Star Citizen Switching To Amazon's Lumberyard Game Engine

Naa, they had to rewrite the code and it took them 4 extra years. Some guys on a forum told me, so its basically a fact. Doesn't matter what the people who actually did it say.
 
I'm not an expert here on how game engines work, so this might not be in the least bit correct.

However from what I'm gathering up it sounds like basically:

You have a railroad, now you have the main track/line (In this case Cryengine) and then you have junctions that go off into other non-main tracks (IE the customized areas they build, like for the AI/physics, etc).

Now since Lumberyard is the same engine, they didn't have to "rebuild" the entire track, they simply had to hook up their junctions to it, the same as cryengine, and then take a little time with making sure it works and everything is how it should be along with Amazon's few things like their backend and what not.

Of course I might be wrong, but that's what it sounds like to me.

If that's the case and I'm understanding it right I don't see why people think it's not possible to have done this in just a few days.
 
I read his post everything in it to me suggests that they were prepping for the switch for almost a year. Which is the right way to do it. Continue development while keeping the fact in mind that you'll need to transfer everything to the completely new and untouched SDK by amazon. If you work with that in mind, then you're not loosing work later. But that is already a part of the switch procedure. It might only take a day to actually transfer the prepared code to the new sdk. But that preparation needs to be done. You must separate every bit of your own code from the SDK and remove or change anything that is specific to the cryengine sdk.

I'm not against the engine switch I'm against bullshitting.
That's exactly what I told you the other day. Glad you finally went to the source and read up on it. Not sure why you're still banging this drum if you agree that it's been in the works for the past year and it'd only take a day or two to wrap it up...exactly like he posted.

Now since Lumberyard is the same engine, they didn't have to "rebuild" the entire track, they simply had to hook up their junctions to it, the same as cryengine, and then take a little time with making sure it works and everything is how it should be along with Amazon's few things like their backend and what not.
It's even less complicated than that. We don't know how much or how little customization CIG has done to CryEngine (and M76 seems to think it's basically nothing making his complaint even more nonsensical if he believes that since it makes this process even easier), but the physics and graphical engines are the things we do know are heavily customized and are completely unrelated to the changes that needed to be done.
 
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People yelling "PONZI SCHEME", don't seem to even know the basics of what a Ponzi scheme is.
Hint: no "investors" are getting money. Not a dime, never have, never planned to never will. Thus, the whole idea of SC being a Ponzi scheme is... well bullshit.

No, Star Citizen isn't a ponzi in the classic financial sense. The spirit of the criticism lies in the similarities:

Financial Ponzi
- Pays quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors to create the illusion of legitimacy
- Victims are motivated by financial greed

Star Citizen
- Pays half a decade of youtube videos and meaningless incremental updates to buggy, slopped-together Cryengine tech demos and hangar simulators to create the illusion of legitimacy and progress
- Victims are motivated by emotional greed - the more they spend on jpgs of imaginary space yachts, the more perceived advantage they'll gain over others in the "finished" game.

I don't believe CR and his singing/dancing/acting wife set out to defraud anyone when he announced Star Citizen in 2012. But the business of selling jpgs for a permanently "in development" project has become a money-making monster too big and too powerful to slow down now by actually finishing the game or ceasing ship sales.
 
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I don't believe CR and his singing/dancing/acting wife set out to defraud anyone when he announced Star Citizen in 2012. But the business of selling jpgs for a permanently "in development" project has become a money-making monster too big and too powerful to slow down now by actually finishing the game or ceasing ship sales.

If he hadn't already done the exact same thing a couple times across more then one industry I would be willing to forgive him as some wide eyed dreamer.

His most recent other venture was a movie studio that got bought out after having to settle multiple investor suits... and one from Kevin Costner. Roberts had his fingers in 4-5 big budget movies that all cost millions more then they should have and lost his investors a lot of money. Long story short he is no longer welcome in that industry.

His last gaming company was run the same way going years over schedule and blowing through millions of investors money creating a ton of nothing. He cashed that one out on MS.... if that is where his gaming story ended I would enjoy the laugh on MS.

Of course it isn't, I think I believe he never intended to bilk the average gamer. I believe what he said day one, that he had angel investors ready to swoop down and sprinkle investor money on SC after players proved it was viable by crowd sourcing a start. Perhaps... also likely that was a BS story as well. Roberts is a scammer plain and simple he belongs in jail not making video games. :) (I can say that in this thread now his supporters have long since tuned me out) What really pisses me off about Chris Roberts isn't SC, or that he should be known as Chris "Madoff" Roberts. Its that he will be responsible for souring a lot of people on crowd sourcing, which could be a great tool if used well. (like frontier did with Elite Dangerous, a game that accepted some crowd sourcing... then set goals and got real investors and got an actual product out the door in a very reasonable time frame)

Anyway if any SC lovers get this far in this post... go play Eve people. Eve is 10x the game SC will ever be. It has a gorgeous graphics system, a large player base. Ships you can spend thousands of dollars on if you choose... and all the things Roberts talks about and tries to hit you up another 10 million for have already been done by CCP in Eve. Even down the the FPS stuff if you want that pick up Dust and you can FPS with in the Eve universe real time like. You want VR they got it... you want big space battles they got it, you want real trading they got it. You wanna play space trucker space miner space pirate space taxi... they got all that to. Its everything Roberts claims to be making... done better. The fact that CCPs game has been out for over 10 years now... you have to wonder why people where thinking SC was even needed.
 
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If he hadn't already done the exact same thing a couple times across more then one industry I would be willing to forgive him as some wide eyed dreamer.

His most recent other venture was a movie studio that got bought out after having to settle multiple investor suits... and one from Kevin Costner. Roberts had his fingers in 4-5 big budget movies that all cost millions more then they should have and lost his investors a lot of money. Long story short he is no longer welcome in that industry.

His last gaming company was run the same way going years over schedule and blowing through millions of investors money creating a ton of nothing. He cashed that one out on MS.... if that is where his gaming story ended I would enjoy the laugh on MS.

Of course it isn't, I think I believe he never intended to bilk the average gamer. I believe what he said day one, that he had angel investors ready to swoop down and sprinkle investor money on SC after players proved it was viable by crowd sourcing a start. Perhaps... also likely that was a BS story as well. Roberts is a scammer plain and simple he belongs in jail not making video games. :) (I can say that in this thread now his supporters have long since tuned me out) What really pisses me off about Chris Roberts isn't SC, or that he should be known as Chris "Madoff" Roberts. Its that he will be responsible for souring a lot of people on crowd sourcing, which could be a great tool if used well. (like frontier did with Elite Dangerous, a game that accepted some crowd sourcing... then set goals and got real investors and got an actual product out the door in a very reasonable time frame)

Anyway if any SC lovers get this far in this post... go play Eve people. Eve is 10x the game SC will ever be. It has a gorgeous graphics system, a large player base. Ships you can spend thousands of dollars on if you choose... and all the things Roberts talks about and tries to hit you up another 10 million for have already been done by CCP in Eve. Even down the the FPS stuff if you want that pick up Dust and you can FPS with in the Eve universe real time like. You want VR they got it... you want big space battles they got it, you want real trading they got it. You wanna play space trucker space miner space pirate space taxi... they got all that to. Its everything Roberts claims to be making... done better. The fact that CCPs game has been out for over 10 years now... you have to wonder why people where thinking SC was even needed.

Eve is tired and corrupt. The 2 games do not have much in common. For me a few large 1000+ player space battles was enough. They seem more like a job than entertainment. Kill a titan, been there done that. Small ship roams were fun for a while. The promise of SC is what drew so many to become backers. I jumped in in 2013. Had over 5000 forum posts. Over time I lost faith for so many reasons. Now I am fully refunded but remain hopeful that there will be a product at the end of the rabbit hole. It is a real shame that it has reached this point. What a waste!
 
Eve is tired and corrupt. The 2 games do not have much in common. For me a few large 1000+ player space battles was enough. They seem more like a job than entertainment. Kill a titan, been there done that. Small ship roams were fun for a while. The promise of SC is what drew so many to become backers. I jumped in in 2013. Had over 5000 forum posts. Over time I lost faith for so many reasons. Now I am fully refunded but remain hopeful that there will be a product at the end of the rabbit hole. It is a real shame that it has reached this point. What a waste!

I know many people did when he first pitched the idea. I never did although I know lots of people from games like Eve and STO that did. I admit I almost bought in myself... the only reason I never bought in myself was the memory of the MS screw job he pulled. At the time I was awaiting freelancer like many people... I was let down at first, but when it became clear Roberts obviously screwed them over I admit I enjoyed the thought of MS getting taken.

I too as much as it doesn't sound like it would love to be proven wrong. If SC turns out to be the must have game of 2018 I will gladly eat by pride and sing SC praises for all to hear as I dive into the game.

In the end I have more faith that companies like Frontier and CCP will tool their games into more enjoyable experiences. Eve is a game I come and go from, stopping by for a few months it seems every year. Every time I do I see all sorts of changes, and if SC does nothing else... it has kept CCP honest. Eve has gotten a lot of great additions the last few years from a complete GFX/lighting engine overhaul, manual controls, to a refocus on Space stuff and heck even F2P access (not sure how free it really is, but I'm sure I'll jump back in for a few months at some point in 2017 to find out). I guess what I'm saying is if people really want the best space game ever made... they would have more luck trying to engage those great developers then spraying funds at Roberts and preying he isn't just burning it on cars women and what ever else Accomplished and Renowned developers do for fun.
 
WTF?

Do you not understand that all that custom code to cryengine they developed can be easily ported to THE EXACT GOD DAMNED ENGINE AGAIN? Read that sentence a few times until it clicks. Do you think they are trying to rewrite everything from scratch or something?

Im pretty sure you are just trolling at this point... Don't even respond to me if you are going to continue to be this dense.
You couldn't transfer all the custom code to a bone stock SDK of the exact same version of the exact same engine in a day either.

The fact of the matter is that CR is trying to downplaying the impact of an engine change. But he causes more uproar instead. It was completely unnecessary everyone understands why it had to be done with crytek struggling and probably not providing enough support, plus lumberyard being a better fit with the net code.
 
That's exactly what I told you the other day. Glad you finally went to the source and read up on it. Not sure why you're still banging this drum if you agree that it's been in the works for the past year and it'd only take a day or two to wrap it up...exactly like he posted.

FYI I read the post long before that. That doesn't change the fact that he's bullshitting with the 1 day 2 guys lunacy.
It's even less complicated than that. We don't know how much or how little customization CIG has done to CryEngine (and M76 seems to think it's basically nothing making his complaint even more nonsensical if he believes that since it makes this process even easier),
To my defence I didn't see 2.6 then and judging by the general enthusiasm of the believers I thought the game is much farther advanced in development than it actually is.

but the physics and graphical engines are the things we do know are heavily customized and are completely unrelated to the changes that needed to be done.

That makes zero sense. How is it not related? The graphics and the physics are parts of the same cryengine that they' have thrown out and replaced with lumberyard. You can't separate them. Unless they're pulling a hat trick and using both sdks simultaenously with the graphics and physics running on the cryengine sdk and the rest running on lumberyard. It can be done, but it would be extremely nasty and stupid because they'd have to pay to both parties in case the game ever gets a release.
 
You couldn't transfer all the custom code to a bone stock SDK of the exact same version of the exact same engine in a day either.

The fact of the matter is that CR is trying to downplaying the impact of an engine change. But he causes more uproar instead. It was completely unnecessary everyone understands why it had to be done with crytek struggling and probably not providing enough support, plus lumberyard being a better fit with the net code.
You dont have ANY information or proof to dispute what he said. All you are doing is hoping and guessing. Its splitting hairs anyway. If it took 1 minute, 1 day, 1 week or 1 guy or 5 guys..etc..etc It doesn't matter. The overall point he made (and been proven now) was that It was an extremely easy and seamless transition. As it should be since they are copying code from cryengine...to cryengine. Anyone that thinks otherwise is just looking for a reason to hate on the game.

"We stopped taking new builds from Crytek towards the end of 2015. So did Amazon. Because of this the core of the engine that we use is the same one that Amazon use and the switch was painless (I think it took us a day or so of two engineers on the engine team). What runs Star Citizen and Squadron 42 is our heavily modified version of the engine which we have dubbed StarEngine, just now our foundation is Lumberyard not CryEngine. None of our work was thrown away or modified. We switched the like for like parts of the engine from CryEngine to Lumberyard. All of our bespoke work from 64 bit precision, new rendering and planet tech, Item / Entity 2.0, Local Physics Grids, Zone System, Object Containers and so on were unaffected and remain unique to Star Citizen."
 
I'm not an expert here on how game engines work, so this might not be in the least bit correct.

However from what I'm gathering up it sounds like basically:

You have a railroad, now you have the main track/line (In this case Cryengine) and then you have junctions that go off into other non-main tracks (IE the customized areas they build, like for the AI/physics, etc).

Now since Lumberyard is the same engine, they didn't have to "rebuild" the entire track, they simply had to hook up their junctions to it, the same as cryengine, and then take a little time with making sure it works and everything is how it should be along with Amazon's few things like their backend and what not.

Of course I might be wrong, but that's what it sounds like to me.

If that's the case and I'm understanding it right I don't see why people think it's not possible to have done this in just a few days.

Well it's a sort of analogy. But in the code it's often not obvious what part of the code is the junctions and what part is the sdk. And in many cases you don't just add your own code on top of the sdk. That'd be inefficient. You go right into the sdk and modify what you need right then and there to serve your purposes.
If you then decide to change the SDK you have to infuse those changes into the new SDK you're replacing it with.
 
Its splitting hairs anyway. If it took 1 minute, 1 day, 1 week or 1 guy or 5 guys..etc..etc It doesn't matter.
Yes it is. But it feels all the more important to me that he's bullshitting when he is sipping expensive champagne while doing so paid for partly by my donations to the project.

And I'm 99.9999999999999999% sure that he's lying about the 1 day switch. You not wanting to believe it somehow imagining it was proven that it was really done in 1 day by two guys. Show me where is it proven? Because he said it was done like that? You know that's no proof that's faith.

But even if I believe that his miracle workers did the switch in a day, no matter how I look at it 2.6 is not a game, it's so far off a finished product as can be. It's 25% done tops. But it can be as low as 5% I can't tell exactly. It's a little hard to believe that they can do an engine switch in a day with two employees, but can't make half a game in 4 years.
 
Conversation over. I'd have better results trying to explain calculus to my dog.
I can explain something to you, but I can't understand it for you.
 
Conversation over. I'd have better results trying to explain calculus to my dog.
I can explain something to you, but I can't understand it for you.
Yeah it's like a blind person trying to explain colors to someone with vision.

I base my judgement on programming experience. You base your faith on what CR said.

Don't try to high road me on this one.
 
Conversation over. I'd have better results trying to explain calculus to my dog.
I can explain something to you, but I can't understand it for you.
He's now managed to pummel that straw carcass down to a one day job. Tomorrow he'll be claiming Chris Roberts said they did it in an hour.
 
You do realize that the 2.6 and things out there is NOT the full extent of the game that the developers have currently right now right?

We have already seen parts of SQ42's story elements and scenes, we saw the big gameplay from gamescon, etc. which isn't 2.6

The 2.6 release is NOT everything that they've worked on or are working on currently,.
 
You do realize that the 2.6 and things out there is NOT the full extent of the game that the developers have currently right now right?

We have already seen parts of SQ42's story elements and scenes, we saw the big gameplay from gamescon, etc. which isn't 2.6

The 2.6 release is NOT everything that they've worked on or are working on currently,.
You really don't want to ask M76 what he "realizes." Go read his "review" in the main gaming thread...poor guy didn't even know he was dead! I'm trying not to laugh at his expense but really go read what he wrote.
 
He's now managed to pummel that straw carcass down to a one day job. Tomorrow he'll be claiming Chris Roberts said they did it in an hour.
He said two guys one day.

You dont have ANY information or proof to dispute what he said. All you are doing is hoping and guessing.
Actually you have no proof to verify what he said. You know the mantra. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
And all my experience says that it is not possible to switch an engine in a day with two guys on a large project. Sure it can be done on a garage project with 1000 lines of code. I've done it before. That's why I have a rough idea on how long it takes.
 
What he actually said, and you've already pointed out elsewhere so you're well aware of the fact, is that CIG has been working with Amazon for over a year and that the final strokes were done in a day "or so" with a couple engineers. Is this one of those 'how many engineers does it take to change a logo' joke? I'll have to run that one by my buddies.
 
You really don't want to ask M76 what he "realizes." Go read his "review" in the main gaming thread...poor guy didn't even know he was dead! I'm trying not to laugh at his expense but really go read what he wrote.
WTF are you going on about? Shooting random insults will certainly make your case stronger congratulations.
 
I'm talking about your description of how you spawned into Arena Commander and couldn't move and all the colors were whitewashed. That's because you were dead. It's not an insult, I said I wasn't trying to laugh at your expense...but come on even you have to admit that's pretty damn funny.

Tried arena commander I couldn't even use throttle after a few seconds, it stopped responding, I was floating around like a blob unable to go anywhere or do anything meaningful. The graphics looked all white washed like they used a color palette with no reds.
<< this is what you experience when you die.>>
 
You do realize that the 2.6 and things out there is NOT the full extent of the game that the developers have currently right now right?
No, it's what they can safely show for it.
We have already seen parts of SQ42's story elements and scenes, we saw the big gameplay from gamescon, etc. which isn't 2.6
Congratulations you've seen the trailers, I've seen the trailers too. Now what? Actually looking back at that gameplay footage now it doesn't show much more than what 2.6 has.
The 2.6 release is NOT everything that they've worked on or are working on currently,.
So you created a strawman where in your head I think they haven't even began to work on SQ42 yet? Nice.
 
I'm talking about your description of how you spawned into Arena Commander and couldn't move and all the colors were whitewashed. That's because you were dead. It's not an insult, I said I wasn't trying to laugh at your expense...but come on even you have to admit that's pretty damn funny.

<< this is what you experience when you die.>>
I don't think we're talking about the same thing. I could move, I could flip the ship around, the only thing I couldn't do was apply throttle after I started moving out from the hangar. I was floating around not standing still I could move all the thrusters to change orientation of the ship, I could change views, change power configurations, but I couldn't for the sake of anything holy apply any throttle.

But if I was dead, then the game starts out with you being dead already? Or what. Because it was all whitewashed right from the start.
 
Well Arena Commander is a dogfighting module (and for the record, I didn't appreciate you implying in the other thread that I told you the game was well along in its development. What you wrote here was that all you wanted was some story and dogfighting and I told you there wasn't any story yet but you could dogfight now.) so while you're not supposed to spawn dead, you spawn into a dogfighting arena where others sometimes kill you immediately.

You also might have died from a bug. I die all the time for random reasons: moving around my ship, falling out of my ship, turning my head wrong, it's a buggy mess so I take it with a grain of salt. When the bugs annoy enough to stop playing I do something else. I know a lot of people in my org play all day every day. Some of them just like to sit in their hangars and explore their ships. A whole huge bunch of them are military and have spent I don't even want to know how much on flight sim hardware to play the game. So for them it's already providing some kind of pleasure.
 
What they have released isn't everything ?

They have more CGI youtube videos too you know.

lmao

Come on guys.

They have burned through 140 million dollars.

Give your heads a shake. They are not creating an engine they are using another companies.... it doesn't cost 140 million to hire enough art guys to create space ships for someone elses engine.

CCP hired enough guys to do that and have employed them in some cases for over 10 years. Considering they have investors and servers to keep running ect they have made less then 140 million to spend on development in 10 years. Actual development costs + content for the first 5 years or so of Eve where right around 50 million in Spend.

Bethesda spent in around 50 million to create skyrim... from zero to done, even use their own engine.

CD Projekt RED spent 46 million developing the Witcher 3... again zero to done, again using their own engine.

Trion worlds spent 50 million developing Rift... again zero to done, their own engine their own net code.

Blizzard developed world of warcraft for 50 million... "" "".

Star Citizen is currently one of the most expensive games ever produced... and lets be honest they haven't produced anything but a tech demo to this point. What they have created would be impressive for a small studio with a few million dollars in crowd funding. For a company that has had 4 years and 140 million dollars, headed by a legendary Accomplished and Renowned developer its clearly a scam at this point. I'm sorry but any developer who knew what they where doing could have hired good programmers and created their own engine and completed a pretty fantastic game for HALF what Roberts has already burned through. That isn't a BS number its fact as referenced above... ground breaking engine and expansive open world games cost around 50 million when done right... not 150 million. David Braben had a budget of 8 million for ED... when it was clear that wasn't going to work he crowd sourced another 3 million or so and finished that game with a total cost well under 20 million.
 
They have burned through 140 million dollars.

You bring many facts to your posts. This is supposition. Unless of course you have seen CIG's books you have no idea how much cash is on hand. It detracts from credibility.
 
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You bring many facts to your posts. This is supposition. Unless of course you have seen CIG's books you have no idea how much cash is on hand. It detracts from credibility.
That is true but, if you look at it as they have raised 3X more than it normally takes for a AAA title and had 4 years to work on it in a fully funded environment.
 
That is true but, if you look at it as they have raised 3X more than it normally takes for a AAA title and had 4 years to work on it in a fully funded environment.

While they money they've raised and likely spent is crazy at this point it's probably around 2X the cost of average AAA titles these days. Especially if you include marketing budgets into the mix.
 
You bring many facts to your posts. This is supposition. Unless of course you have seen CIG's books you have no idea how much cash is on hand. It detracts from credibility.

You are right of course. raised 140 and spent 140 are not the same thing. Of course Roberts is still asking for more money so... I can only assume he plans to continue spending. I guess it is possible they have only spent 100 million or something and are planning on using what is left to market the game. :) If that is the case then they have already spent 2x more then it took other developers to create some of the most expansive video games ever made using their own very expensive in house engines. So you would think Roberts would have something worth shipping already.
 
Well Arena Commander is a dogfighting module (and for the record, I didn't appreciate you implying in the other thread that I told you the game was well along in its development. What you wrote here was that all you wanted was some story and dogfighting and I told you there wasn't any story yet but you could dogfight now.) so while you're not supposed to spawn dead, you spawn into a dogfighting arena where others sometimes kill you immediately.
I started arena commander in private mode and in a race. So absolutely no chance of someone killing me. You only told me that I have to try it because it's already enjoyable. You didn't say specifically that it's well along in its development, true. But it being enjoyable kind of implied that to me.

Sorry but I can't do anything with this but wait for them to do something. But I suspect we'll be having the same argument 5 years from now still. I mean the believers who think everything CR says is fact, and those who only believe what can be proven or at least sounds reasonable. I wonder how long will it take for people to change their tune.
 
You bring many facts to your posts. This is supposition. Unless of course you have seen CIG's books you have no idea how much cash is on hand. It detracts from credibility.

A) they haven't ceased ship sales or said "okay we have enough to finish the game now, and B) they aren't giving a cent of that $140 million back because they "have enough money", so it's as good as spent - kiss it goodbye, baby.

As long as Chris loves $40,000 espresso machines and his wife is flying around first class suckin' on champagne, the game needs to remain in-development and taking in money at all costs. Finishing the game would be too big a disruption to the business, too great a shock to the system.
 
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I love this whole notion being floated that a custom game engine from some other developer somehow means licensing a game engine should somehow be way cheaper. Reports are that Amazon bought the rights for cryengine for around 70 million, but what do those rubes know amirite?

In any case, comparing those games to cryengine is silly on its face regardless of star citizen. And please stop using ED as an example. For one thing, it was in development for years and there's no telling how much was spent on it over those years since it was absorbed by the studio.
 
A) they haven't ceased ship sales or said "okay we have enough to finish the game now, and B) they aren't giving a cent of that $140 million back because they "have enough money", so it's as good as spent - kiss it goodbye, baby.

As long as Chris loves $40,000 espresso machines and his wife is flying around first class suckin' on champagne, the game needs to remain in-development and taking in money at all costs. Finishing the game would be too big a disruption to the business, too great a shock to the system.

until it comes out with a $20 a month subscription.. er.. I mean insurance
 
I love this whole notion being floated that a custom game engine from some other developer somehow means licensing a game engine should somehow be way cheaper. Reports are that Amazon bought the rights for cryengine for around 70 million, but what do those rubes know amirite?

In any case, comparing those games to cryengine is silly on its face regardless of star citizen. And please stop using ED as an example. For one thing, it was in development for years and there's no telling how much was spent on it over those years since it was absorbed by the studio.

Yes licencing a game engine is CHEAPER then creating your own. Why would anyone licence an engine for a AAA game if it wasn't cheaper. Think about that a moment. For a cheapo game by a cheapo game house that can't afford to hire good programmers yes its a cheap way to get a top notch engine with out having to hire the very expensive programmers and keep them around to take care of things for years. For large AAA studios the only reason to licence is also to save money >.< (it saves a ton of time on development and cuts down on required staff by at least half) No need to develop,test or support core frameworks with expensive in house engineers. You pay your fee all that is done for you... and all you have to do is create art. That is the idea.... and why when ever a company starts talking about heavily customizing a well known engine, it should be a massive red flag that they are completely full of shit.

Roberts was using Cryengine for one reason and one reason only... it sells JPGS of star ships to idiots that don't know how game development works. They know Cryengine = good graphics and stuff. Its also why he announces support for every marketing buzz word tech he can. Now we will hear for a year how great the amazon net code is... and how Roberts and his team is modifying it for the absolute best space pew pew experience possible. :rolleyes:

As for ED yes you can of course compare them because it isn't a secret how much money was spent creating it. It was in development for a couple years on a 8 million dollar budget. It became clear that they where going to go over budget and some things shuffled and IPs where purchased... at which point the creator turned to crowd sourcing and raised another 4 million (aprox with exchange they raised just under 2 million pounds)... they raised another few million from pre sales. At that point they where able to get some more investment money that was spent on marketing. All in they spent less then 20 million making ED. That isn't pulled out of the air that is the facts. They crated an entire game with a custom engine for less money then it took Roberts to create a CryEngine space demo. I can't confirm this but since their launch I would suspect that they still haven't spent 1/4 as much on development of what roberts has. And they have been adding new content expanding system and ported the entire thing to Xbox and PS4. (the difference when you compare the level of competence is pretty striking)
 
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You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. There are all kinds of licensing agreements that create a variety of cost options. Now you've wandered into silly land since it's obvious that Amazon would have simply rolled their own for less than 70m if they could have... but an engine like cryengine costs many times what they paid and comparing it to this or that random and incomparable engine is nonsense.

But hey, what does Bezos know compared to the combined knowledge pool of your and M76, probably not much and those fools also hitched their wagon to this conspiracy train. That sounds believable....

And before you continue spouting off about ED go look up the definition of a skunk works project because that's what ED was before you or anyone else ever heard about it and that was long before they asked for external funding. You continue to cite the public timeline and either don't know or don't care that it was an incubated project for an unspecified time with unspecified funds... and then there's that pesky engine issue rearing its ugly head. (and no, it wasn't a bespoke engine. Seriously, you need to get some facts straight if you want to grind this axe to the nub)

and FYI, based on what my buddies who do develop games (i don't), the decision to license an engine usually has more to do with know how rather than cost. Not whether it's more or less money, but rather timelines, capabilities of what's out there, and then whether they can get a team with the skills to code a bespoke engine and that's something game devs don't usually do.
 
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You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. There are all kinds of licensing agreements that create a variety of cost options. Now you've wandered into silly land since it's obvious that Amazon would have simply rolled their own for less than 70m if they could have... but an engine like cryengine costs many times what they paid and comparing it to this or that random and incomparable engine is nonsense.

I don't think you understand why amazon made the choice they did.

You are forgetting two very very important aspects of the business. One of those is time. Amazon saved lots of TIME buying an engine instead of paying a small army to create one. There is a point where throwing more Engineers at a problem doesn't speed things up. No matter what it takes a few years to create a AAA caliber engine. Two you are forgetting one of the most important parts of the story... the company that owns the engine in question was hard up for $.

Using your logic no company would ever buy out another...

Purchasing another company or their IP... is about saving time to market, and in some cases its about profiting from others misfortune.

Amazon didn't create their own engine because the route they went saved them years to market... and they got a steal of a deal due to another companies misfortune.
 
and FYI, based on what my buddies who do develop games (i don't), the decision to license an engine usually has more to do with know how rather than cost. Not whether it's more or less money, but rather timelines, capabilities of what's out there, and then whether they can get a team with the skills to code a bespoke engine and that's something game devs don't usually do.

Your friends are right... they are also making the same point I am.

I am sure you have heard "time is money". Choosing another companies engine is about finding the best way to get to a goal in the CHEAPEST way possible. Do you licence and pay a % to another company take 3 years with say expenses of 1 million a month... or do you go full custom and spend 4 years with expenses of 1.2 million a month (due to more expensive programming know how) paying no royalties to anyone. Most AAA companies choose custom... Roberts didn't yet he claims to have that same level of expensive staff customizing all his Cry code.

It is about know how. There are only a handful of programmers that are capable of creating AAA level engines. They don't come cheap.... very few companies have such people on staff. Because they cost in many cases up to 2x as much as other programmers. However if your planning to make a game that goes way beyond what a licenced engine is capable of you need people of the same caliber as the creators to create all that custom code. If your going to modify something like the Cry engine beyond recognition you need that same level of know how... you can't modify, take apart and put back together an engine if you aren't capable of understanding it deeply. Your friends will tell you there is a huge difference between understanding a SDK and being capable of building modules programmed based on said SDK... and rewriting the SDKs rules completely. (which is what Roberts is claiming his guys have been doing) It reeks of BS to anyone that has ever done any programming. Then to go further after claiming you have been doing all this customization for 3-4 years and claim you ported all your code over to another companies respin of the same base code you started with all those years ago in a few days... lol yes it really is one of the most silly things Roberts has claimed.
 
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