Crysis PC Game: Crysis Warhead - Q&A with Cevat Yerli

German PC Games interviewed Cevat Yerli and asked him several questions about Crytek's upcoming Crysis Warhead. Though Cevat's answers were in German, thanks to thebusdriver at Crymod forums we can read it in English.

"Have you reprogrammed or have you integrated additional technical features into your existing technology?

Overall technical optimization. Config params have been optimized and finetuned which results in a better overall performance. Optimization of particle stream (?), necessary because there would have been a general loss in performance if they hadn't done it.

There are more particle effects in Warhead, the gaming experience will be more explosive and more intense than in Crysis.

New feature: global ambient illumination/lighting: no performance loss but better overall image quality. Global ambient lighting makes the normal maps appear more intense, materials look more realistic. The overall image quality has been improved with this feature (both far and near objects). This also results in overall improved lighting/light effects. They are thinking about doing the same thing for Crysis, because it looks better and can be easily done.

Many players have complained that CryENGINE 2 is very demanding if you want to play Crysis with the highest detail possible (DirectX 10). Were you aware of this fact when programming Warhead, are you therefor constantly trying to optimize your base technology to lower the hardware requirements, especially for those who want the best visual quality?

They try to do everything they can to make Warhead playable on all computers. 600 euros is enough to be able to play Warhead on the highest possible settings. The goal was to make Warhead available to a larger group of customers (especially those with lower hardware configurations).

How do you think about the fact that fans have found ways to activate special features in the engine like very high resolution textures, ultra high mode or enabling DirectX 10 visuals on DirectX 9 cards? Do you appreciate that? Do you take this into consideration when developing Warhead? Does this even help you to constantly optimize your technology?

DX10 features haven't been disabled intentionally for DX9. If all DX10 features were included in DX9, there would have been performance issues, the features would be available but they might not work. Customers that bought DX10 graphics cards have a better CPU, and RAM too, so their PC automatically qualifies for these additional features.

We couldn't allow physics/improved visuals/destructible objects in DX9 multiplayer, because DX9 computers usually don't have the same performance as DX10 computers do. It was possible to activate DX10 features for DX9, and for some people that worked, but for others it didn't, due to them not having all the necessary hardware they made this decision because DX10 guaranteed that computers have enough performance to cope with these additional features.

The discussion about DX10 is still ongoing and Microsoft has already presented an expansion. Will Warhead support and utilize the API extensions, if yes, how can DirectX 10.1 improve or optimize the rendering process? If not, why was there no need to support DX10.1?

There's no support for DX10.1 because the improvements that have been made are minimal and wouldn't aid in increasing the performance while playing Crysis.

We can think about supporting DX10.1 for future games, but there's no need for that yet. It would confuse most customers to create a game for DX10 and the next one for DX10.1, which is unacceptable. That would introduce the same issues Crysis had (DX9 vs DX10). DirectX 10.1 just contains some minor fixes, which won't make any difference for Crysis/Crysis: Warhead.

ATI as well as NVIDIA recently presented a new generation of graphics cards featuring two GPUs on one card. Have you already tested this hardware with Warhead, will you optimize CryENGINE 2 for multi-GPU settings or does your technology already profit measurably from multi-GPU cards? Can players buying an AMD HD 3870 X2 or NVIDIA GeForce 9800GX2 expect a performance boost in Crysis: Warhead?

Warhead does support multi-GPU configurations, especially the recently released new hardware. We didn't focus on the new generation (GTX 200/ATI HD 4800) cards as our goal was to create a game that should run on PCs that cost around 400 euros. However, multi-GPU configurations will provide additional performance but it's not necessary.

Quad-core CPUs become more popular as well as affordable and the processor manufacturers have plans to increase the core number up to eight or even more. Will the build of the engine that is used in Warhead be able to scale perfectly with 8 or even more cores, do you have any plans to reorganize the thread structure of CryENGINE 2 to utilize such a high number of cores efficiently?

CryENGINE 2 does support multi-core CPUs, but the support is limited to 4-6 cores, maybe 8 (he wouldn't bet on it). MCPU will most probably provide a more stable framerate instead of an overall increase in fps.

CPUs do have multiple cores, but they can't be accessed fast enough yet. CryENGINE 2 won't have a new threading structure as it is too early to make a safe bet.

We're working on a technology that will allow middleware developers to easily create software for x-core systems. We do intend to sell that technology too. Also, the name for the next CryENGINE hasn't been chosen yet (2, 2.5, 3, 4, ...)"