Interview: Illfonic On NEXUIZ And CryEngine 3

What cooperation are you getting from CryTek with the engine?

CryTek provides awesome support for us. They work very close with us and are very responsive. The support team is really nice and they don’t look down on us because we’re an independent team.

This will likely be the first playable experience most people get of a much anticipated engine, are CryTek keen to help you get the best out of it or are you being left to their own devices and literally just buying a license?

They sent people over to our studio to train some of us and are always very helpful. There is always big challenges when dealing with new engine tech. However, Crytek is on top of it and doing some really kick ass stuff.

What benefits have you experienced using this new engine compared to the more wide-spread and tried and trust middleware available to developers for many years?

CryEngine 3 is very plug and play friendly. It doesn’t take long to get something up and looking beautiful. It supports very easy to understand tools to your face right when you open it up. It isn’t bloated with a lot of features you wouldn’t need to use. However, if you needed more features it’s not too shabby at supporting them. There’s a lot of dope engines out there. CryEngine 3 is definitely one of the top 3 out there. Right now I would have to say it is a straight neck and neck battle between them and UnrealEngine 3.

Is there a demo or trial planned?

There will be a demo upon launch. We are still trying to figure out the best way to do a demo for an Arena FPS game. We don’t want to split up the player base. But, we’ll figure out something that allows players to get a feel of what Nexuiz is.

What challenges have you encountered getting the engine to perform on both the 360 and the PS3? How, if at all, have the consoles’ different architectures influenced the final product? Are you leading on one platform?

Well CryEngine 3 basically takes the hard work away from us on that front. The game looks almost identical across PC, PS3 and XBOX 360. The content is handled pretty much the same way across all 3. There are some core differences between the consoles… for example, the 360 has better contrast, the PS3 is more washed out and the PC is well… whatever your custom rig is like.

We’re trying to make an even ground on the content front to make sure it looks the same across all three platform. What Crytek got running on these consoles is marvellous.

The FPS market is an exceptionally difficult nut to crack…

The FPS market has been really crowded since the launch of Doom. One trend we’ve noticed, especially with console games, is that FPS games have been slowing down a lot and getting more tactical. We saw this rise with PC games like Delta Force, SWAT, Rainbow Six, etc. PC went towards the twitch game-play because of how far more superior and accurate you can get with a keyboard and mouse. Console play lacks that edge. There are some players who are super bad-ass with thumbsticks. But, most are not. That’s why I believe it’s been a lot slower for consoles and the trend stayed after Halo exploded on the scene.

What does Nexuiz offer that gamers might not get from the more AAA of established titles currently on the market and the upcoming juggernauts such as Medal of Honor and Call of Duty: Black Ops.

With Halo and Call of Duty’s success, a brand new flood of gamers have just now appeared on the scene. This is one of the biggest markets of players out there. They are untapped and thriving on FPS action right now. They miss this twitch style game play we all got to enjoy. They are our target audience for Nexuiz. However, the hard-core guys that have been here for a while will still get something out of this game. The highly competitive, fully integrated edge can bring back a lot of those arenaFPS familiarities to players.

Gamers are more social now but mostly over Mic in the games. This has taken an unfortunate stab to LAN parties (but they are still kicking). We wanted to build a fully self-contained game for everything you would need involving the community. Although Call of Duty and Medal of Honor are more than likely going to print money, we feel the $15 price point as well as hot graphics of CryEngine 3 is enough to give curious gamers a try of Nexuiz.

Once they start playing it, they may notice the fast game-play is what they’ve been wanting.

And finally, how the f*ck do you pronounce Nexuiz?

You pronounce Nexuiz however the f*ck you want! We pronounce it like nexus. The original community behind the game had long discussions on how to discuss it and what is the right way. I personally don’t think anyone knows. You can put any dialect on it to make it sound a specific way no matter how the letters are shaped up.

My dialect says nexus.