Growing Pains?
Elxx | November 29, 2007Well, the Crysis modding community has gotten off to a good start. An editor was included in the demo as well as the full game, there’s an “official” modding site, there’s a rep from Crytek working to answer questions…it looks pretty good. There’s also an SDK coming soon (then again, so’s the BF2142 editor…hah) that should increase the modding potential even further.
However, there’s a problem. Crytek appears to be dictating what mods can/can’t be released. See, in Crysis, after you shoot an enemy, their ragdolls lose all collision meshes apparently. Thus, you can’t punch ragdolls, move them, nothing like that. It really pissed me off to see that in such a sexy engine. So, somebody made a Ragdoll/Blood Mod that re-enables ragdoll movement and blood on dead enemies. The modders are just making the game better, right?
Well, Crytek decided that they didn’t like that. Though they first supported the mod, suddenly they decided to yank it off CryMod, delete the topics of discussion about it, and send off memos to other Crysis fan sites to get it taken off. Now, that immediately made me remember the Unlocks Mod for BF2142, which Dice tried to demolish. Of course, that didn’t quite work out for them…you can’t stop modders.
My hunch is that they’re caving in (somewhat) to Germany’s ridiculous game violence laws and trying to prevent a Hot Coffee incident in Crysis. But that still makes no sense…you can strangle enemies, throw them into walls, drown them, blow them up, shoot them, etc…but once they’re dead, you must not disturb them?!
Crysis still looks like an amazing modding platform, but Crytek’s control of Crymod is now starting to worry me after this incident. And, like the DX9 “Very High” capability, it’s another one of those “artificial limitations” they’re trying to impose on us…and all they’re doing is crippling their own awesome engine!















