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Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are using Amazon’s Lumberyard game engine

venturebeat.com

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Re: Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are using Amazon’s Lumberyard game engine

#21

Post by scrollaway »

caseysoftware wrote: post #8
gulaschadasical wrote: post #7

Apparently "The most open game development in history" involves briefly mentioning an engine / platform switch at 5pm on a Friday before christmas

Did you see their EULA change a while back? If you upgraded to the latest beta, you absolved them of all liability if they never deliver the actual product. This is a sinking ship, they just won't (publicly) admit it yet.. though a bunch of their staff jumped ship, so they realize it.

"A bunch of their staff" jumped ship? What are we talking there? 5 people? 10? 50?

Unless you're talking about a mass exodus, more high ranking employees left Blizzard Entertainment the past couple of years than that. Is Blizzard a sinking ship as well?

Re: Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are using Amazon’s Lumberyard game engine

#22

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

The link should probably be updated to point directly to Venturebeat [0] instead of the AMP version. I think submitting the AMP version might break the guidelines, which ask you to submit the original source.

I preordered Star Citizen a few years ago, but I stopped keeping track of all updates after a while. To be honest, I kinda assumed it'd just become vaporware.

Although I'd heard about Amazon Lumberyard before, I hadn't considered this before: I wonder if Amazon will start a game studio at some point, since they seem to have a hand in pretty much every other tech scene. Are there any big avenues open for disruption in the videogame scene?

[0] http://venturebeat.com/2016/12/23/star-citizen-and-squadron-...

Re: Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are using Amazon’s Lumberyard game engine

#23

Post by wavefunction »

mikhailt wrote: post #6
scrollaway wrote: post #2

I didn't expect this, but it makes a lot of sense in retrospect. CIG had already hired a bunch of the crytek devs and invested a ton into their engine. They're also already pretty tightly coupled with AWS. I suspect this is the nail in CryEngine's coffin. I massively disagree with the decision, though. I think CIG could have taken CryEngine under their wing and continued developing it, releasing StarEngine (their for…

I don't see how fragmenting CryEngine benefits that much considering they're all on the same licensed CryEngine. Amazon paid $50m for the CryEngine and Amazon said Lumberyard is free to use with their AWS services. I think it makes sense for CIG to use Lumberyard's engine with AWS integration, especially it saves them a lot of money not licensing their own CryEngine fork and they're using AWS anyway.

As far as I knew, the plan was to use the various Google Cloud services for the backend, but I wonder if CIG found the offerings from Google too paltry. AWS seems to have better geographical proximity for Australia and South America, along with Asia in general, which was a complaint/concern among backers from Asia and Australia and South America.

As far as the license for CryEngine, I believe that wasn't an ongoing cost per se. I know CIG has done a bunch of customization (64-bit floating point precision vs 32-bit floating precision the biggest) but they were originally talking about folding some of those changes back into the general CryTek offering. I wonder if they're instead going to offer that to Amazon for Lumberyard as a cost offset to their use of the services.

Star Citizen would be a pretty big feather in the cap for Lumberyard, as well. I'm optimistic about the game's development.

Re: Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are using Amazon’s Lumberyard game engine

#24

Post by dualarte »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #22

The link should probably be updated to point directly to Venturebeat [0] instead of the AMP version. I think submitting the AMP version might break the guidelines, which ask you to submit the original source. I preordered Star Citizen a few years ago, but I stopped keeping track of all updates after a while. To be honest, I kinda assumed it'd just become vaporware. Although I'd heard about Amazon Lumberyard before, I…

Amazon actually already runs a game studio: https://games.amazon.com

Re: Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are using Amazon’s Lumberyard game engine

#25

Post by indy »

1_2__3 wrote: post #18

To abuse a phrase: it is difficult to make a dev finish a project when his livelihood depends on him not finishing it.

I think the devs deserve slightly more respect. Nobody wants to spend years of their lives on an unfinished product.

Re: Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are using Amazon’s Lumberyard game engine

#26

Post by scrollaway »

indy wrote: post #25
1_2__3 wrote: post #18

To abuse a phrase: it is difficult to make a dev finish a project when his livelihood depends on him not finishing it.

I think the devs deserve slightly more respect. Nobody wants to spend years of their lives on an unfinished product.

CIG deserves a lot more respect than that. I'm appalled at the quality of the comments here.

They are one of the best studios in the industry right now when it comes to consumer and dev friendliness. Their blog is a treasure trove of interesting posts on the internal development of the game, far more often and rigorously updated than anything else.

Seriously, keep the unsourced/unresearched flames to Reddit. You'd think that HN of all communities would be more appreciative of what CIG brings to the table.

Re: Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are using Amazon’s Lumberyard game engine

#27

Post by rasz_pl »

Dont get your hopes up, this game is shaping to be something between Theranos and No Mans Sky (aka No Mans Gameplay[1])

Here is a critique of FPS portion from seasoned FPS player (Beagle - former ShackTac etc) https://www.twitch.tv/beagsandjam/v/109477776

TLDR: devs dont have any idea how FPS games work and what makes them fun.

[1] I used that sentence during the hype train and got downvoted to hell and back ;-) People are blind when they go fanboy mode.

Re: Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are using Amazon’s Lumberyard game engine

#28

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

dualarte wrote: post #24
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #22

The link should probably be updated to point directly to Venturebeat [0] instead of the AMP version. I think submitting the AMP version might break the guidelines, which ask you to submit the original source. I preordered Star Citizen a few years ago, but I stopped keeping track of all updates after a while. To be honest, I kinda assumed it'd just become vaporware. Although I'd heard about Amazon Lumberyard before, I…

Amazon actually already runs a game studio: https://games.amazon.com

Well, that doesn't surprise me, but still... I'm absolutely amazed at how many things they seem to be doing over at Amazon.

I wonder if Amazon will follow Google's route and start splitting up into smaller companies at some point?

Re: Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are using Amazon’s Lumberyard game engine

#29

Post by eximius »

scrollaway wrote: post #2

I didn't expect this, but it makes a lot of sense in retrospect. CIG had already hired a bunch of the crytek devs and invested a ton into their engine. They're also already pretty tightly coupled with AWS. I suspect this is the nail in CryEngine's coffin. I massively disagree with the decision, though. I think CIG could have taken CryEngine under their wing and continued developing it, releasing StarEngine (their for…

As someone who actually wants the game to come out, I'm glad they didn't.

Re: Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are using Amazon’s Lumberyard game engine

#30

Post by spullara »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #28
dualarte wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon actually already runs a game studio: https://games.amazon.com

Well, that doesn't surprise me, but still... I'm absolutely amazed at how many things they seem to be doing over at Amazon. I wonder if Amazon will follow Google's route and start splitting up into smaller companies at some point?

I think it is already split into a lot of sub-companies.

https://www.quora.com/List-of-all-Amazon-properties-subsidia...

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