Thread: Dunia vs. Crytek 2

For all the hype that was Crysis I went out and purchased Crysis along with Crysis Warhead and Crysis Wars. Since I waited so long I got them all for about 30 bucks in one package.

After beating Crysis and Crysis Warhead and beating Farcry 2 I must say that the Dunia engine both performed better, had far better weather and day/night effects, far better light shaft renders, and was more pleasing to the eye. The jungles in Farcry 2 look very real and the entire render almost conveys the idea that there is a ton of humidity in the air. The shadow maps in Farcry 2 are nothing short of amazing. The so-called gimicky fire effect in Farcry 2 is actually one of the coolest things I've seen in an FPS in a long time. Nearly everything can catch on fire which is just pure gaming goodness. There is nothing more satisfying than choosing to shoot a fuel barrel and kill the enemy via a raging fire than wasting tons of ammo on each baddie. And I can play for hours and hours and it never CTD's.

Crytek 2 looks very good, do not get me wrong, but it does not live up to the hype surrounding it. The models in Crytek are a bit better than Farcry 2 but that comes down to the game designers and artists not really what the engine can and cannot do. Light shafts in Crysis do not look right and the shadow mapping glitched out really bad on my system. Crytek also loses points because Crysis was not free-form in that it had to dynamically load and track an entire island. There were parts in Crysis where I could see the end of the level...even though it was supposed to be on a large island. Farcry 2 only limited you to the playing area but the Dunia engine could more than handle the dynamic terrain and texture streaming required to simulate a huge area of terrrain to explore. Also Crytek 2 had 5 CTD's on my system and they were all related to quick saving at the wrong time. After one CTD and multiple attempts to restart the game I had to reboot the system and restart the game to avoid more CTDs. The jungles in Crysis look good but not nearly as good as in Farcry 2. In fact there were some areas where I actually thought the Crysis jungle looked like a bunch of plant billboards thrown around at random.

Both games ran excellent on my system maxed out but Dunia wins in my book for overall presentation.

For those of you that have played these games what do you think? I beat Farcry 2 first and then Crysis. I really thought Crytek 2 and Crysis would blow me away but they did not. I'm really not looking for gameplay comments here since I know Farcry 2 is a bit repetitive for some (but thats what people asked for when they said they wanted more freedom than Farcry 1) and Crysis gameplay just about sucks when you get to the alien part.

So which is the best enigne in your book? Dunia or Crytek 2?

Originally Posted by abachler

Graphics aside, I prefer FPS games that are more realistic, like Hidden and Dangerous et al. I just find it completely unbelievable that I would need to shoot someone more than once with an anti-tank rocket.

I agree with this... I'd also like to see enemies getting hit with the side effects of explosives much worse than they do. Outside of the kill radius of any explosive there should be non-lethal concussion, there should be stunning from the sound of a huge blast going off right near your ear... too many games don't employ these effects.

However good the Dunia engine may be, i feel that Crysis as a game (not considering the capabillities of each engine) looks far better than Far Cry 2.

When you say you played both 'maxed out', what exactly does that mean? Did you play on Very High in Crysis, and if so, at what resolution?

My old system could handle Very High @ 1920x1200 if i didn't mess with AA, and i was constantly awed by Crysis and Crysis Warhead, never ceased to amaze me. Far Cry 2 had very good graphics, but the game itself didn't captivate me, and i must say, visually, i felt it was inferior to both Crysis games.

I'm not a 3D programmer however, so i might not have the same insight into the techniques and qualities of each game and engine.

Curiously I felt the other way. FarCry 2 impressed me more graphically. But maybe because I'm partial towards the African setting which was so marvelously depicted. The game however was no joy for me. Really not my style of FPS at all, where Crysis was a little more to it.

I can't say which engine impressed me the most. I have little knowledge on these things. However this much I know, Dunia offered more for the buck. I could set it up for full settings under 1400x900 and the game would run on the 50-30fps mark, only dropping to 30 or the high 20s on explosions sights (on a ATI Radeon HD 4770). I could not do the same with Crisys which invariably made the game lost some of its graphical appeal.

So, a well tuned engine may make a selling difference favoring a game for those many users with borderline GPUs just touching the high end entry level. Of course, the game must be good to... and neither game ended up making any of my shopping lists. (and Crysis, also because I decided to boycott it over the DirectX 10 idiocy).

Originally Posted by Mario F.

The game however was no joy for me. Really not my style of FPS at all, where Crysis was a little more to it.

Ditto.

I can't say which engine impressed me the most. I have little knowledge on these things. However this much I know, Dunia offered more for the buck. I could set it up for full settings under 1400x900 and the game would run on the 50-30fps mark, only dropping to 30 or the high 20s on explosions sights (on a ATI Radeon HD 4770). I could not do the same with Crisys which invariably made the game lost some of its graphical appeal.

So, a well tuned engine may make a selling difference favoring a game for those many users with borderline GPUs just touching the high end entry level. Of course, the game must be good to... and neither game ended up making any of my shopping lists. (and Crysis, also because I decided to boycott it over the DirectX 10 idiocy).

A very good point, Crysis is way too hard on the system. The DX10 idiocy can be circumvented with some user-created mods, you can even make it a bit prettier than what the game normally allows, although this doesn't help the framerate either obviously.

If my memory serves me correct, the Dunia engine is a heavily modified version of the CryEngine 2(source), so logically speaking, you'd expect it to be somewhat better. Farcry2 was also release a year after, so there's bound to be a little improvement.
Engine-wise, I agree that Dunia was a bunch better in both capabilities and speed. I especially thought the water was great. Crysis also had good FPS moments and bad (which ticked me off because the bad was always at the end). I also think that creating the tropical areas seens in crysis would be a lot harder to get realistic (skillfully and technologically) than farcry2's africans safari. Farcry 2 didn't have much in the way of arial views like crysis (crysis had the mission where you flew the VTOL).
Gameplay-wise, I thought farcry2 was aweful after the first couple of hours. It's too repetative, too long and if I had to put up with one more native chasing me down to death for the simple fact that they saw me, I'm was gonna chew on the disc and send it back to the developers.

Originally Posted by yaya

If my memory serves me correct, the Dunia engine is a heavily modified version of the CryEngine 2(source), so logically speaking, you'd expect it to be somewhat better. Farcry2 was also release a year after, so there's bound to be a little improvement.

Yes, heavily modified version of CryEngine 1, not CryEngine 2 which was the one used for Crysis and Crysis Warhead.

Besides, Crysis was way ahead of it's time, visually speaking, so i think it's pretty fair to compare the two, even though CryEngine 2 is a bit older.