Crytek just released CryEngine 5.7 LTS, the first public CryEngine release since all the way back in 2019. So after 3 years in development CryEngine 5.7 LTS is going to be packed full of new features? Well, no, actually…
Features of CryEngine 5.7 LTS include:
- Scaleform 4 The Scaleform 4 integration features customized rendering for higher performance on all platforms. It is backward compatible with ActionScript 2.0, providing you with performance benefits without having to remake your Flash projects in ActionScript 3.0. It also supports ActionScript 3.0, which enables the use of Adobe Animate. Scaleform 3 remains available if the upgrade to Scaleform 4 causes unforeseen bugs for your projects.
- Scaleform Schematyc The Scaleform Schematyc plugin emulates the necessary functions that Flow Graph provides for the UI system. UI elements are available as components, while functions and events corresponding to these elements can be defined in an Element XML file. It supports both Scaleform 3 and 4.
- GamePlatform Plugin The GamePlatform plugin is an update to the plugin that shipped with CRYENGINE 5.6. Expanded features include support for Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox. It also includes an optional new plugin that provides visual scripting nodes for Flow Graph and Schematyc. The deprecated Discord Rich Presence SDK has also been updated to the Discord Game SDK. New documentation for the GamePlatform Plugin can be found here.
- Visual Studio 2017 – 2022 Support Engine code and CMake has been updated to support Visual Studio versions 2017, 2019, and 2022. Visual Studio 2015 support has been deprecated. Along with this upgrade, support for the C++17 standard implementation has been added, while Windows SDK has been updated to 10.0.20348.0.
There are a number of smaller features, bug fixes and improvements available in the complete release notes.
This leads to the obvious question… what happened to mobile support, software raytracing, etc that was announced back at GDC 2020? Unfortunately all of that development was essentially dropped or delayed, so the clock as essentially been reset. You can learn more about the problems they encountered and the plans for the future in this Q&A video.
You can learn more about the CryEngine 5.7 LTS release in the video below.