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Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration

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Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration

#111

Post by TranquilMarmot »

TrevorJ wrote: post #107
mikeash wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems pretty crazy to me. I get that they're using this as a loss leader to promote their services, but it seems to me that they'd do much better if they just made it work great with AWS such that it was the natural choice. If you integrate AWS heavily then people will pick it anyway, but if they think it's their own decision they'll be a lot happier with it.

Developing a game is such a time and resource intensive process, I don't see any AAA studios locking themselves into using AWS. It's a non-starter.

Definitely agree. You'd be at the mercy of Amazon's AWS pricing for the whole lifecycle of your game. Let's say they suddenly increase the price tenfold... you either shut off your multiplayer (not an option for some games), host it all yourself (which would mean buying servers, paying people to maintain them, changing the game to use a new backend, etc.), or switch to another engine (essentially, recreate your game from scratch)

Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration

#112

Post by autoreleasepool »

knodi123 wrote: post #95
bobajeff wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"if you're developing a fast-twitch action game or shooter - a GC pause might drop enough frames to matter there, but for most games, Java or C# should be fine." Are most games adventure, puzzle solving, or turn-based?

or otherwise not dependent on single-frame precision, yeah. certainly "fast-twitch action games" and "fast twitch shooters" are a minority of all games.

Action games may be the minority of all games developed, maybe. They're definitely the most desired and most market viable. It's easier to write a turn based game in garbage collected language. There's a surplus of these games, so they don't even sell well.

The best selling console games are sports simulators and first person shooters. The next popular are open world RPG/action (Skyrim, Fallout), then we have fighting and racing games. 2.5D platformsrs are also popular now. All of these games need the deterministic guarantees of "fast twitched action games".

It's not so much performance as much as control. Objective-C is a lot slower than C++, but making action games in pure Objective-C is viable because you are still in control of a system that allows for deterministic resource cleanup and stable frame rate.

In the US, I'd say turn based RPGs and puzzle games are by far the least popular genre on consoles across the board. They may be most widely produced games, they are hardly the most widely consumed ( outside of Mobile).

Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration

#113

Post by TranquilMarmot »

julius wrote: post #9

The big question for me is: Why an entire engine? If they were just interested in getting developers, to use their cloud services. Wouldn't they simply release plugins for all major engines? And wouldn't Unreal and Unity be much more interesting targets (based on their usage in the industry), than CryEngine?

This way they lock you in to AWS so you're stuck with it and can't switch to Azure of Google Cloud Compute.

Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration

#114

Post by autoreleasepool »

lmm wrote: post #57
thecatspaw wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isnt the main problem with C#, Java and similars the garbage collector? which can at its worst kick in while you're in the middle of a fight or something. Even if its just 20ms, in a online FPS it potentially makes the difference between winning and loosing it. edit: I am a Java guy myself, and would like to do some amateur gamedev in that direction (online FPS), but im worried about above mentioned point.

True as far as it goes. Modern GC can mostly be done concurrently (it's only heap compaction that requires stopping the world). Fully pauseless GC is very much possible (see e.g. Azul C4), as are e.g. architectures involving multiple short-lived processes with individual heaps. Even without that, it's often possible to do a relatively small amount of manual work to do the things that require pausing only at appropria…

Possible != usable in production.

Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration

#115

Post by jccalhoun »

benbristow wrote: post #48
twoquestions wrote: post #44

I wonder why Amazon is going after game developers, as the gaming industry looks like a crowded and low-margin market. Not to mention the free to try and mature tools that developers already have (Unity, Unreal Engine, etc.)

The cloud service offerings. They can make a killing off of hosting the game servers and backend APIs.

That and to get people into their ecosystem. Make a game that runs on their firestick and a user might stick around to use Amazon Prime and rent a movie or something.

Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration

#116

Post by autoreleasepool »

lmm wrote: post #66
bobajeff wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"computers get faster" Not everywhere. Phones, tablets and older or low end laptops are very popular.

Phones are really quite fast these days. C# is a perfectly reasonable choice for a phone game.

C# is a perfectly reasonable choice for a phone game that can afford garbage collection pauses. This means turn-based.

In every other case, you're better off using a language whose resource management model doesn't fight you.

Swift is the best of both worlds in this regard.

Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration

#117

Post by UK-AL »

thecatspaw wrote: post #54
lmm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Five years ago using C# for a serious game would get you laughed at. But every day the balance shifts: computers get faster, but developers don't get smarter, so a language that sacrifices performance for ease of development becomes a better choice. If you're looking to the future I'd recommend sticking with C#.

isnt the main problem with C#, Java and similars the garbage collector? which can at its worst kick in while you're in the middle of a fight or something. Even if its just 20ms, in a online FPS it potentially makes the difference between winning and loosing it. edit: I am a Java guy myself, and would like to do some amateur gamedev in that direction (online FPS), but im worried about above mentioned point.

Modern C# allows you to define a code path where GC is not allowed to run. I'm not sure if unity allows for this.

I'm also not sure about the new c# -> to native compilers coming out.

Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration

#118

Post by UK-AL »

autoreleasepool wrote: post #116
lmm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phones are really quite fast these days. C# is a perfectly reasonable choice for a phone game.

C# is a perfectly reasonable choice for a phone game that can afford garbage collection pauses. This means turn-based. In every other case, you're better off using a language whose resource management model doesn't fight you. Swift is the best of both worlds in this regard.

Considering virtually every major mobile game is unity these days, is this really an issue?

Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration

#119

Post by outworlder »

BatFastard wrote: post #90
dahart wrote: post #87

https://aws.amazon.com/service-terms/ 57.10 Acceptable Use; Safety-Critical Systems. Your use of the Lumberyard Materials must comply with the AWS Acceptable Use Policy. The Lumberyard Materials are not intended for use with life-critical or safety-critical systems, such as use in operation of medical equipment, automated transportation systems, autonomous vehicles, aircraft or air traffic control, nuclear facilities…

That's really in there! There are lawyers with a sense of humor?

Not just lawyers. Someone in charge must have authorized that. Which is, frankly speaking, amazing! Too many companies are too serious for their own good, it's a refreshing change.

Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration

#120

Post by outworlder »

TrevorJ wrote: post #107
mikeash wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems pretty crazy to me. I get that they're using this as a loss leader to promote their services, but it seems to me that they'd do much better if they just made it work great with AWS such that it was the natural choice. If you integrate AWS heavily then people will pick it anyway, but if they think it's their own decision they'll be a lot happier with it.

Developing a game is such a time and resource intensive process, I don't see any AAA studios locking themselves into using AWS. It's a non-starter.

But they do lock themselves up all the time, on console deals, on cloud platforms (Azure for Xbox, anyone). Isn't this something a proper contract would solve? We are talking about an AAA studio after all.
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