Amazon has released a new version of the free Lumberyard game engine

The company has released the Lumberyard Beta 1.7 beta, which includes 403 improvements and fixes. The main focus in the updated version is on the UI and UX of the engine.

The project leader, J.C. Connors, noted in the Amazon Web Services blog that this is the largest update of the engine since its release. In the post, he highlights that the engine team is thinking about the usability of Lumberyard. A number of the most significant updates relate to the work on the UI and UX editor.

• In Lumberyard Beta 1.7, the Asset Processor has been updated, which automatically processes graphic files into assets and automatically updates the asset immediately if the source code changes.
• Asset Browser Preview allows you to see all available assets as a preview and simply drag and drop them on the game stage.
• Lumberyard Editor has also been updated, which now has both a materials editor and tools for working with light, drawing roads and rivers.
• Mobile developers will appreciate the Deployment Tool, which allows you to deploy releases and debug builds from the editor to Android devices “with one click”.

The full list of updates, which also includes support for Visual Studio 2015, can be found here. We, for our part, note that the weak side of CryEngine, on which Lumberyard is based, has traditionally been considered the complexity of mastering and working compared to the much more accessible Unity and Unreal Engine 4.

Lumberyard is an open source engine. It is distributed free of charge. Amazon also does not take a share from sales. But the developer must pay for the Amazon Web Services engine used in the work.

Amazon acquired the rights to use CryEngine in April 2015. The transaction amount is estimated at $50-70 million.

Source: Amazon