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Star Citizen transitions to Amazon Lumberyard, Releases Alpha 2.6

B

Besthelboy

Banned
NOTE: The transition of Star Citizen's engine has not negated all the work that the team has put into their fork of CryEngine. All the work they've used to expand and modify the engine has transitioned to the new engine. This transition has already occurred and the latest patch is running on the new engine.

Source

There is one other big announcement we would like to make with the release of 2.6. We are now basing Star Citizen and our custom technology development on Amazon’s Lumberyard Engine. Since the beginning of the project, we’ve had to make a huge number of changes to the CryENGINE code and tech to enable us to deliver Star Citizen. While the original CryENGINE had great strengths in many areas like rendering and cinematics the needs of our game were well beyond what came ‘out of the box’. So we have, over time, changed significant parts of the engine for our technology, such that only a baseline of the original engine truly remains. In the future we will continue to make significant changes to AI, Animation and Network code and systems.

When Amazon announced Lumberyard back in February 2016, we were immediately interested. While based on the same baseline technology as Star Citizen, Lumberyard is specifically designed for online games, utilizing the power of Amazon’s AWS Cloud Services and their Twitch streaming platform. Amazon’s focus aligns perfectly to ours as we’ve been making significant engineering investments into next generation online networking and cloud based servers. Making the transition to Lumberyard and AWS has been very easy and has not delayed any of our work, as broadly, the technology switch was a ‘like-for-like’ change, which is now complete.

As an added benefit Amazon AWS data centers are spread around the world from North America to South America, Europe to China to Asia Pacific, which will allow us to better support the many backers across the globe as we scale up Star Citizen.

Finally, Amazon has made Lumberyard freely available for anyone building their own game. That means that technically-inclined members of the community can have a better view 'under the hood' of our game than ever before. It's also a great path for anyone interested in game development professionally; I fully anticipate that in the coming year we will be hiring programmers who have taught themselves using Amazon's Lumberyard resources!

As we move forwards, we are confident you will see great benefits from our partnership. Amazon will bring new features to Lumberyard to assist in creating online persistent games, adding great support for their products like Twitch (which we use extensively) and of course investing heavily in engine research and development for years to come. We could not find a more stable and reliable engine partner than Amazon, so with this partnership we are sure we have secured the future development and continuing technical innovation for Star Citizen.

With that I would like encourage everyone to download and play Alpha 2.6. It is a lot of fun and I look forward to seeing you in the ‘verse!

Happy Holidays!

-- Chris Roberts
Click to expand...

Update from CR:
C0iiXRnWIAQUKef.jpg:large
Click to expand...

In other news, the much awaited Alpha 2.6 was pushed to live today, a number of improvements and additions come with it. The largest ones being:

  • The First Person Shooter module called "Star Marine" with 2 maps and 2 game modes
  • New FPS combat mechanics such as cover, mantle and vault
  • A complete re balancing of the flight model
  • A complete overhaul of the menu UI and frontend
  • Four new flyable ships and four new variants
  • A new "Pirate Swarm" game mode
  • Complete camera overhaul, giving players more freedom in creating their own video content
2.6 is Live!

Star Citizen Alpha 2.6 is now available for all backers! Alpha 2.6 includes the first iteration of Star Marine, our dedicated FPS module, as well as significant updates to the rest of the Star Citizen experience. Star Marine offers two game modes that will give you a taste of first person combat in the ’verse while a new Pirate Swarm game mode has been added to Arena Commander and a grand total of eight new ships are available in the PU. The patch also includes a major spaceflight balance pass, a brand new menu system, as well as dozens of bug fixes, quality of life improvements and other changes. The Alpha 2.6 patch is now available for download via the Star Citizen launcher.

Full patch notes can be found here.
Click to expand...

2.6 Gameplay Trailer

If you're interested, you can check out the Alpha 2.6 and all Star Citizen entails by heading over here and signing up for the upcoming free flight period. Sign up with the code WELCOME2SC
 
T

Teknopathetic

Member
"Holy crap, with all the bad Crytek news I knew they still had this going on for them, so much for that."

Lumberyard is based on Cryengine.
 
H

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
I'm guessing they're abandoning Crytek like everyone else is. Can't blame them either
 
T

tuxfool

Banned
I should also point out that 50% of the code in the SC version of Cryengine has been rewritten. As such it is something of a misnomer to even consider it still cryengine to begin with.

Whatever was left of the original CE was liable to be stuff that remains pretty common to all 3 branches of the engine.
 
G

Graphics Horse

Member
I had a feeling this would happen, but not right now.

Teknopathetic said:
"Holy crap, with all the bad Crytek news I knew they still had this going on for them, so much for that."

Lumberyard is based on Cryengine.
Click to expand...

Tagyhag means Crytek will be missing out on their licence fees in future. Lumberyard is wholly owned by Amazon.
 
R

Raticus79

Seek victory, not fairness
I had to take some time to find out what Lumberyard actually was. Good to hear it wasn't too cumbersome to bring over. It should be great news for their infrastructure long term. Nice bonus for international players too.
 
M

mnannola

Member
Thought the title was a joke, but that switch actually doesn't seem like a huge deal. Getting the easy to use AWS integration probably helps a ton.
 
H

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
Tenck said:
.
Click to expand...

Yeah I saw that quote and still posted what I did. They aren't using the CryEngine directly anymore but Amazon's version of it. Crytek is going to be in some dire straights soon and Amazon is not, in fact they seem poised to start making a big push into the gaming world. Its an easy transition for them that no longer relies relying on the shit show that is Crytek
 
BigTnaples

BigTnaples

Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
Sounds like they are making progress. This is my dream game. I can't wait for it to be done right.
 
H

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
So how does the Lumberyard Engine work in terms of letting other outside developers use it?Does Amazon own it out right? Does Crytek have a say in things involved with the engine?
 
G

Graphics Horse

Member
Tagyhag said:
Oh I'm dumb, I also forgot that Cryengine is the one that has no royalty fees.
Click to expand...

While it's pretty cheap per user/month, the CryEngine website makes it seem like CIG have/had some kind of custom Enterprise Licence with Crytek, whatever that entails.
Probably a decent support contract, until they started poaching all their staff anyway.
 
T

tuxfool

Banned
Outrun said:
Isnt the development not problematic?
Click to expand...

How about not supporting a worthless non-sequitur that adds nothing to the conversation.

HStallion said:
So how does the Lumberyard Engine work in terms of letting other outside developers use it?Does Amazon own it out right? Does Crytek have a say in things involved with the engine?
Click to expand...
The former. Amazon paid a lot of money in order to get a fully formed engine with which they could do as they chose. Basically anybody can do what they like with the engine for free, the main requirements are that if you use cloud services you have to use AWS.

Graphics Horse said:
While it's pretty cheap per user/month, the CryEngine website makes it seem like CIG have/had some kind of custom Enterprise Licence with Crytek, whatever that entails.
Probably a decent support contract, until they started poaching all their staff anyway.
Click to expand...
One of the common complaints about Cryengine was that support was somewhat lacking. Either way, the deal they had predates the time Crytek started offering full source access to their engine.
 
G

Graphics Horse

Member
HStallion said:
So how does the Lumberyard Engine work in terms of letting other outside developers use it?Does Amazon own it out right? Does Crytek have a say in things involved with the engine?
Click to expand...

Iirc they own their version outright and it's Free for all, with some caveat about using Amazon for any server side infrastructure your product might need.
 
H

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
Graphics Horse said:
Iirc they own their version outright and it's Free for all, with some caveat about using Amazon for any server side infrastructure your product might need.
Click to expand...

So would that mean CRI might be working with Amazon in some further capacity than just using the Lumberyard Engine?
 
F

funkystudent

Member
If you are working on CryEngine you probably should jump now because I dont think Crytek will be around for much longer.

I dont think Lumberyard has forked all that much from CryEngine yet.


Working with Amazon dev support might be a better move too. Or at the very least having a big AAA project finally under Lumberyard will put Amazon games support through its paces and help those to follow down the road.
 
R

Raticus79

Seek victory, not fairness
Come to think of it, I'm surprised no one figured it out via data mining along the way. This came out of nowhere.
 
D

Dead Man Typing

Member
First reaction: "wow engine changes always result in problems and delays. This seems like a terrible thing."

After thinking about it for 2 sevonds: "oh yeah, lumberyard is just a branch of CryEngine, this isn't a big deal"

Cool that they can use the Amazon cloud services more readily.
 
R

Raticus79

Seek victory, not fairness
Graphics Horse said:
Should at least be for the online mmo servers yeah, but I don't remember the details.
Click to expand...

Right, the integration to AWS is the big benefit here I think. Probably got a good deal being one of the first big games to pick it up, so I'd expect there's a decent savings vs their previous hosting with Google Compute.

Outrun said:
Fair point.

Is this offshoot engine more conducive to what CIG are doing?
Click to expand...

Should be good news for server performance, which was definitely needed.
 
D

Dmax3901

Member
It's not like they've announced an engine change then gone dark. They've literally released a new Alpha version alongside the announcement.
 
R

Raticus79

Seek victory, not fairness
Dmax3901 said:
It's not like they've announced an engine change then gone dark. They've literally released a new Alpha version alongside the announcement.
Click to expand...

I think from the original press release it might not have been clear that they had already finished the move and the new patch was on the new engine already. There's an update in the article:

"Updated: I've had a response from CIG director of communications, David Swofford, to say that the relationship between CIG and Amazon is that of them being a regular licensee of Amazon's technology. The reason for the announcement today was that it was turned on with the release of 2.6. He also confirmed that all the work CIG had done to expand the CryEngine has been transitioned to the new engine."
 
S

Somnid

Member
This is a big get for Amazon provided this game ever releases. I wonder if it'll get to the point where they buy Crytek or their assets for some ridiculous low-ball offer.
 
K

KKRT00

Member
This is big change, but not for CIG and Star Citizen, but for Amazon and whole games industries.

First of all Amazon just got big tech upgrade to their engine, second of all almost anyone in the industry will have access to Star Engine, which is a big deal.

For Star Citizen this probably means free cloud infrastructure more than anything else.

-----

dragonbane said:
Sucks for Crytek I guess to lose out on the license fees
Click to expand...

CIG has not had to pay license fees to Crytek. They bought out full CryEngine license, which means that they could do pretty much whatever they wanted with an engine, except for licensing it.
 
V

viveks86

Member
As long as the transition work has already happened, this a good thing. Moving to lumberyard ensures the base engine continues to be supported and is not something solely dependent on CIG for future tech.

What's surprising is how this stayed under wraps for so long.
 
T

trugc

Member
tuxfool said:
No.

It was forked before Crytek added support for it. Not that it matters much, the dx12 implementation in CEV is garbage (in the sense that like in a lot of other games, it is slower than dx11).
Click to expand...

Crytek completely rewrote the renderer backend in CEV so you will also get a large performace boost under DX11 mode.
 
J

Joey Ravn

Banned
That 2.6 trailer looks amazing. I have a policy of not backing Kickstarters and such, so I'll gladly wait for the product to be released. But if they manage to deliver on the final game, it will be absolutely brilliant.
 
D

DieH@rd

Banned
I never looked to deep into it, but I viewed Amazon Lumberyard more as a standard CryEngine that has modules that help the integration of the game into large infrastructure of AWS. Nothing from previous work should be lost.

Anyhow, game still looks great. I'm still eagerly awaiting proper gameplay unveil of Squadron 42. :) Also, I wont lie, after I saw 2.6 triler I went to RSI website and looked how much would cost me to switch from my basic entry Aurora to something more cool.

BTW, what can I currently expect from framerate performance on PTU on FX8350, 8GB of RAM and RX470?
 
P

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
HStallion said:
I'm guessing they're abandoning Crytek like everyone else is. Can't blame them either
Click to expand...

Lumberyard is based on the same engine revision that SC was using probably, but they have moved a lot lot further since then (revolutionising the VR pipeline amongst other things). Deep respect for all their tech and content guys.
 
R

RubberJohnny

Banned
"CIG are completely transparent with backers, they do open development more than anyone"

**transfers engine secretly for a year, hiding it from all monthly updates and presentations**
 
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