Earlier quoted context omitted.
They certainly already have a SDK for Unity: https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-unity
Does this have support for their "auto scaling" back end? That is what interests me the most.
Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration
131–140 of 187 posts
Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
You have to weigh these risks against the likelihood of them actually happening. If AWS made a first-ever price increase, yes, you'd then have to consider whether you could beat that pricing by doing it in-house but you have to balance that against the very low odds of it actually happening and the up-front costs of hiring a ton of staff (e.g. just having 24x7 support requires something like 5 people when you factor…
I don't understand what you mean by balancing it against the up-front costs of hiring a ton of staff. The whole point here is that if you're not locked in to AWS (because you don't use their free-with-massive-strings-attached game engine) then you can migrate to some other cloud service if AWS no longer suits you.
Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration
#133The thing I find weird about this is how Lumberjack is not compatible with any of Amazon's own devices. I would have expected their engine to support Fire tablets and Fire TV, at least.
Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have to weigh these risks against the likelihood of them actually happening. If AWS made a first-ever price increase, yes, you'd then have to consider whether you could beat that pricing by doing it in-house but you have to balance that against the very low odds of it actually happening and the up-front costs of hiring a ton of staff (e.g. just having 24x7 support requires something like 5 people when you factor…
> If AWS made a first-ever price increase Actually, AWS does this all the time: for new or growing large scale users they offer a discount on the list price. Once the user is firmly embedded in AWS, they stop offering the discount. This can lead to an effective doubling of the cost of using AWS.
That's not the same thing because you know in advance exactly which terms you're getting and you can make your decision accordingly.
Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration
#135https://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…
Certain types of safety-critical systems are regulated with liabilities coming in. They have to be built in a rigorous way to show the developer attempted to counter some amount and types of risk. There's a niche market that uses tech like OpenGL to build GUI's and simulators for safety-critical systems. I think this clause is a smart dodge of unknown risks rather than a joke.
Relevant page: https://www.khronos.org/openglsc/
Example companies doing that stuff:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110224145307/http://www.altsof...
Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have to weigh these risks against the likelihood of them actually happening. If AWS made a first-ever price increase, yes, you'd then have to consider whether you could beat that pricing by doing it in-house but you have to balance that against the very low odds of it actually happening and the up-front costs of hiring a ton of staff (e.g. just having 24x7 support requires something like 5 people when you factor…
I don't understand what you mean by balancing it against the up-front costs of hiring a ton of staff. The whole point here is that if you're not locked in to AWS (because you don't use their free-with-massive-strings-attached game engine) then you can migrate to some other cloud service if AWS no longer suits you.
What I was getting at is the need to actually look at those costs rather than just assuming that it's always better to maximize flexibility. Running your own services has a high up front cost because you have to pay people to build, test, and secure everything before you see any return. You can come up with estimates for the various outcomes and how likely each would be but that's a lot more nuanced than this thread had been, particularly with speculation like “What if they suddenly increase the price by an order of magnitude?”.
The detail which I think techies are particularly prone to forget is that businesses deal with “lock-in” (i.e. contracts) all the time; it has downsides but managing those is routine. In particular, many businesses love to defer up-front costs into a structure where they only need to pay for actual usage.
Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
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Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration
#138How does the automatic lag compensation work?
Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Another fully open-source 3D engine is no bad thing. Small correction; it is not open source: https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/faq/#Licensing
It is open source, but it's not FOSS.
The source is available but it's not "open source", more what Microsoft would call "shared source".
Re: Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Occam's razor makes me think it was slipped in by some web developer.