Overview

This page serves as a starting point for developers wanting to get started with CRYENGINE programming using C++, introducing the user to both project and plugin creation, and compiling the engine itself.

At the end of this article, you'll have your development environment set up to a point where you can write and test game code.

Prerequisites

This article assumes that you have the main CRYENGINE programming prerequisites:

In addition, the CRYENGINE Launcher will be needed.

Creating a new project

In this section we will go through the process of creating a new project through the CRYENGINE Launcher. Creation of a project is always done by first selecting a template, giving you the foundations you need for the type of game you wish to create.

To start, open up the CRYENGINE Launcher and press +New in the Projects menu.

This will then take you to the Create Project screen, in which we can select an engine version, preferred language, a project template, a project filename and finally, a path or location.

Once you can see the screen pictured above, follow the steps below:

1. Select the Blank C++ game template
2. Name your project
3. Select where the project should be stored.

When you're done, press Create Project in order to trigger the project generation. Once this is done you will be returned to the main Launcher screen where you can launch the Editor or the Game. I.e. creating a project does not automatically open it.

Generating a Visual Studio Solution

In order to start generating a Visual Studio solution, we need to go to our project directory. This was configured in the step above in the Create Project screen.

An easy way of opening the project directory is by clicking on the gear icon in the Launcher and selecting Reveal in Explorer.

Once you have the folder open in Explorer, right-click the Game.cryproject file and select Generate Solution. This will output a Solutions directory in the same directory. Opening this reveals a win64 directory, containing Game.sln. This solution file can be used to build your game project.

Now, double click your Game.sln file to open the solution with Visual Studio. Once opened, you should have a view similar to the image below:

This presents us with our project; Game (seen under the Project folder in the Solution Explorer), contains all C++ source files contained in our game plug-in.

In addition, we are presented with three executable files that can launch the engine:

• GameLauncher - Used to play your game as an end-user would
• GameServer - Used to start a dedicated server running your project
• Sandbox - Used to open the CRYENGINE Editor to create levels for your project

By default, the GameLauncher is selected. This means that if we press F5, the project will be built and launched in a pure game context.

Conclusion

This concludes the article! You are now able to continue building your C++ powered game using CRYENGINE.

If you are interested in going further, we recommend checking out:

• Tutorial - Installing Visual Studio
• Tutorial - Building CRYENGINE From GitHub
• Tutorial - Compiling a C++ Project
• Introduction to the Engine API
• Projects and Plugins
• Getting Started with Entity Components
• Building the Engine from Source Code