
Amazon Lumberyard: free AAA game engine with Oculus and AWS integration - dshankar
http://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/
======
dahart
[https://aws.amazon.com/service-terms/](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, manned spacecraft, or military use in connection with live
combat. However, this restriction will not apply in the event of the
occurrence (certified by the United States Centers for Disease Control or
successor body) of a widespread viral infection transmitted via bites or
contact with bodily fluids that causes human corpses to reanimate and seek to
consume living human flesh, blood, brain or nerve tissue and is likely to
result in the fall of organized civilization.

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

~~~
outworlder
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.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
Occam's razor makes me think it was slipped in by some web developer.

~~~
porkloin
Just curious - why am I suddenly seeing so many people referencing occam's
razor? It is happening way too frequently to be a coincidence. Was the idea
featured someplace recently? It seems like just about every tech-ish thread on
reddit and HN has one "Occam's Razor" dude for the last couple weeks.

~~~
kuinak
That would be the simplest explanation.

~~~
mentat
Well played.

------
thenomad
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
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.

~~~
wlesieutre
Another 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
This 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.

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

~~~
eterm
It also contains built in obselesence:

    
    
      57.6 Registration; Release. Before distributing your 
      Lumberyard Project to End Users, you must register it at 
      aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/registration. You must obtain our 
      prior written consent if the initial public or commercial 
      release of your Lumberyard Project is based on a version of 
      the Lumberyard Materials more than 5 years old.

~~~
Tepix
That means if you keep releasing updates for a project for 5 years, you need
renewed permission from them, right?

~~~
jo909
Updates would clearly not be an " _initial_ public or commercial release of
your Lumberyard Project".

It's about the first version, you just can't sit on your project forever and
still use an old version of the engine when you finally go public. I see no
harm in that clause.

------
Grue3
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 games with highest development budgets, why would
they care about the engine being free? Clearly choosing a free engine is a
cost-saving measure, at which point you're no longer making an AAA game by
definition.

~~~
nacs
> 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.

~~~
outworlder
Except that, at that level, it is no longer 'free'. Unity will likely be the
Pro version (still peanuts). Unreal will also get a chunk of the pie. It's
only free up to a point, which is reasonable.

~~~
ezzaf
Just as Lumberyard is only free up to the point you actually deploy it on AWS,
at which point Amazon are making money on your hosting.

------
julius
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?

~~~
athrun
They certainly already have a SDK for Unity: [https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-
unity](https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-unity)

~~~
gravypod
Does this have support for their "auto scaling" back end? That is what
interests me the most.

~~~
ckozlowski
Yes. [https://aws.amazon.com/gamelift/](https://aws.amazon.com/gamelift/)

------
markatkinson
I got pretty excited and rushed through the article trying to clarify what
engine and language it is based on.

Got a little bleak when I saw CryEngine and C++. As someone who uses C# and
Java it's becoming pretty clear I need to start learning C++ if I want to
explore game dev.

I realize Unity uses C# but when I compare UE, Unity and CryEngine it really
feels like Unity still has a long way to go. The features you get out the box
with UE for example are far superior to Unity.

Anyway, I just went off topic. It looks like an interesting option for
developing multiplayer focused games.

~~~
lmm
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#.

~~~
thecatspaw
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.

~~~
lmm
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 appropriate times.

~~~
autoreleasepool
Possible != usable in production.

~~~
pjmlp
Well, not everyone is writing the next version of Crysis.

There are plenty of production games that can live with < 10ms pauses.

~~~
Nang1975
It's not just the pauses though. Cities Skyline has terrible performance, far
worse than other more-intensive 3D games, and I can't help but feel that their
choice of game engine is a major reason behind that.

~~~
pjmlp
The engine or the programmers?

------
clebio
Minor nit: the link doesn't once mention Oculus. Only on the FAQ page is that
mentioned.
[http://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/faq/](http://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/faq/)

I mean, the closest thing to a title for this linked page would be the
subheading:

> Amazon Lumberyard is a free AAA game engine deeply integrated with AWS and
> Twitch – with full source.

------
twoquestions
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.)

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

~~~
dharma1
wouldn't it make more sense to focus on AWS offerings for Unity3D/Unreal
Engine instead?

~~~
benbristow
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/](https://games.amazon.com/)

~~~
dharma1
Ah, that explains why. And they might have some VR plays in mind, where it
makes sense to have an engine they control

------
shadowmint
Some interesting legal stuff with this engine, which their FAQ(1) goes over.

Basically, use it for whatever, free of charge, but not with any other cloud
services that mimic amazon's services(2).

Except cloud services for some things, which are fine:

    
    
        Your game may read and write data to platform services and public 
        third-party game services for player save state, identity, social 
        graph, matchmaking, chat, notifications, achievements, leaderboards,
        advertising, player acquisition, in-game purchasing, analytics,
        and crash reporting. 
     

Is it a game changer?

Hard to say, but like they say, you can't beat free.

If nothing else, a _lot_ of people are going to download this and have a look
at it and mess around with it.

Pretty exciting stuff. :)

[1]
[https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/faq/#licensing](https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/faq/#licensing)

[2]
[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/latest/userguide/lumbe...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/latest/userguide/lumberyard-
alternate-web-services.html)

~~~
Keyframe
Also: _You can use hardware you own and operate for your game servers._

So, it's a fair deal. You can use your own servers and not AWS for anything,
but you can't use other web services which are competing with AWS. You can
also modify source code as you see fit, but not distribute it. That's about
it. Can't complain.

------
JohnTHaller
It's an interesting ploy by Amazon to get game devs to lock themselves into
Amazon's AWS for backend and Amazon's Twitch for streaming.

------
usaphp
It's funny to see in that video how drastically different work environment is
at "gunfire games" studio and twitch. Looks like day and night.

------
kderbe
My guess is Amazon plans to use this engine for their in-development AAA PC
game [1][2] announced last year. Usually the engine spin-off happens _after_
the game itself is released, so I wonder what their motivations are for
promoting the standalone engine so soon.

[1]
[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/245102/Sponsored_Amazon_i...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/245102/Sponsored_Amazon_is_now_hiring_for_its_first_PC_game.php)

[2] [https://games.amazon.com/jobs/](https://games.amazon.com/jobs/)

------
jdoliner
I'm pretty wowed.The quality of code that's being opensourced lately really
seems to be ticking up. I didn't take the time to play with it so I'll be
interested to hear the first reactions but it certainly looks pretty good in
the screenshots. And integration directly into AWS could really streamline a
lot of the difficulty of making online multiplayer games. I suspect this will
put a new class of games in reach for indie development which is going to be
really cool.

~~~
dennisnedry
Lumberyard is not open source.

~~~
jdoliner
Yeah, I didn't read that very closely :-/

Still cool, but not as much as I'd thought.

------
spullara
They recommend using an operating system (Windows 7) for which mainstream
support ended over a year ago.

~~~
whitegrape
Extended support until 2020 though. :) Personally I have no need for Windows
10 on anything I own or use, maybe MS will offer something better by 2020.

------
meow_mix
Sure it can't be redistributed, but if it could wouldn't someone just
repackage it and make it such that you didn't have to use AWS for the servers?
Their goal is to make game devs go to AWS, so this makes sense to me

------
gravypod
What is this auto-scaling back end system about? How does it work? Does it
just launch more nodes in a cluster or does it actually expand the VM that you
are running in like expanding an OVZ container.

~~~
mjblack
AWS autoscaling is service that can be used to scale applications based on
different metrics, one being CPU load and another is ELB traffic. I'm sure
there is probably more options but the idea is it scales up and down depending
on the policies put in place. It'll launch either VMs or containers, which is
really how you design the autoscaling configuration.

------
teamonkey
The 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.

~~~
leetNightshade
That support should be coming. As far as I heard, they're trying to create one
cross platform gaming ecosystem based on their services/platforms.

From the FAQ: "Mobile support for iOS and Android devices is coming soon,
along with additional support for Mac and Linux."

------
akerro
> Peer attempted old style (potentially vulnerable) handshake. (Error code:
> ssl_error_unsafe_negotiation)

I'm unable to connect there from mobile and desktop Firefox.

------
sagivo
It's about time we'll have some choice and better competition after Unity3d
basically dominated the market.

------
shmerl
AWS integration sounds like a vendor lock-in to me.

Other than that, what value does it offer on top of Cry Engine that it uses?

------
wilhil
I hope their webpage isn't an indication of performance of EC2! I keep getting
timeouts and errors :(

------
lobster_johnson
I wonder how suitable this is for 2D development. Anyone know?

~~~
leetNightshade
On the main page Lumberyard is described as a 3D game engine, which is the
case because it's based off of the 3D CryEngine game engine.

If they're to add 2D support, it'll probably be a while. And it'll likely be
something built using the 3D technology, unless they want to put in a lot of
work to optimize for a 2D use.

------
Kiro
How does the automatic lag compensation work?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lag#Solutions_and_lag_compensa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lag#Solutions_and_lag_compensation)

------
theworstshill
Not even going to try it on principle. Amazon is a big tentacled octopus thats
tightening its grasp over any and every area it can. Lets leave Amazon for
ecommerce and AWS.

------
zyngaro
FYI Microsoft.

