When comparing CryEngine vs Skyline, the Slant community recommends CryEngine for most people. In the question“What are the best 3D game engines?” CryEngine is ranked 7th while Skyline is ranked 39th. The most important reason people chose CryEngine is:
CryEngine has some C#template and also C# based system to write your function/ideas in to your game.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro C# integration
CryEngine has some C#template and also C# based system to write your function/ideas in to your game.
Pro DX12, Vulkan support
CryEngine 5.4 now supports DX12 and Vulkan
Pro Features allowing for realistic weather effects
Cry Engine has volumetric fog rendering which allows for realistic cloud shadows that actually render shadows onto the fog itself. Combined with their time of day system, it's possible to create incredibly realistic weather effects. On top of this, color grading allows user to post process pallets allowing them to change the color tone for different type weather, such as using a deep dark blue for rain.
Pro There is already a built-in AI
It can shoot, walk on patrol points, can see the player and so on.
Pro VR support
Cryengine (starting on Cryengine V) has Virtual Reality support. Developers can create games with VR support for multiple platforms: PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
Pro Dynamic water rendering
Cry Engine has realistic water effects that even simulate ocean physics. Features such as waves that respond to global wind, and dynamic water volume tessellation allow for some of the most realistic water effects available to a game developer. The engine also takes into account LOD (level of detail) on water geometry to allow it to stay performant for water at a distance.
Pro Realistic rendering of vegetation and landscapes
Where Cry Engine really shines is with rendering scenes of nature. The Crysis games feature incredibly detailed vegetation and weather effects and it's the Cry Engine that enables that. The engine has many features to create a cohesive realistic looking world. Dynamic water effects allow users to have beautiful oceans, fog and cloud effects allow for realistic weather, and a plethora of lighting effects optimized for natural looking scenes make Cry Engine one of the best engines for creating vast beautiful landscapes.
By having all these features built together from the ground up, Cry Engine is capable of doing more complex effects more efficiently, than other engines that didn't have these effects planned from their inception.
Pro All platforms, including next-gen consoles, are supported
Supports miltiple platforms including: Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, Wii U, PC, iOS, and Android.
Pro Versatile flow diagram script model
Flow graphs resemble flowcharts where each box represents a function or value, with connections between them representing program flow. This provides a better at-a-glance indication of game logic than a simple list of events, and makes complex behaviors easier to accomplish.
Pro Dedicated channel for Q&A
Crytek has launched a dedicated Q&A forum for everything Cryengine related. It's called Cryengine Answers and it's a community dedicated to sharing and answering any question related to Cryengine.
Pro Online marketplace available
The Cryengine marketplace is an online marketplace which enables developers to access and use individual assets from thousands of materials, sounds and 3D objects created by the community. Even Crytek's own library assets are available there.
Pro Advanced volumetric cloud system
Cryengine has an optimized volumetric cloud system for Virtual Reality to give clouds full 3D spatial rendering. This ensures a high rendering quality with a minimal performance hit.
Pro Terrain tools are great
Pro Disallows bad practices in asset creation
Simply by looking at the RC log when exporting can greatly improve your work. Cryengine doesn't handhold you constantly and helps greatly with avoiding bad practices in asset creation.
Pro Great tech support and friendly community
A growing community that is always helpful with dev response times averaging less then 24 hours. Often less than 12.
Pro Comprehensive WYSIWYG editor
Skyline provides a straightforward drag and drop development environment that can be customized to suit individual preferences. Playing the game and animating the scene can be done from within the editor at any time.
Future versions will allow extending editor's functionality with plugins and offer an official way of trading custom plugins.
Pro Highly affordable licensing
Skyline's commercial edition costs just £40, has no royalties or earning limitations and includes 2 activations per license purchase and a year of free updates.
Pro Runs well on lower end machines
Skyline can be run on a machine with 2GHz Dual Core CPU, 2GB of RAM and Nvidia's 9800 GT (or equivalent) GPU. While, obviously, higher specs are recommended, it's reasonable to expect around 60fps on small scenes with these specs.
Pro Excellent terrain editor
The Terrain editor is easy to use and will include features such as hole cutting.
There is a differed lighting render for internal scenes, which makes creating multi light and beautiful/atmospheric scenes so much easier.
All the tools for the terrain are in one place such as placing road/paths, vegetation, billboards, and the settings are easy to locate and change.
Planned features include:
Hole cutting in terrain and
Terrain paging.
Pro Low learning curve
Making a game in the current top engines is hard work, making something small and basic in Skyline is not. Easy to learn drag an drop model placement and editing supplemented with easy to follow video's on forum make the process straightforward.
Pro Full global illumination
Including image based lighting.
Pro Has a free version
A free version that's limited to non-commercial usage and lacks a few features is available.
Pro Impressive water render
Rendering of a water plane looks fantastic and is easily edited for different effects.
Pro Artist-friendly
The schematic editor is designed to make it easier for non-programmers to create games.
Pro Asset store
Not much in it at the moment but is starting to grow and will continue to grow with an increase of users.
Pro Constant development and regular updates
There are many additions to the engine that are on the road map such as multi threading and tree physics.
The feature list is constantly evolving with each user request and idea put forth.
Pro Support for custom editors
Skyline has a custom editor that gives the user of making their own tools for use directly in the editor to develop their games. All the editors are made using the Qt Designer and programmed in lua inside the engine itself.
Pro OSVR support announced
Open-Source Virtual Reality support is in development.
Pro More editor's
Shadow editor.
Weapon Class Editor.
Mesh Editor.
Advanced Mesh Editor.
GUI Editor.
Script Editor.
Environment Editor (volumetric clouds and day night cycle, lightening, ocean settings, height fog).
Particle Editor.
Path editor.
Schematic editor.
Navmesh editor.
Material editor.
Pro Lots of learning resources
The documentation is been rewritten and follows a structure like a course.
Introduction to > Level designer with examples > Artists
There is also video tutorials, video examples and video tutorial series been produced.
There are user created demo scenes, examples and more.
Pro Visual GUI/HUD Dditor
Making HUDs and GUIs has never been easier
Pro PBR Workflow
Full PBR workflow, your not stuck to Secular or Metallic it has both
Pro One on one private support with engine developers
Can contact the Skyline developers and they will always respond and help as fast as they can.
Cons
Con Steep learning curve
Except for basic FPS games getting anything done will require solid knowledge of C++, Flash, ActionScript and Lua.
Con No GNU/Linux support
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Con Hard to develop games other than FPS
Cryengine is a great engine to be used for developing an FPS (and it's relatively easy to do so). But if you want to develop another type of game, it requires at least advanced knowledge of C++ and Visual Studio.
Con No Mac OS X support
Con Restrictive license
Cryengine is not restrictive anymore just more personalized. The model is Pay what you want and if you want more you get a membership with them. Or private support, help and lessons directly from the CryEngine team.
Con Currently limited to targeting PC
Mobile targets are planned.
Con Free Version currently not available/severely limited when available.
The free version has massive amounts of features functionality removed, including the ability to compile anything standalone.
The free version is currently (as of November 2017) not available until the next major release.
Note: some of what is below is open to change, this is the coming set of changes.
The price will be jumping from $40 to £99.99 ($132.32) for the lowest tier able to build a standalone. This tier will not be able to remove the engine splash screen.
The next tier will be £199.99 ($264.66).
Con No C++ SDK
Con Small community
There is a small but helpful community that are constantly creating video tutorials and one member is creating a FREE ebook to make the transition to the engine simpler.
Con Still in beta
Not all features are fully implemented yet.
Con Lacks occlusion culling and lightmapping
This is been added in a future update, however a date of this update hasn't been given yet.