Cryengine isn’t open source, but its full code is now up on GitHub

Developers are always looking to better understand their tools, and now Crytek has made a big leap toward that goal.

The full source code for the game-making Cryengine software is now available on the programming repository GitHub. Crytek senior systems engineer David Kaye explained in a blog post that this will enable people to quickly see the differences between various versions of the toolkit going forward. While companies and other groups typically upload their source codes to GitHub with an open-source license that gives everyone the right to redistribute and modify, that is not the case for Cryengine. The German company will require you to purchase a commercial license to access certain parts of its code, and the legal restrictions of that license will still apply.

“In the past, public Cryengine releases came with source code in a zip file included in the build,” wrote Kaye. “While this allowed users to customize systems as they saw fit, it was a simple drop of files. To see the difference in a set of files between one release and the next, both archives needed to be extracted and compared. Git makes this a lot easier, and since Git is decentralized, it can also be used just as effectively with no network connection.”

Another benefit of Cryengine on GitHub is that it makes it easier than ever for its users to stay updated.

CRYENGINE. GIT. NOW!https://t.co/o03vLv1GoA

— CRYENGINE (@cryengine) May 24, 2016

This is the latest big move for a Crytek company that has had a number of major transitions. In March, Crytek made Cryengine V — its latest revision of the software — pay-what-you-want. This means developers could download the entire tool for any price, even a penny. The company also introduced a marketplace where creators can sell content and tools to one another. Also, in February, Amazon revealed that it was offering a free game-making tool called Lumberyard that it based on Cryengine.