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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

#71

Post by mikeash »

jo909 wrote: post #35
ascorbic wrote: post #4

Note that it's "free, including all source code", but definitively not open source. https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/faq/#Licensing

Also note that you can not use other cloud platforms for your games backend. While I understand their position, I consider that a deal breaker. Q. Can my game use an alternate web service instead of AWS? No. If your game servers use a non-AWS alternate web service, we obviously don’t make any money, and it’s more difficult for us to support future development of Lumberyard. By “alternate web service” we mean any non-…

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.

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

#72

Post by mikeash »

Grue3 wrote: post #17

The wording is rather strange. >free AAA game engine Doesn't being called that require that there are AAA games developed with it? According to wikipedia, "In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") or Triple-A is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion or the highest ratings by a consensus of professional reviewers." So if it's an engine for game…

I would understand "AAA game engine" as merely meaning that it is suitable for making AAA games. I don't see why that phrasing would require an existing AAA game developed with it, unless you require an existence proof of its capabilities before you believe it.

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

#73

Post by sangnoir »

patates wrote: post #6
thenomad wrote: post #3

Digging into the details, it seems this is largely a fork or adaption of the CryEngine, with all the advantages and disadvantages that brings. As I said about Autodesk's offering, Stingray, I think that even a giant like Amazon is going to have an uphill battle bringing a new game engine into mass use. Having been testing game engines just this week, I'm reminded just how much of an ecosystem has built up around Unit…

So this was the secret deal which, according to rumors, saved Crytek. This is the second fork of the CryEngine that I know of (other is the Farcry fork of Ubisoft), and I find it interesting that they keep forking it instead of offering a library designed to work with it. I wonder if it says something about the codebase.

> I wonder if it says something about the codebase.

Well, this is Amazon we are talking about - they like dancing to the beat of their own drum. They also forked Android.

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

#74

Post by [deleted] »

dragonwriter wrote: post #68
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software can be commercial and open source meaning you can read the code but you have to purchase a licence to make copies and/or use it - that's open source but not Free[-Gratis] Open Source Software (FOSS).

No, that's "source available" or "shared source", not " open source".

[deleted]

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

#75

Post by maxsilver »

Grue3 wrote: post #17

The wording is rather strange. >free AAA game engine Doesn't being called that require that there are AAA games developed with it? According to wikipedia, "In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") or Triple-A is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion or the highest ratings by a consensus of professional reviewers." So if it's an engine for game…

> Doesn't being called that require that there are AAA games developed with it

Lumberyard looks like it's mostly CryEngine plus extras, and CryEngine has been used for a number of "triple A" games for a decade now. (including recent titles like Crysis 3, Ryse: Son of Rome, Star Citizen, Evolve, Homefront, State of Decay, etc).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CryEngine_games

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

#76

Post by nacs »

Grue3 wrote: post #17

The wording is rather strange. >free AAA game engine Doesn't being called that require that there are AAA games developed with it? According to wikipedia, "In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") or Triple-A is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion or the highest ratings by a consensus of professional reviewers." So if it's an engine for game…

> choosing a free engine is a cost-saving measure, at which point you're no longer making an AAA game by definition

Not necessarily. 2 of the most popular game engines, Unreal Engine and Unity3d, have very good free offerings now and many AAA games have been made with them.

You can have multi-million dollar development budgets and only be using "free" engines without issue nowadays.

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

#77

Post by benbristow »

dharma1 wrote: post #53
benbristow wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

wouldn't it make more sense to focus on AWS offerings for Unity3D/Unreal Engine instead?

As far as I know Amazon are going to start making their own games as well. Makes sense to use their own engine so they don't have to share any profits.

https://games.amazon.com/

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

#79

Post by gravypod »

athrun wrote: post #11
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?

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.
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