Amazon Lumberyard is a free, cross-platform, 3D game engine for you to create the highest-quality games, connect your games to the vast compute and storage of the AWS Cloud, and engage fans on Twitch.
By starting game projects with Lumberyard, you can spend more of your time creating great gameplay and building communities of fans, and less time on the undifferentiated heavy lifting of building a game engine and managing server infrastructure.
Mod Friendly
Games that support mods and user-generated content have extended lifespans, and increased virality and player retention. Lumberyard is mod friendly – you can include components from the Lumberyard Editor into your games so that your end users can create content with the same tools that you use.
With a full-featured editor, native code performance, stunning visuals, and hundreds of other features, Amazon Lumberyard gives professional developers the tools and technology they need to build world-class games.
With Amazon Lumberyard’s visual scripting tool, your designers and engineers with little to no backend experience can add cloud-connected features to a game in as little as minutes (such as a community news feed, daily gifts, or server-side combat resolution) through drag-and-drop visual scripting.
Amazon Lumberyard is free, including full source code, so you can deeply customize Lumberyard for your team and your vision for your project today, and for future projects in years to come. There are no seat fees, subscription fees, or requirements to share revenue. You only pay for the AWS services you choose to use.
Once you’ve downloaded Lumberyard, get started by watching our Tutorials, visiting us on our Forums, or reading through our Documentation.
I don't know if I'm happy with this?
Lets see what people can do with the updated engine. Does look powerful
It is Cryengine, from all the different games made with it and what I've just personally made with it, It's quite powerful. The reason You should be happy is because CryEngine is super powerful, even more than Ureal 4 for me(Obviously the ability of an engine is limited by the knowledgeability of the dev/user actually working in it so this is a personal opinion, mostly because I don't know how to use Unreal). The fact it's free, comes with source, you don't pay royalties to amazon for a commercial product, and they've made it super easy to make multiplayer games with their cheap Web services(I don't know how good this multiplayer stuff will turn out though). It's certainly something to get excited for, especially if you're an indie team.
I've got experience with CryEngine. Glad to hear it's free. I've been there since before the introduction of CAAS (which got me to favor UE more and more).
The engine is extremely versatile, powerful and most of all, easy to use indeed. It's definitely in my top 3 WYSIWYG engines to date, but what got me on edge is that Amazon, a huge company, is entering the market with no actual content to back up their image.
For me, someone who's had experience with the engine / tools, it's GREAT seeing it back alive, backed by a company that'll surely make it even better and has the funds to support it, but it at the same time introduces doubt in where Amazon will sit between developer and customer and how they're going to act when it comes to a 'fair share' deal if there would be a huge project that would generate loads of income.
I haven't read the EULA yet, so I won't comment on the specifics, but CAAS was VERY pricey. Hence the doubt.
Still, it's great seeing it back again. Makes me feel nostalgic about my CryEngine2 days, too.
they ought use torrents for such large file sizes. 10 gb download is allot.
.... Or, have a online downloader that has the installer but downloads the stuff afterwards when you got the installer.
Wait what? Cry Engine has been rebranded?
Cry engine, mod-friendly, and "full-featured editor", it's heaven!
You forgot to add that it's also free ;)
I'm not sure what to think of this...
To people curious about its relation with CryEngine, I found this on CryEngine's page on Wikipedia:
I somewhat disagree with the wiki.
Amazon deleted the netcode and replaced it with their AWS code and added twitch. The core, that what makes the Cryengine the Cryengine, an optimized make-you-look-good engine, is somewhat unchanged when compared to the latest Eaas Version.
Crytek will continue develop their engine, with its proven staff, and Amazon in turn has yet to show us what they can do with it.
Competition is always good for the end users.
All the best to Amazon, though. I hope they profit from their investment.
It's called Amazon GameLift.
You are only allowed to make Multiplayer games using that service ONLY, or your own servers (DON'T USE OTHER COMMERTIAL SERVERS LIKE Google's servers etc.)
Have they added support for more filestypes beside AUtodesk ?
Gorgeous visuals, can't argue with free!
That's intersting.
However too much bad self-made game using Unreal and Unity have hurt me too much..So,i take reservations towrds this engine.
It's the removal of the original netcode and adding their cloud based code what bugs me, I wonder if you can create multiplayer games without any kind of royalty too, as you are forced to use their netcode implementation.
I may be wrong, but that could be the catch. In any case, if I'm wrong, please enlighten me.
looks amazing nice man!
I checked that video and I'm not sure why they highlight that two specific thing, but here are my thoughts on them:
They talk about AWS like it's a well known thing, I had to look it up to see how is it related to gaming.
Yes, I can see these would be useful for some bigger companies, for smaller indies it depends on the prices.
What I don't really get is the Twitch thing. How is this chat integration work exactly? Did anyone actually read twitch chat? For bigger streamers it's just a constant flow of "dank memes" and spam.
So I'm not sure if it's a good idea. What if this current Twitch popularity is just a phase? What if in 5 years people will only use it for e-sports, and a competitor showed up and most people started streaming there instead? All those games that have been developed to include some sort of twitch chat integration can seem like a waste of dev time at that point.
It's a hypothetical scenario, but it can happen.
So it would have been probably better if they talk more about the strengths of the engine, compatibility, etc. instead of gimmicky things like this, because otherwise it looks quite nice and useful, and probably a nice alternative to Unity for smaller teams.
Yes I get it, Twitch (and AWS) is Amazon's "playthings" now, but still... "We can't imagine what developers going to do with this" Oh please. Fad games and meme games that will lose there popularity quickly. I see no other serious company use this other than "Allow Twitch streaming" like in the case of Minecraft.
Since Amazon is running this idea, will they eventually claim our game projects for themselves? I say nay, but you never know what these giant scummy corporations gonna do.
Free beta only or will always be "free"?
Free is never really free when it comes to these kind of things.
So, there will be a catch, for sure.
Always loved the Cryengine, and this is Cry with a Amazon mark on it.
Leon
It's free if you don't give a **** about Multiplayer.
(Which you need to use Amazon GameLift to use multiplayer/online functions, they didn't really specify... OR your own servers.)