Amazon's LumberYard Engine that is.
Amazon has recently announced their new development system called LumberYard. The announcement caught the attention of many independent developers whose popular options for game engines have so far been the Unity and UnReal engines. Unlike those options, LumberYard is free, fully and completely. No hidden gotchas or royalties... well except for the fact that should you need servers, and you don't host them yourself, then you can only use Amazon Web Services (which does charge for use). But really, AWS is really pretty awesome anyways so that isn't that big of a gotcha. AWS is the only was Amazon gets money from LumberYard as there is no free until you make $X and no royalties tied to your projects.
Some quick, early comparisons:
LumberYard:
| Unity:
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Overall, I'd say if you are well into a project in another engine, it may be best to finish it there rather than make the switch, as Lumberyard has a tiny bit of growing up to do to iron out some of its quirks. However, definitely get your hands on it and start fiddling with its capabilities. it is in no way a bad system, just, well, in Beta.
In the DET department we have dived headfirst into the system and have made some crazy discoveries already. In fact, we are switching our work on the virtual campus over from Unity now into LumberYard. It will be an interesting change, but one we look forward to pioneering along with many indie developers taking the plunge to test it out as well. I look forward to sharing some the interesting creations we come up with!
Until next time,
See Ya!
Until next time,
See Ya!