Online retail giant Amazon released its very own game engine called Lumberyard. Based on Crytek’s CryEngine, which has been the base for many games like Far Cry, Evolve and Crysis this one too can be used to develop games for both PC and consoles. It’s free to download and use, but one only has to pay for Amazon’s cloud services (Amazon Web Services) for multiplayer.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) also allows you to make use of Amazon’s GameLift, where one can create and operate multiplayer sessions based in AWS’ cloud infrastructure.
Not only that, it also has asset packages available to download which can be used in game creation right from all the coding to develop a first-person shooter game, including complex animated characters, vehicles and game AI.
Lumberyard is also Twitch friendly as it has two new integration features – ChatPlay and JoiIn. ChatPlay allows games to provide social gaming experience with keywords in a Twitch chat stream with other users. Whereas JoinIn allows broadcasters to invite an audience member into the game from within a chat channel.
Amazon continues its foray into the gaming industry after the acquisition of Twitch, Amazon underground and now a game engine which is free. Lumberyard has a potential to give competition to already heavyweights like Unity and Unreal Engine 4 but we’ll have to wait and watch how developers take liking to this new engine.