6 ms·
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
by thenomad 11y ago
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 Unity in particular - displacing an engine with that is like displacing Wordpress as the dominant blogging engine.
It's early days yet but they've got some serious catching up to do. For example, it appears that 3D assets can only currently be created in Max and Maya (no Blender, no Cinema4d), as rather than using FBX or similar as an interchange format they're using their own custom formats with an exporter. Most other game engines stopped doing that a while ago, for good reason.
Likewise, the level editor is either underdocumented or feature-light. The docs currently just cover creating terrain and vegetation. I assume that the engine has the capability to handle non-outdoor scenes too, but it's not explicitly documented anywhere I can find in a quick look.
There's also no documentation on non-sky lighting, lighting builds, light types, or similar that I can find. There's one mention that the engine supports Global Illumination, but no details as to whether it's realtime or requires a bake process. Searching for "lighting", "lights", or "light" in the documentation returns no results!
Interestingly, there's a full-featured cinematics system, which means it's of considerable interest to me, but that's very much a minority thing.
I wish them luck and I'll certainly be checking it out, having said all that. Another fully open-source 3D engine is no bad thing.
- patates 11y agoSo 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.
- sangnoir 11y ago> 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.
- Slippery_John 11y agoWell, the meaty bits that make Amazon money are all separated out into a service called GameLift and the C++ SDK.
- wlesieutre 11y agoAnother major engine fork is for Star Citizen / Squadron 42. They've hired several ex-Crytek engineers at the Foundry 42 office in Frankfurt, and among other changes have modified the engine to support a 64 bit data in coordinate system and rendering, multithreaded physics, and independent physics grids for inside the larger ships while they're moving around. Probably other things, but those are the main ones.
- wlesieutre 11y agoThis sort of thing is actually pretty common in games; you end up doing some engine customization to fit your needs, and eventually you have to say "We've diverged too far to try and keep following the main updates anymore," and you stick with a customized version of an old release. Nearly every AAA game is going to fit into that pattern, it's just that the 64 bit coordinates overhaul in Star Citizen is probably a larger and lower level architectural change than what most things bother with.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- keyle 11y agoShame about the 3D format supports. :(
- markatkinson 11y agoYea, which is a shame for them, as lots of the smaller shops starting out and actually deciding which game engine to use are likely to be starting with something like Blender. I don't even think 3DS Max exists anymore? Isn't it just Maya now?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- iheartmemcache 11y ago3DS Max definitely exists. Autodesk is still supporting them, and not as a 'oh this is just an auxiliary side project'. The breakdown (oversimplified) is Maya is more for complicated models used in animation/CGI (MEL scripting is their 'killer' tool that puts it ahead of Max), while things like architectural and game models are mostly done in 3DS Max (but theres a lot of overlay between the two, i.e., I've seen tons of work done in game modelling on Maya LT). Speaking of which, Maya LT is not that badly priced for what you get - I have no animation ability but I've seen my friends do some incredible things with it. If you're artistically inclined, have a play. Regardless, the lack of Blender support makes me sad.
- thenomad 11y agoHmm, interesting question whether the exporter supports Maya LT. I'd guess it does, and it's cheap (ish).
- shinymark 11y agoAll game studios I have worked at have used Maya. I do know of some that use Max but it's definitely not the case that Maya is only used outside of games. As a side note, Maya added Python as a scripting language a while back. You can also write plugins in C++, which can be a nice way to write custom exporter code sharing engine code files for file formats and such.
- cies 11y ago> Another fully open-source 3D engine is no bad thing. Small correction; it is not open source: https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/faq/#Licensing https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/faq/#Licensing
- Tinyyy 11y agoI think your definition of open source is flawed.
- cwyers 11y agoNo, you're confusing open source and source available.
- acdha 11y agoTheir own FAQ answer to “Is Lumberyard open source?” starts with “No.”
- icebraining 11y agoBlame the Open Source Initiative :)
- mikeash 11y ago"Open source" generally means not only can you get the source code, but you can use it freely and make your modifications available to others. There's some wiggle room for exactly what qualifies there, but Amazon's terms are pretty far from any gray areas.
- beefsack 11y agoIt is open source, but it's not FOSS.
- dragonwriter 11y agoThat's a contradiction "FOSS" encompasses the software which meets the (nearly-equivalent in practical application) FSF Free Software definition and/or OSI Open Source definition. If it is open source software (which this is emphatically and expressly not), it is FOSS.
- agentultra 11y agoI don't think we're done making game engines. We're not done making blogging engines. Wordpress may be one of the largest incumbents but it's not the dominant platform and there are plenty of competing alternatives along every axis. Unity may be one of the current incumbents but it's not the best engine and won't be the last. More competition is good. It means Unity won't be able to stand still and we'll get to see more features and interesting ideas. Cloud + Twitch integration? Pretty cool!
- thenomad 11y agoOh, definitely not. We aren't at The Last Game Engine by a long way - but currently it's an uphill battle to introduce a new one, and I'm dubious this engine is differentiated enough to succeed. There might be a lot of competing blogging engines, but there's only really about 3 that have any significant market share, and you can explain why each of them are has at least one radically superior feature to Wordpress in about a sentence and a half.