Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), has enhanced Lumberyard’s game engine with a beta offering that adds over 200 new features.
Lumberyard is a cross-platform, free game engine that includes a development IDE. It was launched in 2016 by AWS to capture the lucrative game development market.
AWS stated that Lumberyard beta 1.14 should be of particular interest to visual scripting fans, as its Script Canvas received multiple upgrades.
Other improvements include new components, which are part of the Component Entity Systems, and support for Visual Studio 2017.
AWS stated that the Visual Studio 2017 support was tested against the most recent version of the popular IDE. This release has been faster.
The v1.14 release notes state that you can use the Lumberyard Setting Assistant to configure Visual Studio 2017, Visual Studio 2015. Or both. To install the appropriate Visual Studio redistributables, you must choose at least one version. Waf generates a Visual Studio solution that you can manage with the user_settings.options file (located in the \dev\_WAF_ directory). This file automatically updates the Visual Studio version field with the latest version. Visual Studio 2015 is the default value if you have both versions installed.
A blog post also highlights other new features, such as a Virtual Gamepad gem that creates touch-screen controls and a new particle emitter for UI Editor.
AWS stated that the new and improved features were designed to help customers build ambitious, cloud connected games without having to rely on a team of engineers.
AWS has tutorials, forums, and documentation that provide more information about Lumberyard.
