What initially drew you to write your book for Packt Publishing?
Trying to bundle all the CryENGINE knowledge and everything we have learned over the past decade working with CryENGINE was something we wanted to do for a long time. With a publisher like Packt we felt confident we could deliver a comprehensive CryENGINE guide.
When you began writing what were your main aims? What did you want the book to teach your readers?
It was really about taking the readers’ CryENGINE skills to the next level. There are plenty of beginner tutorials and articles out there that focus on getting to know the engine or on building simple examples. What was really missing was a book that focused on users who already have the basic experience and know their way around CryENGINE. This is why Mastering CryENGINE covers a lot of advanced topics and contains a lot of tips and tricks useful for people using the engine in a real production environment.
What did you enjoy most about the writing process and what was most rewarding about the experience of writing?
Seeing the book come together and grow larger and larger over the course of many months really felt good. And of course knowing that somewhere, someone will read it one day and improve their skills with this book is something that just makes you feel good about all the work it takes to finish a book.
What parts of the writing process were the most challenging? How did you overcome the
The single biggest problem was cutting down the content so that it would all fit within the scope of the book. There were many more chapters, examples, and images we would have liked to add to the book. It is easy to keep on adding more content and have the book lose its focus, so we had to take a lot of care to keep the book streamlined and on topic.
Why, in your opinion, is CryENGINE exciting to discover, read, and write about?
CryENGINE is one of the most advanced 3D engines out there and it offers so many features and possibilities that it makes it hard to really discover everything. Even after having worked with CryENGINE for ten years I still sometimes discover new things and new best practices I didn’t know about.
And of course CryENGINE is always evolving. New features are being added and old features optimized. This means there are new things to discover on a regular basis that help you to build your games more efficiently.
Why do you think interest in CryENGINE has continued to maintain such popularity?
Today it is easier than ever to develop and publish games. You don’t need to be a big company anymore to get your game published. CryENGINE gives you the tools to build amazing games in a short amount of time and release them to the public. More and more people are discovering that it is easy and fun to try to put their own games together. I think this is why CryENGINE continues to be that popular.
What do you see on the horizon for CryENGINE?
This year has been a busy year for Crytek and CryENGINE. A lot of features have been added. I think we will see even more features and optimization to the engine in the next months. Focus points of this development will be improvements to the ease of use of the SDK tools as well as to the pipeline and the steps necessary to actually get a release-ready game.
Any tips or stories to share for aspiring/new technical authors?
The beginning is always the hardest part. Once you start writing, it starts to flow. Especially with a great publisher by your side there is no need to be afraid of trying.