Crytek Announces "EaaS" For Indie Game Developers

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Crytek Announces "EaaS" For Indie Game Developers

The latest exciting announcement for gamers and game developers out of this week's GDC is word of Crytek starting an "Engine-as-a-Service" program...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTYzNzU

[Sdar]

Why some people wants to kill Opengl to replace it with Mantle a not Open source, bad documented, Amd GCN bounded API that ,in spite of being an api that works only with a small sets of cards (AMD GCN), in some cases causes stutter, vsync problems and crossfire problems, so it's just some kind of beta right now.

On the other hand Opengl can give developers the same performance gains that mantle claims with support for all the major vendors (Amd, Intel, Nvidia and even some Mobile phone gpus) it's open source and already exists.

Some GDC 2014 Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/CassEverit...iver-overhead#

[Marc Driftmeyer]

They also announced that their engine will support Mantle. And since Mantle should be open source and cross-platform, it gives hope that we can finally have something that will kill DirectX and OpenGL.

Mantle doesn't kill OpenGL.

[erendorn]

Which is exactly what I said above. If user refers to a developer and you're working in your own, it would be 10 bucks a month.

If user refers to the actual enduser of your game you'll need to earn some serious cash. Without some kind of subscription based model you won't be earning close to 10$/user/month.

But without a subscription model, there's no way you can know how many months your users are playing the game. Which means that the fee is per developer (per user of the SDK).

[tuubi]

That's my view as well. 3D graphics + 2D gameplay = 2.5D. 2D graphics + 2D gameplay = 2D, no matter how it uses the hardware (otherwise my card game would be a 2.5D game, because it uses OpenGL )

I've only ever seen the term 2.5D in reference to games that mix 2D and 3D graphics, like many point and click adventures and some jrpgs do. Mostly prerendered backgrounds with 3D characters. But I guess it could be stretched to mean anything "more than 2D, less than 3D". Underlying technology shouldn't matter though.

[GreatEmerald]

As far as I?m concerned I?ve only seen it used for games with 3D graphics but 2D gameplay. Thomas Was Alone has 2D graphics and 2D gameplay, but uses 3D hardware (I guess)?

That's my view as well. 3D graphics + 2D gameplay = 2.5D. 2D graphics + 2D gameplay = 2D, no matter how it uses the hardware (otherwise my card game would be a 2.5D game, because it uses OpenGL )

[stqn]

That would be 2.5D, that's different from 2D.

We can argue forever about that, apparently, since according to wikipedia 2.5D can mean about anything. As far as I?m concerned I?ve only seen it used for games with 3D graphics but 2D gameplay. Thomas Was Alone has 2D graphics and 2D gameplay, but uses 3D hardware (I guess)?

[Wildfire]

10 bucks per user per month, and that's a whole different story! Also, hell if I know who's a user by their definition!

Which is exactly what I said above. If user refers to a developer and you're working in your own, it would be 10 bucks a month.

If user refers to the actual enduser of your game you'll need to earn some serious cash. Without some kind of subscription based model you won't be earning close to 10$/user/month.

[GreatEmerald]

Good point, I assumed that the OP intended to have 3D graphics but have the game played in two. That being said, I do like the idea of using cryengine to produce a game with like Thomas Was Alone, if only to make the renderer developers slap their foreheads ans sigh :-D

That would be 2.5D, that's different from 2D.

[archibald]

Trine is not a 2D game.

Good point, I assumed that the OP intended to have 3D graphics but have the game played in two. That being said, I do like the idea of using cryengine to produce a game with like Thomas Was Alone, if only to make the renderer developers slap their foreheads ans sigh :-D