Crysis full game

Crysis is $14.99 on Steam this weekend. Can the Steam version be as easily customized (as far as ini tweaking) as the box version?

 

Yes.

 

I remember trying out Crysis with the 360 gamepad, and it works wonderfully, with vibration too. Of course, you're really asking for it in MP if you choose to use that instead of mouse and keyboard.

 

I have a couple friends who are pretty amazing with gamepads. Shocking, but true.

 

Wow, world of difference in performance since I last played this back when I had my 2900XT. Running on my 5770 1Gb and silky smooth on Very High @ 1680x1050. Now using Nebula's Ultra High config and might even try some AA if combat doesn't get very choppy as I'm sure I'm probably CPU bound on my C2D@3ghz.

Nebula, I tried your TOD mod and first thing I noticed at the start of the game is the ground textures for the sand and grass were missing, were just flat color surfaces. The rest of the textures were fine, just the ground. Going back to original level files worked fine.

 

No way you're CPU bound in crysis/very high at HD rez... No way.

To test this (crackpot ) theory of yours, just start up fraps, see what framerate you get. Then reduce rez to say 800*600. If it does not go up (which I'm certain it will), you are indeed CPU bound.

But this scenario seems pretty much impossible to me.

 

I figured since my CPU was the weak point of the system, Crysis would be pushing that more than the GPU in my configuration. Sorry for being a crackpot, I'll not voice a theory next time.

 

Nebula and everyone else. I've got a "strange" situation here with Crysis 1.2.

I'm running a gtx 285 SSC with i7 920 @ 3.8ghz, 6gigs of ddr3 so I am not "resource" limited outside of maybe my videocard not being as fast as the 5870.

Anyhow I'm doing Crysis in DX9 64bit mode, 1920x1200, no AA 16xAF. I've done as much tweaking as possible with the commands, I have Rygel texture pack as well as Nebula's particle mod dated July XX, 2009.

Here's what's weird. I turn on the budget monitoring, and on the very first level, "island", there is a radio tower on the peak of a tall hill. If I look outwards from that area onto the dense jungle and the ocean, my draw calls are ABOVE 10,000, up to 12k. Is this "normal"?

Then I went ahead and played with the r_geominstancing command. Now you may think that I would already have r=geominstancing=1 instead of =0. But here is the weirdest part. When I have geometry instancing on my draw calls are almost halved (now only 6k instead of 12k) HOWEVER, my fps DECREASES once I have instancing on. Instead of 26 fps up on that hill with what was 12k draw calls, now with only 6k draw calls, I'm getting 22 - 23 fps (even 3 to 4 fps can make Crysis a lot more playable). How can that be? How can a less "intensive" situation provide me with LESS fps?

Isn't that just weird? Maybe I'm missing out on some other command or trigger here?

The other general Crysis question relates to shadowing in the distance. On the second stage, "Recovery", I notice a lot of shadow "flickering" in the distance. It's almost as if the shadow movement/update interval is too slow and artifical to look real. The only way I have found to make it better is by upp'ing the r_shadowjittering from 1 to 2.5 (default for very high). Of course if I go any higher, the shadows closer to me will look too blurred out. Does anyone know of a command or a set of commands that can tweak these distanced shadows so they update more often rather than wave back and forth at a very slow rate?

 

I have also found some weird "quirks" to Crysis that can be a bit distracting (though I've having loads of fun tricking the AI into elaborate exploding vehicle traps and collapsing huts).

Are some of the rock and metal textures really ugly up close and at certain angles? I've noticed that on the first map, there are metal barriers that look very pixelated even with Rygel's work. Some rocks look like crap up close, like "stair case" type of dotting done in MS Paint. It's not every rock but every so often you'll have something like that stand out. Is this normal? Are there commands to get it to look better? I already have everything customized and maxed out, am I missing something?

Also the red barrels that explode upon being shot have weird sound properties. Say I pick one up and threw it across the floor. Sometimes if I pick it up again, it will make "burning" noises when very obviously it has not been shot and is not burning and will not explode without a bullet.

Sometimes after it explodes, even when all the flames are gone, broken parts of the red barrels will have the burning sound.

The burnt vehicles too have strange properties. A jeep that I destroyed hours ago, when I go back to it, will still damage me when I touch it, as if it was on flames but there are no flames.

And what's with the two KPAs that are always stuck at the wooden restroom on the first map? Must be some sort of NPC programming error.

 

r_geominstancing should be set to 1 to reduce load on CPU however strange it results in a perfomance decrease!

Say have you changed this value to "1" in your autoexec.cfg and then relaunched Crysis to test?

Also these could improve perfomance a bit depeding on e_terrain_lod_ratio value.
e_occlusion_culling_view_dist_ratio=1
e_terrain_occlusion_culling_max_dist=800

Play with these commands to up perfomance.

e_view_dist_ratio_vegetation= 80-200 (global draw dsitance for vegetation, sprites/3D)
e_view_dist_ratio= 80-200 (draw distance for AI, obejcts, rocks, procedural vegetation)
e_vegetation_sprites_distance_custom_ratio_min=1-2 (threshold distance between 3D vegetation and sprite vegetation)
e_vegetation_sprites_distance_ratio=1-2 (threshold distance between 3D vegetation and sprite vegetation)

To have full updaterate for all shadow LODs then this command (potential big perfomance reduction depedning on shadowmap resolution and shadow amount),

e_gsm_cache = 0

Or customise which shadow LOD gets lower framerate than main framerate by changing,

e_gsm_cache = 1
e_gsm_cache_lod_offset=0-5 (where 0 is all shadows have low updaterate, 1 shadow LOD 1 and forward etc)

To make vegetation not move,

e_vegetation_bending=0 (0 is disabled and 2 is full bending)

e_time_of_day_speed=0 (some elvels have fast time transition and might make shadows "crack up")

Also I recommend a shadow jittering value of 1.5!

 

Some quirks with shadow system. If you type e_shadows=0 you will see the textures are actually great but sometimes in shadows they look strange. Improved shadow system in Warhead and quite excellent in Crysis Wars resolving this quirk.

Sounds like bugs. I do now about the sound beign there a bit longer than the actual burning effect. Be catious to not run 32bit saved games in 64bit mode or the reverse as this will 100% create strange errors and bugs.

See but not touch?

Nah really I cant remember that part but probably another bug. Shame they didn't update Crysis some more and add enhancements from Crysis Wars aswell as fix some bugs. Would run quite better and look better.

 

That's because the normal maps don't show up in shadows, and the base textures usually aren't very high res.

Example:

 

For geominstancing, I have it in my autoexec and systemcfg, it is at 1 when i set it. Ive checked it in console as soon as the game starts before i load any game, it is at 1. but i still lose fps even though calldraws are decreased. must be a cpu thing where more intesive work makes the cpu accelerate the game better vs lower drawcall and less priority in a result.

e_occlusion_culling_view_dist_ratio, funny that you should mention this command. i cannot change it midgame to 1 from its default of 0.5.

when i put it in an autoexec or system.cfg, it doesnt change from 0.5 to 1.0.

but if i edit the game difficulty files (bauer, hard, normal, easy) it will change. at value of 1, i DO get an increase of about 1 fps, it does help.

BUT!!!! here is the problem, if i edit the game difficulty files, the console will keep giving me error about the command being a cheat protected cvar! how can i avoid this? I dont feel that it is correct the game keeps giving me message error about this over and over again. Is there some sort of toggle to enable cheats so it doesnt flag it?

Thanks for the shadow updating commands, I will test them out.

 

Ah I see... too bad they never bother to continually fix Crysis. I can understand where they are coming from since the game is easily pirated and does not have a very sophisticated DRM protection like steam games. Due to how it is perceived to run most people without great computers are reluctant to buy Crysis, say, over something like HL2 or TF2.

Nah I only use 64 bit.

Yeah the two KPAs getting stuck in the wooden stall on the first map was quite common for me in all my playthroughs. I'm sure with some time Crytek could have easily fixed this but I guess they shouldn't bother.

 

Fortunately that problem will be somewhat solved by the use of SSAO on normal maps in CE3:

 

http://www.pcgames.de/aid,700030/Battlefield-trifft-auf-Crysis-Erster-Trailer-zur-CryEngine-2-Mod-Casus-Belli/PC/Video/

I can't understand a word, but this makes me think hard why are other devs not using Cryengine for games ?!?!?!?
Its the best out there !

 

I guess it is costs when they already got an engine or have progressed far enough into current game development that porting their work over to CE3 would be time consuming and increase costs. however for games that are going to be developed now or next year I would think CE3 would be interesting to lots of devs.

 

haha that's awesome, thanks.

 

Well there's this: