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PayPalThis could be the start of something truly big for game development (amongst other things), with the Linux Foundation pulling together some huge names to launch the Open 3D Foundation and the Open 3D Engine based upon Amazon Lumberyard.
In the announcement the Linux Foundation stated that Amazon Web Services (AWS) contributed an "updated version of the Amazon Lumberyard game engine" as what will form the basis for the future project. So, is this Amazon basically throwing out Lumberyard, to get the community to pick up the slack? Either way, donating it in this way is a good thing. More companies should do this. The AWS team themselves said in their own announcement they were building "the successor to Lumberyard" and so to "enable the game and simulation developer community to work side by side with us" they then spent over a year finding partners for it and it looks like it had some big upgrades too.
“The new Open 3D Foundation finally gives gaming and engine developers an opportunity to influence the direction of a major AAA class 3D engine that is sustained for the long term by a worldwide open source community,” said Chris Aniszczyk, CTO, Linux Foundation. “Furthermore, other industries such as automotive and healthcare can take advantage of embedding the engine and supporting the advancement of the engine to benefit all.”
Currently, the game engine editor on GitHub only has Windows build instructions, which is hilarious (in an annoying way) when you consider that this is coming from the Linux Foundation. Going by their public roadmap, Linux Client support isn't hooked up yet either but it is planned with Vulkan support. Early days though of course, and now it's in the open and open source (available under either the Apache License 2.0 or MIT) perhaps we can now see a boost to Linux support from contributors.
Joining this new Open 3D Foundation are the likes of AccelByte, Adobe, Apocalypse Studios, Audiokinetic, AWS, Backtrace.io, Carbonated, Futurewei, GAMEPOCH, Genvid Technologies, Hadean, HERE Technologies, Huawei, Intel, International Game Developers Association, KitBash3D, Kythera AI, Niantic, Open Robotics, PopcornFX, Red Hat, Rochester Institute of Technology, SideFX, Tafi, TLM Partners and Wargaming - so a lot of big names.
It will definitely be interesting to see how this goes. With the likes of Unity and Unreal Engine being the biggest around currently, both of which are proprietary and this new kid on the block comes along and flashes them with open code and an open license. Of course there's also Godot Engine which is open source, Game Maker Studio which is proprietary and plenty more but this looks like it will go up against the bigger few.
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Update: in a post on Twitter, Chris Aniszczyk, CTO of the Linux Foundation stated that it's all in the early stages and they're going through "formalizing governance, to adding full fledged Linux support, etc". So yes, fully proper Linux support is confirmed.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: PhiladelphusI don't recall ever hearing of the Amazon Lumberyard engine before. What kinds of games has it been used to create?
The only one I know of is Crucible, which didn't turn out too well.
There is also Star Citizen which started out on CryEngine but "switched" to Lumberyard at some point for reasons that I don't remember. However, since SC basically forked it as well, this should now be considered a third cryengine fork.
Quoting: EhvisQuoting: PhiladelphusI don't recall ever hearing of the Amazon Lumberyard engine before. What kinds of games has it been used to create?
The only one I know of is Crucible, which didn't turn out too well.
There is also Star Citizen which started out on CryEngine but "switched" to Lumberyard at some point for reasons that I don't remember. However, since SC basically forked it as well, this should now be considered a third cryengine fork.
epic licenced unreal code to tons of developers in the past, if we go by that logic almost no one used unreal ever, they just used an fork of it.
Quoting: EhvisQuoting: PhiladelphusI don't recall ever hearing of the Amazon Lumberyard engine before. What kinds of games has it been used to create?
The only one I know of is Crucible, which didn't turn out too well.
There is also Star Citizen which started out on CryEngine but "switched" to Lumberyard at some point for reasons that I don't remember. However, since SC basically forked it as well, this should now be considered a third cryengine fork.
There might be another fork too. I think when Ubisoft bought the Far Cry IP from CryTek they got the source code with it, including the engine and from that they created the so called Dunia Engine.
Quoting: elmapulQuoting: EhvisQuoting: PhiladelphusI don't recall ever hearing of the Amazon Lumberyard engine before. What kinds of games has it been used to create?
The only one I know of is Crucible, which didn't turn out too well.
There is also Star Citizen which started out on CryEngine but "switched" to Lumberyard at some point for reasons that I don't remember. However, since SC basically forked it as well, this should now be considered a third cryengine fork.
epic licenced unreal code to tons of developers in the past, if we go by that logic almost no one used unreal ever, they just used an fork of it.
I think his point is that in this case there were so many changes to made for SC that is basically its own thing/fork. So it is different from how most licensees use an engine. Although it is not unheard of either. Kinda similar to what 3D Realms did with the Unreal Engine for DNF.
Quoting: elmapulunreal is source code avaliable thoughAs Liam said, it's still proprietary.
And as for Unity, you can browse the C# code here: https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/UnityCsReference
Indeed, you don't have access to the C++, but you can take a deeper look into what's happening (and Unity is using C# more and more over C++)
Quoting: CreakQuoting: elmapulunreal is source code avaliable thoughAs Liam said, it's still proprietary.
And as for Unity, you can browse the C# code here: https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/UnityCsReference
Indeed, you don't have access to the C++, but you can take a deeper look into what's happening (and Unity is using C# more and more over C++)
ok i decided to finally read the licence after so many years of reading the news that epic "open sourced it" and you are right, it may be usefull for those who want to learn how its done, but its almost useless for those who want to reuse it.
its not as useless as unity licence, but its HUGE and from the little that i saw i can see how its not even close to an free licence.
its much worse than GPL, Mit, Appache.
now i'm depressed to know that the human species gave millions to epic to the point they were able to build something like unreal 5... and its licence is almost as bad as an full proprietary licence.
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