Lumberyard, Amazon’s version of the venerable CryEngine, is now available in source code form on Github. This does not however mean that the Lumberyard game engine is now open source, it still has a proprietary license available here. The major difference in this change is that source code is now available using Github instead of requiring you to download it using the Lumberyard binary installer. This update does however enable you to migrate to new versions easier, as they will be released as new branches. This change also makes it possible for community members to easily submit engine improvements and fixes.
From the announcement:
Today, we’re excited to announce that Lumberyard source is now available on GitHub. This has been one of the most requested features from the community, and we’re happy to finally make it a reality. You can check it out at www.github.com/aws/Lumberyard.
Because making games is challenging enough. Here are two ways that GitHub makes it easier.
Get Lumberyard using GitHub
Up until now, the only way to get Lumberyard was to install Lumberyard using our standard installer. This would place all of Lumberyard, including the source, on your machine, in a new but separate directory. We heard you loud and clear: it was tedious to incrementally upgrade Lumberyard. That changes with GitHub.
Now you can get the Lumberyard source code directly from our GitHub repository and easily use GitHub to manage your code. Integrating a new version of Lumberyard is now a relatively simple operation. And since each new release of Lumberyard is a separate branch, you can integrate against any version. Plus, you can even create your own GitHub account to use GitHub for source control on your own project and use that as your remote repository, giving you an easy way to collaborate with your team.
If you are new to Lumberyard, we recently did a hands-on video available here and embedded below.