Amazon ships Lumberyard 1.13
Amazon has released Lumberyard 1.13, the latest beta of the game engine and development environment, adding support for Nvidia’s PhysX physics system, and a range of workflow and performance changes.
The new version went on show at GDC 2018 last week.
Primarily a stability and ease-of-use update
Whereas Amazon describes its recent releases of Lumberyard as being focused on adding new toolsets to the game engine, Lumberyard 1.13 will be the first of two updates focused on ease of use.
In particular, Cloud Gems, the platform’s modular system for adding online functionality to a game, can now access one another’s APIs and backend services.
Lumberyard’s sample projects have also been updated to use newer toolsets like the EMotion FX animation.
Experimental support for PhysX rigid body dynamics
However, there is also quite significant new functionality in the release, in the shape of a new gem supporting PhysX, Nvidia’s popular real-time physics middleware.
The PhysX Gem, which is still officially an experimental preview, enables users to set up rigid body physics effects, including support for collision detection and collision meshes.
The release also adds new tools for defining areas of the navmesh that a game’s AI agents can access; and greater control over timbre and accent via SSML mark-up when using Lumberyard’s text-to-speech system.
Availability and system requirements
Lumberyard 1.13 is available now. The editor runs on Windows 7 and above.
The engine is completely free to use for developing offline and local multiplayer games, including source code access; online games must use Amazon Web Services, charged at Amazon’s standard AWS rates.
Read a full list of new features in Lumberyard 1.13 in the online changelog