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

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

#71

Post by ebbv »

Netbeing wrote: post #69
ebbv wrote: post #61

This isn't nearly as big of a deal as the headline sounds since Lumberyard is just a free version of CryTek with extra bells and whistles. Why would any dev that was using CryTek not switch to Lumberyard?

Because they could never again use any 3rd party cloud services for their game except AWS?

Yeah I didn't check the agreement before, I had assumed the integration with AWS was there to make it attractive, but you're right it locks you out of any other third party service. That does make it a real choice.

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

#73

Post by eterm »

sandworm101 wrote: post #66
bm3719 wrote: post #40

After getting my refund, I've been watching the SC narrative unfold from the sidelines with interest. There's enough things that've gone awry in this project to write a book about (and I guess if you were to collect all of Derek Smart's writings, that's what you'd have). For me, the main deal breakers and why I got out were that I felt substantively bait-and-switched when you compare the current "game" to what was or…

>> compare the current "game" to what was originally promised That's a real issue with crowdfunding. More often than not, the devs truly have no idea what the final game will look like. Much of the early funding goes into what are essentially extended market research projects. Alphas are released, feedback taken, and changes made. Everyone expects that devs have some final version of "done" in their heads, but the tr…

KSP was steam early access rather than crowdfunded per se, and was one of the early successes of steam's "early access", the funding made it into a very complete game and had regular updates and progress throughout the early access stages and didn't re-invent itself.

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

#74

Post by munchbunny »

scrollaway wrote: post #37
1_2__3 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're praising them for being developers, rather than actually making anything finished. I'm glad you respect their effort so highly but that doesn't mean anyone else is "flaming" them for pointing out the constantly pushed-out schedules and the convenient fact that they're making plenty of cash without ever releasing anything... and the betas they have released shows an ever-more-ambitious vision when even 3-5 visi…

> You're praising them for being developers, rather than actually making anything finished This is a developer forum more than a gaming forum, so I think it's appropriate, don't you? > plenty of cash without ever releasing anything Come on now. I haven't at all kept up with the game for the past year and half and I can still tell you that they are regularly pushing out content simply because my inbox gets spammed wit…

I noticed that you've posted many comments in this topic, but I'm answering this one specifically because of your edit. I didn't downvote you here, but I did downvote other comments you made. Since you asked, I hope you'll take a moment to consider why I did it. Based on other comments I read, I don't think I'm alone in my reasons.

It's clear that you are passionate about the game. I appreciate that you are, because as a developer myself, it's really nice to have people who are enthusiastic about the work that you do.

But having said that, your comments as a whole have been defensive. Phrases like "come on now," "these comments are unworthy of Reddit," and calling others' comments disingenuous are fueling the flames. You're making it hard to have a real discussion with you because I don't feel like also ending up on the receiving end of your comments.

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

#75

Post by sandworm101 »

eterm wrote: post #73
sandworm101 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> compare the current "game" to what was originally promised That's a real issue with crowdfunding. More often than not, the devs truly have no idea what the final game will look like. Much of the early funding goes into what are essentially extended market research projects. Alphas are released, feedback taken, and changes made. Everyone expects that devs have some final version of "done" in their heads, but the tr…

KSP was steam early access rather than crowdfunded per se, and was one of the early successes of steam's "early access", the funding made it into a very complete game and had regular updates and progress throughout the early access stages and didn't re-invent itself.

It wasn't only on steam. They also sold through their own store. I certainly didn't buy through steam. Whether the game is complete or not depends on when you got in on the process. What it does have is the layered and rather disconnected set of features that are typical of game development in response to market feedback rather than cohesive vision. It's a good game, but does show the telltales.

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

#76

Post by munchbunny »

bm3719 wrote: post #40

After getting my refund, I've been watching the SC narrative unfold from the sidelines with interest. There's enough things that've gone awry in this project to write a book about (and I guess if you were to collect all of Derek Smart's writings, that's what you'd have). For me, the main deal breakers and why I got out were that I felt substantively bait-and-switched when you compare the current "game" to what was or…

This gets to the root of my problems with the game's development history.

The switch to Lumberyard makes a lot of sense. It's basically Cryengine. With Crytek shutting down, I'd want to switch to a still maintained but pretty much the same engine too.

When Star Citizen was originally announced on Kickstarter I was hyped as hell that Freelancer was going to get a spiritual successor. But I held off because it felt like they were already promising a really big scope at the time of the Kickstarter. Like the size of several games.

Destiny also had a huge vision, but even with an experienced studio and fewer promises, they still had issues delivering on the hype they marketed until many DLC's later.

The vision for the game still felt achievable until they added the FPS elements, at which point I more or less wrote off that the game would ever come out as a fully realized vision. It's just too goddamn big.

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

#77

Post by scrollaway »

munchbunny wrote: post #74
scrollaway wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're praising them for being developers, rather than actually making anything finished This is a developer forum more than a gaming forum, so I think it's appropriate, don't you? > plenty of cash without ever releasing anything Come on now. I haven't at all kept up with the game for the past year and half and I can still tell you that they are regularly pushing out content simply because my inbox gets spammed wit…

I noticed that you've posted many comments in this topic, but I'm answering this one specifically because of your edit. I didn't downvote you here, but I did downvote other comments you made. Since you asked, I hope you'll take a moment to consider why I did it. Based on other comments I read, I don't think I'm alone in my reasons. It's clear that you are passionate about the game. I appreciate that you are, because…

I appreciate the feedback. I was honestly more annoyed that some really low effort comments further down weren't being downvoted, but it looks like it shifted.

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

#78

Post by pandaman »

scrollaway wrote: post #21
caseysoftware wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A simple linkedin search returns about a hundred. With the total number of employees about two hundred and the company having been around for about five years, it's hardly comparable to Blizzard, which has thousands of employees and contractors and had been there for decades.

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

#79

Post by zeeZ »

extrapickles wrote: post #4
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 suspect Lumberyard hasn't diverged from base cryengine much otherwise they wouldn't have been able to as quickly switch. Amazon probably focused on code for autoscaling the backend server pieces and left the front end mostly alone.

A reddit comment [0]:

> StarEngine was based on CryEngine 3.7 (last big integration) with cherry picked changes from CryEngine 3.8 (mainly some Animation/Serialization fixes/improvements). The Lumberyard builds we used had the same CryEngine 3.7 base with the main changes on the Editor/Tools side. We heavily changed or have completely rewritten CPU/GPU side rendering, memory management, multithreading, entity/game object handling + added tons of engine features wich neither CryEngine nor Lumberyard have. Everything else is relatively easy to merge, thanks to the same code base + adding independent Lumberyard only features is straightforward too, especially with the help of Amazon developers. We are pretty good at handling the rest of the old CryEngine codebase, which CryEngine, Lumberyard and StarEngine have in common, ourselves ;)

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/5k06v9/letter_...

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

#80

Post by frik »

Amazon Lumberyard game engine = fork of CryEngine maintained by Amazon. So they just changed from were they get Engine support, the engine is the same.

CryEngine got forked and improved from Ubisoft before and is used in FarCry 2-4 series (now called Dunia engine). The original FarCry 1 was from Crytek.

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