15 ms·

Open 3D Engine

285 points by fdb 5y ago

RyJones 5y ago
Intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_Qh5Q8AAAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_Qh5Q8AAAo
makepanic 5y ago
So this seems to be amazon giving lumberyard to the linux foundation in hopes that a community builds around it? edit: > It's definitely not - it's a complete rewrite, with some useful parts of Lumberyard ported over. https://twitter.com/derekreese/status/1412475974428463107 https://twitter.com/derekreese/status/1412475974428463107
- fotcorn 5y ago
  I wouldn't go as far as calling it a complete rewrite. The renderer (called Atom) is completely new, but many other things stayed the same. Our Lumberyard Gem required some work to port over, but that was mostly replacing old CryEngine stuff with the equivalent in the Lumberyard/O3DE API.
  - pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
    > renderer (called Atom) Dumb. From https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametech/open-3d-engine/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametech/open-3d-engine/ > The core engine modules and any add-ons or plugins are collectively known as “Gems” So, so dumb.
- SXX 5y ago
  I guess Amazon just started to understand they have no clue about how gamedev industry works. They invested heavily in this, but nobody wanted their proprietary tech with cloud lock-in. Now they changed strategy to compete with Epic's Unreal by making the engine actually royality-free and open source. It's very logical step that to compete with source-available product you need one under proper open source license with patents grant.
  - dleslie 5y ago
    There are countless free game engines, now. As a long time industry veteran: the important portion is how the asset pipeline works and whether I can port existing assets or acquire new ones. Assets are all that matters.
    - SXX 5y ago
      Countless free as in free beer ones, but very few are under real open source license. And of open source ones very few are production-ready. For once there is chance that Amazon is big enough to make porting to consoles less of a pain in the ass.
- flohofwoe 5y ago
  Browsing through the code, there's a pretty sizeable chunk of old CryEngine stuff (CryCommon and CrySystem), it's in a directory called "Legacy", but I guess that doesn't mean that it isn't needed anymore.
  - prox 5y ago
    Isn’t StarCitizen using a special version of CryEngine?
    - flohofwoe 5y ago
      In the beginning yes, and a little while ago they switched to Lumberyard, maybe they'll switch to O3DE next, who knows :)
      - prox 5y ago
        Well we have time! With a bit of luck we have real spaceships by the time it is done ;)
      - Bombthecat 5y ago
        I wouldn't be surprised...
Thaxll 5y ago
Cryengine is not very good so we'll see. Also it seems that they don't have the backing from any major studio.
- mikeyouse 5y ago
  Niantic and Adobe as members is a huge boon though - 3D engines are obviously great for games but we need better rendering in tons of software. Intel + AWS + Huawei at least means it's a serious effort to bootstrap this thing too. https://venturebeat.com/2021/07/06/amazons-lumberyard-becomes-an-open-source-3d-game-engine-with-support-from-20-companies/ https://venturebeat.com/2021/07/06/amazons-lumberyard-become...
- ipsum2 5y ago
  They've rewritten the engine from scratch, it supposedly doesn't use any Cryengine components in it.
  - fotcorn 5y ago
    There is still some CryEngine related stuff left: https://github.com/o3de/o3de/tree/development/Code/Legacy https://github.com/o3de/o3de/tree/development/Code/Legacy But it's getting less and less every day.
- vngzs 5y ago
  Why do you say CryEngine is not very good? I don't have any experience with the dev side, but I used to follow engine tech and CryEngine was (historically, at least) ahead of the competition in rendering large, luscious outdoor environments. These are generally regarded as difficult in software compared to the more static, geometric indoor environments common in earlier technology.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    A good renderer is only a small part of a game engine. The rest of CryEngine was a heaving mess for actually trying to make a game in without direct access to the people making it.
tmikaeld 5y ago
Could a new engine really catch up with Unreal Engine and Unity? They have decades of a head-start here...
- topspin 5y ago
  They also have decades of unavoidable baggage. "Disruptive Innovation" theory allows for new competitors to surpass incumbents despite inferior products and lack of depth. We, including you, don't know if there is room for such a disruption. There could be. All we can do is wait and see.
  - tmikaeld 5y ago
    I really hope you're right.
    - kroltan 5y ago
      I've never used Unreal, but the GP is absolutely correct in regard to Unity. It is subject to so much churn, and the main architecture is so flawed, the best way to use the engine is to use it the least possible, as basically a glorified renderer and main loop. The best quote I've seen comes from a comment on a feedback request thread [0] on the Unity Reddit, from andybak: > It seems that everything that's working is deprecated and everything that's current is unfinished. The features touted to be the "correct"/"current" way to use the engine are supremely half-baked, and the "old" ways are so inefficient and still buggy after all these years, that I have no words to describe. I'm basically on the prowl to jump ship to Godot immediately when 4.0 arrives with the new renderer (the current release is not terribly efficient for 3D). It has its warts too, but at least it's architecturally sound, and the source code is very agreeable for someone not very familiar with C++. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/e5g5u2/top_5_unity_annoyances_tell_us/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/e5g5u2/top_5_unity...
      - kroltan 5y ago
        Heck, there is literally no builtin solution for networking. There is a HTTP client, sure, but if you want any sort of realtime multiplayer, you have to use either a separately-billed paid third party, roll your own from sockets directly (good luck supporting WebGL), or use a community-maintained version of the deprecated networking system which frankly is not very good.
cryptoboid 5y ago
Isn't Godot Engine really similar? It's open source as well
- gmueckl 5y ago
  The question with these engines is how scalable they are. This is in terms of team size, ease of use, project size and complexity, editor performance/scalability, runtime performance, quality of presentation... Unreal, Unity, CryEngine, Frostbite etc. have shown that they are tools capable of supporting huge productions. This means that the engine teams have invested a lot of work to remove a lot of barriers that the game teams ran up against when scaling their productions up. New users now get to profit from that when they start out on one of these engines. As far as I know, Godot hasn't been thrown into that particular gauntlet yet (please correct me if I'm wrong here!). From experience with complex projects like this, I can tell you that you will always find new bugs when you stress them in novel ways. For a game production, this means that you take on a higher risk that you need to dive into the engine and bend it to your will, costing engineering resources.
- eloisant 5y ago
  Godot is solid for 2D games, but a bit weaker for 3D, especially if you want to match the render quality of AAA games. My understanding is that you can create AAA-level 3D games with O3DE. The way I see it is Godot is an alternative to Unity, O3DE might be an alternative to Unreal.
bilbo0s 5y ago
I was thinking initially that this is not very useful in a world where we have unreal and unity. Then I thought about the coming world of game streaming, and reconsidered. Any average joes making a startup could nvenc or amf this engine up. Just like that, no more streaming licensing fees to unity or unreal. That's actually attractive. Of course, a set of joes or janes capable of writing a server supporting enough concurrents to make an economically viable service is probably not a set of "average" joes. But you get the idea. These ancillary open source engines are probably the place where indies will end up having to operate in a hypothetical future where game streaming is important. Provided the engines are fast enough. I'm not saying we'd see a python or javascript engine serving as a streaming server, but the C++ and Java open source engines could well be where we'll see the first indie hits in that space. And in that sense, O3DE might be useful.
- nightowl_games 5y ago
  > Just like that, no more streaming licensing fees to unity or unreal. What makes you think streaming a game made in Unity requires licensing fees to Unity or Unreal? Where in the terms of service does it say that? > Provided the engines are fast enough. What do you mean by this? If the game engine is fast enough to push 60fps to the monitor, then it's fast enough to push 60fps to the network. > indie hits in that space Why do you think there will be 'indie hits in that space'? Game streaming (ie Stadia, Nvidia, Playstation, etc) already exists and seems to primarily target heavy AAA games that players dont have the beefy hardware to run. Why should we expect there to be an 'indie hit' on a service like stadia?
  - marshray 5y ago
    > If the game engine is fast enough to push 60fps to the monitor, then it's fast enough to push 60fps to the network. How much is that in bandwidth costs? Is it better or worse than providing periodic multi-GiB updates to every player?
    - echelon 5y ago
      > How much is that in bandwidth costs? In ten years, we'll have fatter pipes. > Is it better or worse than providing periodic multi-GiB updates to every player? Not everyone can afford a 3090. But imagine even higher tiers that really only make sense for data centers to purchase. How much GPU time sits idle at home? As much as I hate thin client-ization of everything, rendering moving offsite makes sense.
grenoire 5y ago
Solid and helpful documentation, should get you started off really quick! https://o3de.org/docs/api/gems/camera/ https://o3de.org/docs/api/gems/camera/ No, not really. Besides a bunch of video guides, there's barely anything that you can read. Highly disappointed with the launch, maybe it'll pick up later..?
- jandrese 5y ago
  Same. I went poking around the documentation area and found only YouTube videos in the examples area and noped right out. The API refs seem extremely terse as well. Just a handful of prototypes with no explanation as to what the parameters are or how to use them. For example: https://o3de.org/docs/api/frameworks/azgameframework/class_az_game_framework_1_1_game_application.html https://o3de.org/docs/api/frameworks/azgameframework/class_a...
  - lostgame 5y ago
    If I can’t read your documentation - e.g. not video - I’m not interested. It’s the principle of the thing. Especially for coding. Sometimes I just want to copy and paste something rather than retyping it all.
    - jandrese 5y ago
      And the last thing I want to do is scrub through a video trying to find the part that I care about.
- CobrastanJorji 5y ago
  My favorite thing about Unity is how seriously they treated documentation and education. There are whole, elaborate tracks of educational material. It's really irritating that they walled a lot of it off behind a high paywall (seems awfully short sighted to charge up and coming developers $200+ to learn one aspect of how to use your product; I can feel the touch of an ambitious middle manager in that move), but what's free is still a great introduction, and the competition doesn't compare.
aidanhs 5y ago
Context: O3DE is an open source (Apache 2) AAA game engine based on an updated Amazon Lumberyard I've had the opportunity to work with O3DE over the past few months at work and I'm very excited to see where it goes. There are two pieces of context if you don't work in the games industry (when I came in from an 'open source' background these surprised me): 1. the best game engine tech in the industry is proprietary (the biggest players are Unreal and Unity, lots of studios have purpose-built ones), there's relatively little open source [0] 2. in a games studio, the workflow of your company orients around the workflows of the game engine [1] These two things combine in quite unfortunate ways, to the point where EA mandated the use of its own in-house engine...with mixed results so far [2][3]. Smaller players have three options: a) suck it up, b) use an open source alternative (i.e. Godot), c) get caught in the tarpit of "build your own engine" O3DE has an opportunity to shake things up - particularly because of how modular it aims to be. At Hadean, our interest is in the networking layer (to drop in as netcode for Aether, our distributed simulation engine) as well as the 'core' simulation layer (to integrate with Aether in order to scale O3DE games/simulations across multiple machines). While doing all this, we will probably 'get involved' and contribute, so that our usage doesn't drift too far from mainline. Anyway, this is all very early days - it's just a developer preview, and the flows are a bit rough. It'll be a while before we see if this changes things (I'm hopeful!), but major credit to the people at Amazon who have made it happen so far! p.s. a checkout with deps, plus fresh compile of O3DE, plus a new project that you've opened once (to process assets) will set you back 100-150GB at my last check - not unexpected if you're used to compiling Unreal! [0] https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1406427706980454406 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1406427706980454406 [1] https://isetta.io/interviews/AmandineCoget-interview/#the-modes-and-pipeline-of-an-engine https://isetta.io/interviews/AmandineCoget-interview/#the-mo... [2] https://twitter.com/kingcurrythundr/status/1083788720459972609 https://twitter.com/kingcurrythundr/status/10837887204599726... [3] https://screenrant.com/anthem-frostbite-engine-development/ https://screenrant.com/anthem-frostbite-engine-development/
- _hao 5y ago
  After having dealt with and released projects with Unreal/Unity and done some experimenting with Godot throughout the years I've completely ditched the idea of using a 3rd party engine for any serious project of mine. I think they're fine for quick prototyping, but I'd take the full control and learning experience of having a custom engine for whatever I want to do than to a) try to fit my design/vision in whatever paradigm the engine is made to work for b) in the chance of a hit (unlikely) give out what could be a substantial amount of money to Unity/Epic (this doesn't cover Godot obviously) and c) I want to own my source and not have done obscene amounts of work in basically closed source environments that don't guarantee future support etc. I don't recommend this to the general user or game dev though. Most people just want to create their game. I want to do that and have the control. Yeah, I can't make AAA engine by myself, but then again even if I could the assets for a AAA game are staggering. I think the industry should actually pull the reigns a bit on these enormous budget pieces of entertainment software for it's own good and scale back a bit, but anyways, that's another discussion. As for Amazon and this initiative I wouldn't touch it based on principle since I don't want to support Amazon and their business practices.
AlbertoGP 5y ago
The presentation video says it is “multiplatform”, but then in the download page: > O3DE requires Windows 10 64-bit (versions 1809, 10.0.17763 or later)
- fdb 5y ago
  I believe the engine is multi-platform but the editor is Windows-only at the moment.
  - okamiueru 5y ago
    Is it? https://o3de.org/docs/user-guide/platforms/linux/ https://o3de.org/docs/user-guide/platforms/linux/ (PS: not being coy, just confused by conflicting documentation)
    - nybble41 5y ago
      The 2017.1 release notes[0] also say: > Implemented support for Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, and iOS editor and runtime builds Perhaps the documentation stating that Windows is required is merely out of date? [0] https://o3de.org/docs/release-notes/archive/2107-1-release-notes/ https://o3de.org/docs/release-notes/archive/2107-1-release-n...
croes 5y ago
So Amazon has given up on Lumberyard and hopes the open source community builds something interesting?
- audiojak 5y ago
  Quite the reverse. We are committing supporting the community and contributing to the software. With over 25 partners, I'm not sure how you could see it as "giving up".
  - wokwokwok 5y ago
    You are literally EOL lumberyard to replace it with this; that’s pretty much the definition of giving up on something.
    - abdulmuhaimin 5y ago
      no. Giving up mean dont even bother anymore. This to me seems like shift of strategy more than anything
blooalien 5y ago
Think I'ma just stick with Godot Engine + Blender 3D. The 4.0 release of Godot should be somethin' really worthy, as even the 3.x releases are already amazingly usable and their plans for 4.x and beyond are quite impressive stuff. Edit: Oh, and Godot already supports all the major platforms right outta the box. Bonus! Totally in favor of another open source 3D engine tho. Can't be a bad thing to have more options available in that space.
- daypay 5y ago
  Godot is such a pleasure to work with too, compared to other engines I've used. It also depends on the type of game you're creating, but 2D has been a more pleasant experience in Godot vs Unity.
  - KronisLV 5y ago
    I think that the opinions here will probably be split between the people who enjoy the simpler workflows of Godot (as well as its more reasonable distribution size, somewhat more convenient 2D implementation, amongst other things) and those who are used to the benefits of using Unity, especially in 3D. For example: - the ECS and DOTS models in Unity feel way better to work with as a developer, since components can be freely attached to GameObjects to give them behaviours vs the node based structure of Godot, where each object can only have one attached script (though their approach to everything being a scene feels better than prefabs in Unity) - the support for IDE integrations, such as JetBrains Rider giving code hints about certain API methods being slow, as well as other API things that can sometimes slip by, seems really useful to have in Unity; furthermore the C# API being the primary one feels way more usable and documented than Godot's efforts to add C# support (which, while a great idea, still needs a bit of work to be fully mature) - Unity also seems way better when it comes to importing assets, such as Blender scenes directly into it, without having to export to Collada, glTF or another format, or having to install a separate exporter for Blender as a plugin which may not be supported in future versions - on that note, there are also a variety of useful solutions built into the engine, such as light mapping, navigation meshes, pretty optimized occlusion culling, LODs (which i'd say are critical for any larger project, or game genres like RTS) among others, which are either missing from Godot entirely for the time being, or which will need to be installed as separate plugins (like terrain editing functionality, for example) - the support for a variety of tools and other integrations is pretty great in Unity, thanks to the asset store - for example, if you'd like to automatically generate the aforementioned LODs, then you can just get https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/poly-few-mesh-simplifier-and-auto-lod-generator-160139 - furthermore, the amount of tutorials and materials for Unity is still probably a bit larger than Unity, as well as its market share will be hard to content with for at least a number of years That said, Unity also lacks in some other areas, such as there not being a decent networking solution at the time, DOTS not being fully finished, the render pipelines being a bit messy to work with (while there are benefits to using URP and HDRP, it's a bit like the Python 2 vs 3 situation with support varying), as well as Unity just generally trying to implement a whole bunch of functionality that's not exactly production ready. Also, their reliance on Unity Hub doesn't feel like a good sign and it feels like a larger and larger part of their offerings will be cloud based, which is understandable from a business perspective, but also concerning. I do hope that Godot gets support for the things that i've mentioned that are missing and perhaps even gets things like networking right, rather than going the path of Unity and jumping around various solutions. Just my 2 cents on those engines, both seem pretty usable! Also, if anyone wants another C# engine to look at, consider Stride ( https://stride3d.net/ https://stride3d.net/ ) or NeoAxis ( https://www.neoaxis.com/ https://www.neoaxis.com/ ). Or maybe if you're more into Java, look at jMonkeyEngine ( https://jmonkeyengine.org/ https://jmonkeyengine.org/ ), which seems underappreciated but nice. Or just look at the "Gamesfromscratch" YouTube channel, which i personally use for keeping up with this stuff: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr-5TdGkKszdbboXXsFZJTQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr-5TdGkKszdbboXXsFZJTQ
pphysch 5y ago
I'm seeing Godot mentioned a lot: one major distinction between O3DE and Godot is that O3DE is "ECS-based" while Godot is "OOP-based" [1][2]. This makes little difference for the hobbyist gamedev, but it has ramifications for large projects with many interacting systems. Proper ECS architecture better supports the latter case [3]. [1] - https://docs.o3de.org/docs/welcome-guide/key-concepts/#the-component-entity-system https://docs.o3de.org/docs/welcome-guide/key-concepts/#the-c... [2] - https://godotengine.org/article/why-isnt-godot-ecs-based-game-engine https://godotengine.org/article/why-isnt-godot-ecs-based-gam... [3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3aieHjyNvw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3aieHjyNvw
- criddell 5y ago
  Would either Godot or O3DE be a good choice for a CAD-type application? It looks like Godot deals well with a scene graph which seems like a good way to organize data for that kind of application.
  - esens 5y ago
    Neither is designed for a CAD engine. CAD uses generally NURBS and a scene graph based around constraints. Game engines are not constraint based but rather about independent behaviour agents interacting using triangle meshes. Quite different.
    - worldsayshi 5y ago
      Interesting! Is there any game engine or open source engine or library that would support those kinds of code styles?
      - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
        I desperately want open source CAD to be a thing. I would suppose that Freecad is probably a very good starting point. I don't think the lack of good open source CAD is due to a lack of a decent codebase so much as the fact that good CAD software is a very large project and we have just not directed enough efforts towards it. I am speculating however and may be wrong.
SXX 5y ago
It's great to see some competition for source-available Unreal. Now there is finally real AAA open source game middleware.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
thrower123 5y ago
Has anyone built anything with this? I've looked at Lumberyard a few times over the years, but even Amazon hadn't actually done much with it.
10000truths 5y ago
Will there be support for building for HTML5/WebGL?
- XCSme 5y ago
  Native support for this would be good, but I think you can already compile most desktop apps to HTML5/WebGL using WebAssembly.
  - 10000truths 5y ago
    WebAssembly alone is not enough, you need access to the canvas and WebGL JavaScript APIs in order to actually perform the rendering. WASI may change this in the future, but for now, it means that integration with the emscripten toolchain is a must.
    - XCSme 5y ago
      Yes, I was referring to compilation using emscripten, but I couldn't remember the name, thank you!
  - flohofwoe 5y ago
    For a big engine like this there's a lot more work involved then cross-compiling the code to WASM. All lower-level parts that sit on top of OS APIs like IO, 3D-rendering, audio, networking, etc... need to be ported over, and the browser is a very different runtime environment than native OS APIs, so sometimes it's not even possible without a lot of compromises which may "drag down" other parts of the engine.
    - XCSme 5y ago
      Hmm, I was under the impression that there already are tools that automatically convert system API calls (IO, audio, networking) to web-compatible APIs.
      - cachvico 5y ago
suyash 5y ago
Sucks that this is an AWS project, you know how well they treat the open source community. I would stay away from it as much as possible.
- troymc 5y ago
  It might have started at AWS, but it seems they really want it to have a broad set of contributors under the Linux Foundation umbrella. "We [at AWS] invested over a year to recruit partners with the right mix of resources, expertise, and above all, motivation to foster a self-sustaining community. We partnered with Linux Foundation as our trusted expert open-source organizational home because it stands as one of the best on the planet at managing large open-source projects. The Linux Foundation can provide the level of expert management demanded by such a large open-source effort. We are thrilled for the backing of a range of partners who feel just as strongly as we do about empowering choice for games and simulations developers. These partners include: Accelbyte, Adobe, Apocalypse Studios, Audiokinetic, Backtrace.io, Carbonated, Futurewei, GAMEPOCH, Genvid Technologies, Hadean, Huawei, HERE Technologies, Intel, International Game Developers Association, Kythera AI, Niantic, Open Robotics, PopcornFX, Red Hat, Rochester Institute of Technology, SideFX, Tafi, TLM Partners, and Wargaming." [1] [1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametech/open-3d-engine/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametech/open-3d-engine/
  - Jyaif 5y ago
    > It might have started at AWS, but... The shader language is called AZSL, short for (I kid you not) the Amazon shader language. If you really care about attracting partners, maybe don't put your brand name in the programming language?
arduinomancer 5y ago
I always thought developing/maintaining an entire game engine just to hopefully get some AWS revenue from the web part seemed like a dubious business model. If a big company is going to adopt your engine they want your main incentive to be making it the best engine possible, not selling you more SaaS integrations.
cropcirclbureau 5y ago
Found this post on the AWS blog to be more...informative. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametech/open-3d-engine/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametech/open-3d-engine/
marcodiego 5y ago
Phoronix gives some interesting details[0]: "Besides Amazon AWS being involved with the Linux Foundation's new Open 3D Foundation, other notable vendors involved include AccelByte, Adobe, Apocalpyse Studios, International Game Developers Association, Niantic, PopcornFX, Red Hat, and Wargaming, among others." Does this means linux gaming improving beyond steam/proton? [0] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=open-3d-engine&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=open-3d-...
mixxit 5y ago
i wish this was c# instead of lua
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
socceroos 5y ago
This feels to me like Amazon is departing the space and they're dumping and running. As in, where they were previously pouring money into starting their own studio and platform, they're now cutting their losses. I'm only drawing this conclusion based on the announcement article and video - maybe I'm missing something.
hype0101 5y ago
I'm no evil but if epic decides to "open-source" their engine with MIT/something similar license, I'm sure it's gonna leave o3de to hang out dry.

285 points by fdb 5y ago

Intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_Qh5Q8AAAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_Qh5Q8AAAo

So this seems to be amazon giving lumberyard to the linux foundation in hopes that a community builds around it? edit: > It's definitely not - it's a complete rewrite, with some useful parts of Lumberyard ported over. https://twitter.com/derekreese/status/1412475974428463107 https://twitter.com/derekreese/status/1412475974428463107

fotcorn 5y ago
I wouldn't go as far as calling it a complete rewrite. The renderer (called Atom) is completely new, but many other things stayed the same. Our Lumberyard Gem required some work to port over, but that was mostly replacing old CryEngine stuff with the equivalent in the Lumberyard/O3DE API.
- pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
  > renderer (called Atom) Dumb. From https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametech/open-3d-engine/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametech/open-3d-engine/ > The core engine modules and any add-ons or plugins are collectively known as “Gems” So, so dumb.
SXX 5y ago
I guess Amazon just started to understand they have no clue about how gamedev industry works. They invested heavily in this, but nobody wanted their proprietary tech with cloud lock-in. Now they changed strategy to compete with Epic's Unreal by making the engine actually royality-free and open source. It's very logical step that to compete with source-available product you need one under proper open source license with patents grant.
- dleslie 5y ago
  There are countless free game engines, now. As a long time industry veteran: the important portion is how the asset pipeline works and whether I can port existing assets or acquire new ones. Assets are all that matters.
  - SXX 5y ago
    Countless free as in free beer ones, but very few are under real open source license. And of open source ones very few are production-ready. For once there is chance that Amazon is big enough to make porting to consoles less of a pain in the ass.
flohofwoe 5y ago
Browsing through the code, there's a pretty sizeable chunk of old CryEngine stuff (CryCommon and CrySystem), it's in a directory called "Legacy", but I guess that doesn't mean that it isn't needed anymore.
- prox 5y ago
  Isn’t StarCitizen using a special version of CryEngine?
  - flohofwoe 5y ago
    In the beginning yes, and a little while ago they switched to Lumberyard, maybe they'll switch to O3DE next, who knows :)
    - prox 5y ago
      Well we have time! With a bit of luck we have real spaceships by the time it is done ;)
    - Bombthecat 5y ago
      I wouldn't be surprised...

Thaxll 5y ago

Cryengine is not very good so we'll see. Also it seems that they don't have the backing from any major studio.

mikeyouse 5y ago
Niantic and Adobe as members is a huge boon though - 3D engines are obviously great for games but we need better rendering in tons of software. Intel + AWS + Huawei at least means it's a serious effort to bootstrap this thing too. https://venturebeat.com/2021/07/06/amazons-lumberyard-becomes-an-open-source-3d-game-engine-with-support-from-20-companies/ https://venturebeat.com/2021/07/06/amazons-lumberyard-become...
ipsum2 5y ago
They've rewritten the engine from scratch, it supposedly doesn't use any Cryengine components in it.
- fotcorn 5y ago
  There is still some CryEngine related stuff left: https://github.com/o3de/o3de/tree/development/Code/Legacy https://github.com/o3de/o3de/tree/development/Code/Legacy But it's getting less and less every day.
vngzs 5y ago
Why do you say CryEngine is not very good? I don't have any experience with the dev side, but I used to follow engine tech and CryEngine was (historically, at least) ahead of the competition in rendering large, luscious outdoor environments. These are generally regarded as difficult in software compared to the more static, geometric indoor environments common in earlier technology.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  A good renderer is only a small part of a game engine. The rest of CryEngine was a heaving mess for actually trying to make a game in without direct access to the people making it.

tmikaeld 5y ago

Could a new engine really catch up with Unreal Engine and Unity? They have decades of a head-start here...

topspin 5y ago
They also have decades of unavoidable baggage. "Disruptive Innovation" theory allows for new competitors to surpass incumbents despite inferior products and lack of depth. We, including you, don't know if there is room for such a disruption. There could be. All we can do is wait and see.
- tmikaeld 5y ago
  I really hope you're right.
  - kroltan 5y ago
    I've never used Unreal, but the GP is absolutely correct in regard to Unity. It is subject to so much churn, and the main architecture is so flawed, the best way to use the engine is to use it the least possible, as basically a glorified renderer and main loop. The best quote I've seen comes from a comment on a feedback request thread [0] on the Unity Reddit, from andybak: > It seems that everything that's working is deprecated and everything that's current is unfinished. The features touted to be the "correct"/"current" way to use the engine are supremely half-baked, and the "old" ways are so inefficient and still buggy after all these years, that I have no words to describe. I'm basically on the prowl to jump ship to Godot immediately when 4.0 arrives with the new renderer (the current release is not terribly efficient for 3D). It has its warts too, but at least it's architecturally sound, and the source code is very agreeable for someone not very familiar with C++. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/e5g5u2/top_5_unity_annoyances_tell_us/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/e5g5u2/top_5_unity...
    - kroltan 5y ago
      Heck, there is literally no builtin solution for networking. There is a HTTP client, sure, but if you want any sort of realtime multiplayer, you have to use either a separately-billed paid third party, roll your own from sockets directly (good luck supporting WebGL), or use a community-maintained version of the deprecated networking system which frankly is not very good.

cryptoboid 5y ago

Isn't Godot Engine really similar? It's open source as well

gmueckl 5y ago
The question with these engines is how scalable they are. This is in terms of team size, ease of use, project size and complexity, editor performance/scalability, runtime performance, quality of presentation... Unreal, Unity, CryEngine, Frostbite etc. have shown that they are tools capable of supporting huge productions. This means that the engine teams have invested a lot of work to remove a lot of barriers that the game teams ran up against when scaling their productions up. New users now get to profit from that when they start out on one of these engines. As far as I know, Godot hasn't been thrown into that particular gauntlet yet (please correct me if I'm wrong here!). From experience with complex projects like this, I can tell you that you will always find new bugs when you stress them in novel ways. For a game production, this means that you take on a higher risk that you need to dive into the engine and bend it to your will, costing engineering resources.
eloisant 5y ago
Godot is solid for 2D games, but a bit weaker for 3D, especially if you want to match the render quality of AAA games. My understanding is that you can create AAA-level 3D games with O3DE. The way I see it is Godot is an alternative to Unity, O3DE might be an alternative to Unreal.

bilbo0s 5y ago

I was thinking initially that this is not very useful in a world where we have unreal and unity. Then I thought about the coming world of game streaming, and reconsidered. Any average joes making a startup could nvenc or amf this engine up. Just like that, no more streaming licensing fees to unity or unreal. That's actually attractive. Of course, a set of joes or janes capable of writing a server supporting enough concurrents to make an economically viable service is probably not a set of "average" joes. But you get the idea. These ancillary open source engines are probably the place where indies will end up having to operate in a hypothetical future where game streaming is important. Provided the engines are fast enough. I'm not saying we'd see a python or javascript engine serving as a streaming server, but the C++ and Java open source engines could well be where we'll see the first indie hits in that space. And in that sense, O3DE might be useful.

nightowl_games 5y ago
> Just like that, no more streaming licensing fees to unity or unreal. What makes you think streaming a game made in Unity requires licensing fees to Unity or Unreal? Where in the terms of service does it say that? > Provided the engines are fast enough. What do you mean by this? If the game engine is fast enough to push 60fps to the monitor, then it's fast enough to push 60fps to the network. > indie hits in that space Why do you think there will be 'indie hits in that space'? Game streaming (ie Stadia, Nvidia, Playstation, etc) already exists and seems to primarily target heavy AAA games that players dont have the beefy hardware to run. Why should we expect there to be an 'indie hit' on a service like stadia?
- marshray 5y ago
  > If the game engine is fast enough to push 60fps to the monitor, then it's fast enough to push 60fps to the network. How much is that in bandwidth costs? Is it better or worse than providing periodic multi-GiB updates to every player?
  - echelon 5y ago
    > How much is that in bandwidth costs? In ten years, we'll have fatter pipes. > Is it better or worse than providing periodic multi-GiB updates to every player? Not everyone can afford a 3090. But imagine even higher tiers that really only make sense for data centers to purchase. How much GPU time sits idle at home? As much as I hate thin client-ization of everything, rendering moving offsite makes sense.

grenoire 5y ago

Solid and helpful documentation, should get you started off really quick! https://o3de.org/docs/api/gems/camera/ https://o3de.org/docs/api/gems/camera/ No, not really. Besides a bunch of video guides, there's barely anything that you can read. Highly disappointed with the launch, maybe it'll pick up later..?

jandrese 5y ago
Same. I went poking around the documentation area and found only YouTube videos in the examples area and noped right out. The API refs seem extremely terse as well. Just a handful of prototypes with no explanation as to what the parameters are or how to use them. For example: https://o3de.org/docs/api/frameworks/azgameframework/class_az_game_framework_1_1_game_application.html https://o3de.org/docs/api/frameworks/azgameframework/class_a...
- lostgame 5y ago
  If I can’t read your documentation - e.g. not video - I’m not interested. It’s the principle of the thing. Especially for coding. Sometimes I just want to copy and paste something rather than retyping it all.
  - jandrese 5y ago
    And the last thing I want to do is scrub through a video trying to find the part that I care about.
CobrastanJorji 5y ago
My favorite thing about Unity is how seriously they treated documentation and education. There are whole, elaborate tracks of educational material. It's really irritating that they walled a lot of it off behind a high paywall (seems awfully short sighted to charge up and coming developers $200+ to learn one aspect of how to use your product; I can feel the touch of an ambitious middle manager in that move), but what's free is still a great introduction, and the competition doesn't compare.

aidanhs 5y ago

Context: O3DE is an open source (Apache 2) AAA game engine based on an updated Amazon Lumberyard I've had the opportunity to work with O3DE over the past few months at work and I'm very excited to see where it goes. There are two pieces of context if you don't work in the games industry (when I came in from an 'open source' background these surprised me): 1. the best game engine tech in the industry is proprietary (the biggest players are Unreal and Unity, lots of studios have purpose-built ones), there's relatively little open source [0] 2. in a games studio, the workflow of your company orients around the workflows of the game engine [1] These two things combine in quite unfortunate ways, to the point where EA mandated the use of its own in-house engine...with mixed results so far [2][3]. Smaller players have three options: a) suck it up, b) use an open source alternative (i.e. Godot), c) get caught in the tarpit of "build your own engine" O3DE has an opportunity to shake things up - particularly because of how modular it aims to be. At Hadean, our interest is in the networking layer (to drop in as netcode for Aether, our distributed simulation engine) as well as the 'core' simulation layer (to integrate with Aether in order to scale O3DE games/simulations across multiple machines). While doing all this, we will probably 'get involved' and contribute, so that our usage doesn't drift too far from mainline. Anyway, this is all very early days - it's just a developer preview, and the flows are a bit rough. It'll be a while before we see if this changes things (I'm hopeful!), but major credit to the people at Amazon who have made it happen so far! p.s. a checkout with deps, plus fresh compile of O3DE, plus a new project that you've opened once (to process assets) will set you back 100-150GB at my last check - not unexpected if you're used to compiling Unreal! [0] https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1406427706980454406 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1406427706980454406 [1] https://isetta.io/interviews/AmandineCoget-interview/#the-modes-and-pipeline-of-an-engine https://isetta.io/interviews/AmandineCoget-interview/#the-mo... [2] https://twitter.com/kingcurrythundr/status/1083788720459972609 https://twitter.com/kingcurrythundr/status/10837887204599726... [3] https://screenrant.com/anthem-frostbite-engine-development/ https://screenrant.com/anthem-frostbite-engine-development/

_hao 5y ago
After having dealt with and released projects with Unreal/Unity and done some experimenting with Godot throughout the years I've completely ditched the idea of using a 3rd party engine for any serious project of mine. I think they're fine for quick prototyping, but I'd take the full control and learning experience of having a custom engine for whatever I want to do than to a) try to fit my design/vision in whatever paradigm the engine is made to work for b) in the chance of a hit (unlikely) give out what could be a substantial amount of money to Unity/Epic (this doesn't cover Godot obviously) and c) I want to own my source and not have done obscene amounts of work in basically closed source environments that don't guarantee future support etc. I don't recommend this to the general user or game dev though. Most people just want to create their game. I want to do that and have the control. Yeah, I can't make AAA engine by myself, but then again even if I could the assets for a AAA game are staggering. I think the industry should actually pull the reigns a bit on these enormous budget pieces of entertainment software for it's own good and scale back a bit, but anyways, that's another discussion. As for Amazon and this initiative I wouldn't touch it based on principle since I don't want to support Amazon and their business practices.

AlbertoGP 5y ago

The presentation video says it is “multiplatform”, but then in the download page: > O3DE requires Windows 10 64-bit (versions 1809, 10.0.17763 or later)

fdb 5y ago
I believe the engine is multi-platform but the editor is Windows-only at the moment.
- okamiueru 5y ago
  Is it? https://o3de.org/docs/user-guide/platforms/linux/ https://o3de.org/docs/user-guide/platforms/linux/ (PS: not being coy, just confused by conflicting documentation)
  - nybble41 5y ago
    The 2017.1 release notes[0] also say: > Implemented support for Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, and iOS editor and runtime builds Perhaps the documentation stating that Windows is required is merely out of date? [0] https://o3de.org/docs/release-notes/archive/2107-1-release-notes/ https://o3de.org/docs/release-notes/archive/2107-1-release-n...

croes 5y ago

So Amazon has given up on Lumberyard and hopes the open source community builds something interesting?

audiojak 5y ago
Quite the reverse. We are committing supporting the community and contributing to the software. With over 25 partners, I'm not sure how you could see it as "giving up".
- wokwokwok 5y ago
  You are literally EOL lumberyard to replace it with this; that’s pretty much the definition of giving up on something.
  - abdulmuhaimin 5y ago
    no. Giving up mean dont even bother anymore. This to me seems like shift of strategy more than anything

blooalien 5y ago

Think I'ma just stick with Godot Engine + Blender 3D. The 4.0 release of Godot should be somethin' really worthy, as even the 3.x releases are already amazingly usable and their plans for 4.x and beyond are quite impressive stuff. Edit: Oh, and Godot already supports all the major platforms right outta the box. Bonus! Totally in favor of another open source 3D engine tho. Can't be a bad thing to have more options available in that space.

daypay 5y ago
Godot is such a pleasure to work with too, compared to other engines I've used. It also depends on the type of game you're creating, but 2D has been a more pleasant experience in Godot vs Unity.
- KronisLV 5y ago
  I think that the opinions here will probably be split between the people who enjoy the simpler workflows of Godot (as well as its more reasonable distribution size, somewhat more convenient 2D implementation, amongst other things) and those who are used to the benefits of using Unity, especially in 3D. For example: - the ECS and DOTS models in Unity feel way better to work with as a developer, since components can be freely attached to GameObjects to give them behaviours vs the node based structure of Godot, where each object can only have one attached script (though their approach to everything being a scene feels better than prefabs in Unity) - the support for IDE integrations, such as JetBrains Rider giving code hints about certain API methods being slow, as well as other API things that can sometimes slip by, seems really useful to have in Unity; furthermore the C# API being the primary one feels way more usable and documented than Godot's efforts to add C# support (which, while a great idea, still needs a bit of work to be fully mature) - Unity also seems way better when it comes to importing assets, such as Blender scenes directly into it, without having to export to Collada, glTF or another format, or having to install a separate exporter for Blender as a plugin which may not be supported in future versions - on that note, there are also a variety of useful solutions built into the engine, such as light mapping, navigation meshes, pretty optimized occlusion culling, LODs (which i'd say are critical for any larger project, or game genres like RTS) among others, which are either missing from Godot entirely for the time being, or which will need to be installed as separate plugins (like terrain editing functionality, for example) - the support for a variety of tools and other integrations is pretty great in Unity, thanks to the asset store - for example, if you'd like to automatically generate the aforementioned LODs, then you can just get https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/poly-few-mesh-simplifier-and-auto-lod-generator-160139 - furthermore, the amount of tutorials and materials for Unity is still probably a bit larger than Unity, as well as its market share will be hard to content with for at least a number of years That said, Unity also lacks in some other areas, such as there not being a decent networking solution at the time, DOTS not being fully finished, the render pipelines being a bit messy to work with (while there are benefits to using URP and HDRP, it's a bit like the Python 2 vs 3 situation with support varying), as well as Unity just generally trying to implement a whole bunch of functionality that's not exactly production ready. Also, their reliance on Unity Hub doesn't feel like a good sign and it feels like a larger and larger part of their offerings will be cloud based, which is understandable from a business perspective, but also concerning. I do hope that Godot gets support for the things that i've mentioned that are missing and perhaps even gets things like networking right, rather than going the path of Unity and jumping around various solutions. Just my 2 cents on those engines, both seem pretty usable! Also, if anyone wants another C# engine to look at, consider Stride ( https://stride3d.net/ https://stride3d.net/ ) or NeoAxis ( https://www.neoaxis.com/ https://www.neoaxis.com/ ). Or maybe if you're more into Java, look at jMonkeyEngine ( https://jmonkeyengine.org/ https://jmonkeyengine.org/ ), which seems underappreciated but nice. Or just look at the "Gamesfromscratch" YouTube channel, which i personally use for keeping up with this stuff: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr-5TdGkKszdbboXXsFZJTQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr-5TdGkKszdbboXXsFZJTQ

pphysch 5y ago

I'm seeing Godot mentioned a lot: one major distinction between O3DE and Godot is that O3DE is "ECS-based" while Godot is "OOP-based" [1][2]. This makes little difference for the hobbyist gamedev, but it has ramifications for large projects with many interacting systems. Proper ECS architecture better supports the latter case [3]. [1] - https://docs.o3de.org/docs/welcome-guide/key-concepts/#the-component-entity-system https://docs.o3de.org/docs/welcome-guide/key-concepts/#the-c... [2] - https://godotengine.org/article/why-isnt-godot-ecs-based-game-engine https://godotengine.org/article/why-isnt-godot-ecs-based-gam... [3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3aieHjyNvw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3aieHjyNvw

criddell 5y ago
Would either Godot or O3DE be a good choice for a CAD-type application? It looks like Godot deals well with a scene graph which seems like a good way to organize data for that kind of application.
- esens 5y ago
  Neither is designed for a CAD engine. CAD uses generally NURBS and a scene graph based around constraints. Game engines are not constraint based but rather about independent behaviour agents interacting using triangle meshes. Quite different.
  - worldsayshi 5y ago
    Interesting! Is there any game engine or open source engine or library that would support those kinds of code styles?
    - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
      I desperately want open source CAD to be a thing. I would suppose that Freecad is probably a very good starting point. I don't think the lack of good open source CAD is due to a lack of a decent codebase so much as the fact that good CAD software is a very large project and we have just not directed enough efforts towards it. I am speculating however and may be wrong.

SXX 5y ago

It's great to see some competition for source-available Unreal. Now there is finally real AAA open source game middleware.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

thrower123 5y ago

Has anyone built anything with this? I've looked at Lumberyard a few times over the years, but even Amazon hadn't actually done much with it.

10000truths 5y ago

Will there be support for building for HTML5/WebGL?

XCSme 5y ago
Native support for this would be good, but I think you can already compile most desktop apps to HTML5/WebGL using WebAssembly.
- 10000truths 5y ago
  WebAssembly alone is not enough, you need access to the canvas and WebGL JavaScript APIs in order to actually perform the rendering. WASI may change this in the future, but for now, it means that integration with the emscripten toolchain is a must.
  - XCSme 5y ago
    Yes, I was referring to compilation using emscripten, but I couldn't remember the name, thank you!
- flohofwoe 5y ago
  For a big engine like this there's a lot more work involved then cross-compiling the code to WASM. All lower-level parts that sit on top of OS APIs like IO, 3D-rendering, audio, networking, etc... need to be ported over, and the browser is a very different runtime environment than native OS APIs, so sometimes it's not even possible without a lot of compromises which may "drag down" other parts of the engine.
  - XCSme 5y ago
    Hmm, I was under the impression that there already are tools that automatically convert system API calls (IO, audio, networking) to web-compatible APIs.
    - cachvico 5y ago

suyash 5y ago

Sucks that this is an AWS project, you know how well they treat the open source community. I would stay away from it as much as possible.

troymc 5y ago
It might have started at AWS, but it seems they really want it to have a broad set of contributors under the Linux Foundation umbrella. "We [at AWS] invested over a year to recruit partners with the right mix of resources, expertise, and above all, motivation to foster a self-sustaining community. We partnered with Linux Foundation as our trusted expert open-source organizational home because it stands as one of the best on the planet at managing large open-source projects. The Linux Foundation can provide the level of expert management demanded by such a large open-source effort. We are thrilled for the backing of a range of partners who feel just as strongly as we do about empowering choice for games and simulations developers. These partners include: Accelbyte, Adobe, Apocalypse Studios, Audiokinetic, Backtrace.io, Carbonated, Futurewei, GAMEPOCH, Genvid Technologies, Hadean, Huawei, HERE Technologies, Intel, International Game Developers Association, Kythera AI, Niantic, Open Robotics, PopcornFX, Red Hat, Rochester Institute of Technology, SideFX, Tafi, TLM Partners, and Wargaming." [1] [1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametech/open-3d-engine/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametech/open-3d-engine/
- Jyaif 5y ago
  > It might have started at AWS, but... The shader language is called AZSL, short for (I kid you not) the Amazon shader language. If you really care about attracting partners, maybe don't put your brand name in the programming language?

arduinomancer 5y ago

I always thought developing/maintaining an entire game engine just to hopefully get some AWS revenue from the web part seemed like a dubious business model. If a big company is going to adopt your engine they want your main incentive to be making it the best engine possible, not selling you more SaaS integrations.

cropcirclbureau 5y ago

Found this post on the AWS blog to be more...informative. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametech/open-3d-engine/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametech/open-3d-engine/

marcodiego 5y ago

Phoronix gives some interesting details[0]: "Besides Amazon AWS being involved with the Linux Foundation's new Open 3D Foundation, other notable vendors involved include AccelByte, Adobe, Apocalpyse Studios, International Game Developers Association, Niantic, PopcornFX, Red Hat, and Wargaming, among others." Does this means linux gaming improving beyond steam/proton? [0] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=open-3d-engine&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=open-3d-...

mixxit 5y ago

i wish this was c# instead of lua

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

socceroos 5y ago

This feels to me like Amazon is departing the space and they're dumping and running. As in, where they were previously pouring money into starting their own studio and platform, they're now cutting their losses. I'm only drawing this conclusion based on the announcement article and video - maybe I'm missing something.

hype0101 5y ago

I'm no evil but if epic decides to "open-source" their engine with MIT/something similar license, I'm sure it's gonna leave o3de to hang out dry.