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Far Cry is a first-person shooter computer game developed by Crytek Studios and published by Ubisoft on March 23, 2004. Known for its striking environments, graphics, and draw-distances, the game raised the bar for first-person shooter graphics. It was the first so called Next Generation Shooter to be released, preceding the releases of Doom 3 and Half-Life 2. Far Cry is also sometimes lauded for its artificial intelligence.
The story follows an ex-Special Forces man named Jack Carver stranded on a mysterious Pacific archipelago, who is searching for a female journalist he was escorting after she went missing when their sailboat was destroyed by mercenaries.
On April 7, 2004, CryTek announced Far Cry: Instincts for video game console systems.
Graphics
Crytek developed a new game engine called "CryENGINE" for Far Cry. Reportedly, the game was born out of a technology demo made by Crytek to showcase the capabilities of the subsequent nVidia GeForce 6 Series. The engine main strong point was the ability to display vast outdoor levels with lush vegetation. Thanks to its LOD technology, Far Cry didn't have distance fog and the player could see for several kilometers. Most of the level territory was accessible to the player without loading pauses. The game engine featured seemless transitions between indoor and outdoor areas (that utilised slightly different lighting and rendering models).
The game engine had a built-in real-time editor that made creating large outdoor levels relatively simple without extensive manual editing. Because of this CryTek designers could add a lot of details to the whole level, creating many different paths without spending excessive time on level design. This allowed the player to chose many different approaches to solving level goals as opposed to more linear gameplay of traditional FPS games.
Graphically the game made extensive use of pixel shaders. For example, water shaders had a significant effect on visual quality, considering that a large part of the action took place near seashore or on the sea. Character detalisation was improved using Polybump bump-mapping technology. Bump-mapping and shaders were also used a lot in indoor levels.
A.I.
Human enemies in the game had advanced AI, favourably compared with other 2004 shooters (though its capabilities made minor glitches more apparent). The enemies were capable of navigating the large levels, using vehicles to travel, when necessary. They were patrolling, chatting with each other (CryTek wrote a lot of funny dialogs for mercenaries that provided a backstory, showing how player's actions affected the archipelago population, although some people complained about voice acting quality), idling, fishing, fixing equipment, etc. They could call for reinforcements and execute coordinated attacks, outflanking and surrounding the player. The tropical jungle provided a lot of cover and the game allowed the player to use it to hide from the enemies. They didn't know the position of the player unless they saw or heard him, but could remember his general location and go there to investigate. The enemy actions were generally not scripted. The scripts were mostly used to time sequences, such as spawning enemies to populate a base when the player gets close to that area. After the start of the sequence, every enemy acts driven by its AI.
Controversy
A month before its release, the German criminal police (Kripo) raided the CryTek offices after a tip from a former CryTek employee, who told that the studio was using unlicensed copies of Maya and 3D Studio Max.
System Requirements
Minimum:
- Operating system: Windows 98 SE/ME/2000/XP
- 1 GHz CPU
- 256 MB RAM
- DirectX 9.0b (included)
- 64 MB DirectX 9.0b-compatible graphics card
- Sound Card: DirectX 9.0b-compatible PCI card
- 4x DVD-ROM
- 4 GB hard drive space
- Multiplayer: Broadband with 64 kbit/s upstream to play (512 kbit/s upstream to host 8 players)
Recommended:
- AMD Athlon 2400-3000+ or Pentium 4 2-3 GHz
- 512-1024 MB RAM
- Video Card: 128 MB GeForce 4 128 MB to GeForce FX 5950; ATI Radeon 9500-9800 XT
- Sound Card: Sound Blaster Audigy series
- 8x-16x DVD-ROM
Weapons
External links
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