Amazon has released its own game engine, Lumberyard, free to use for aspiring developers.
It’s currently in its beta stages but is available to download right away. It’s a cross platform 3D engine that helps developers to make high quality games that use Amazon Web Services for storage and computing power. It’s also connected to Twitch to help get their game out there in that ever growing community.
Lumberyard promises to provide developers with tons of features to help them get their game out there fast. They can build live, online features quickly and appropriately scale session-based multiplayer games with the newly announced Amazon GameLift program.
Lumberyard hopes to lift the heavy grunt work of engine building off of developer’s backs so they can focus on making a more compelling experience and game world. Lumberyard comes with built-in features such as cloth physics, character and animations editors, particle editors, UI editors, audio tools and much more. For developers that need more customization, Lumberyard has an open access source code to fiddle around with to further change things up.
Lumberyard also allows you to easily integrate Twitch controls into your game. Allowing Twitch users to play your game as a collective.
It looks like some developers are already getting excited, like Josh Atkins, Vice President of Creative Development at 2K Games. “The integration of a fantastic game engine with amazing cloud services presents a wonderful opportunity for both independent developers and established publishers.” He said.
Amazon Lumberyard is available to PC and console game developers and is completely free, there’s no subscription cost. However, using Amazon’s GameLift program and other services will come at a price. GameLift costs $1.50 per 1000 Daily active users plus AWS fees.
