from Phong or Blinn or whatever to CryTek Shader. Then came the other shock: You MUST use either .tif or .dds format, and for Normal Maps, you MUST use .dds format!

So today I'll be busy converting my textures from Ahnonay to comply with this. I already tested it out with one object that has multiple materials on it, and it worked.

However, I also had a conversation with Mark yesterday. While my goal was to see about converting all of Uru, he reminded me of the legal problems with doing it. Plasma may be open sourced, but the game content itself is not. I would be treading on very thin ice.

He urged me to think of doing something new and original instead.

While that idea is very cool, most of the people that I can think of that would love to help and be excited about this have drifted off or disappeared.........