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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Create stunning 3D multiplayer games with integrated cloud-based features
About This Book
- Build a multiplayer 3D game from scratch using the features of Amazon's Lumberyard
- Explore the world of Lumberyard along with Twitch and various key Amazon Web Services to build a game
- This step-by-step practical guide will teach you how to build cross-platform games using Lumberyard
Who This Book Is For
The book caters for those who have an interest or desire to create their own games, either as a hobbyist or to enhance their skills as a professional games developer. The book requires previous knowledge of software development. Experience with C++ will also be beneficial.
What You Will Learn
- Explore Lumberyard's graphical user interface
- Create stunning game worlds
- Use Geppetto editor to create 3D characters
- Create and animate game characters using Lumberyard's toolset
- Create impressive gameplay to add multiplayer functionality to your game
- Debug and play your 3D game
- Add multiplayer functionality to your game using Amazon GameLift
- Integrate with Amazon cloud services to support cloud computing and storage
- Engage your users during gameplay with Twitch
In Detail
Amazon's Lumberyard is a 3D cross-platform game development engine for building high-quality AAA games. It makes the process of creating multi-player games and adding realistic characters, stunning terrains, and special effects much faster and more efficient.
This book will show you how to use Lumberyard to create a multiplayer 3D game with cloud computing, storage, and Twitch integration for user engagement. We will start with an introduction to Lumberyard and provide an overview of its capabilities and integration options. Once the game engine is installed, we'll guide you through the creation of an immersive game world with characters. You'll add animations and audio to bring the game to life. We'll explore external interactions to support live multiplayer game play, data storage, user engagement, and the back end.
By the end of the book, you will be efficient in building cross-platform games using Lumberyard.
Style and approach
This step-by-step tutorial is filled with practical examples that will introduce you to the game engine's interface, as well as setting up your development environment.
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Seitenzahl: 221
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Table of Contents
Learning AWS Lumberyard Game Development
Learning AWS Lumberyard Game Development
Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: October 2016
Production reference: 1211016
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
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Birmingham
B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78646-086-8
www.packtpub.com
Credits
Author
Dr.Edward Lavieri
Copy Editor
Safis Editing
Reviewer
Randy Lutcavich
Project Coordinator
Ritika Manoj
Commissioning Editor
Ashwin Nair
Proofreader
Safis Editing
Acquisition Editor
Anurag Banerjee
Indexer
Tejal Daruwale Soni
Content Development Editor
Sachin Karnani
Graphics
Abhinash Sahu
Technical Editor
Sachit Bedi
Production Coordinator
Melwyn Dsa
About the Author
Dr. Edward Lavieri is a veteran game designer and developer with a strong academic background. He earned a doctorate in computer science from Colorado Technical University and three Master of Science degrees in Management Information Systems (Bowie State University), Education – Instructional Design (Capella University), and Operations Management (University of Arkansas), demonstrating his passion for academic pursuits. He has developed and taught computer-related courses since 2002. Edward retired from the U.S. Navy after 25 years as an Intelligence Specialist and Command Master Chief.
Edward has authored Adaptive Learning for Educational Game Design, Getting Started with Unity 5, LiveCode Mobile Development Hotshot, LiveCode Mobile Development Cookbook, Software Consulting: A Revolutionary Approach, and was the technical editor of the Excel Formulas and Functions for Dummies book. He has also authored numerous computer science and information systems college courses.
To IBB, my ride or die.
About the Reviewer
Randy Lutcavich is a software engineer focused on leveling up his skills in mobile and gaming technology. As the cofounder of WiNF Studios LLC, he creates games for all. You can follow him on Twitter at @WiNF_Randy.
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Preface
As you can guess from the title of the book, this book is designed to introduce game developers to Lumberyard. Lumberyard is a new, open source 3D game engine that provides game developers with the ability to create live multiplayer games with the integration of key Amazon Web Services.
This book teaches the reader how to use Lumberyard to create a multiplayer 3D game with cloud computing and storage and with Twitch integration for its user engagement.
This book will start with an introduction to Lumberyard and an overview of its capabilities and integration options. Once the game engine is installed, the book guides the reader through the creation of an immersive game world with characters. Animations and audio will be added to help bring the game to life. External interactions will be explored to support live multiplayer game play, data storage, user engagement, and backend support.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Welcome to the Lumberyard, will give you an initial look at Lumberyard and why it is unique among other game engines. We install the game engine and explore the user interface.
Chapter 2, Planning Your Game in the Lumberyard, will look into Lumberyard's beta release history and explore how that impacts your development efforts. We will also preview game functionality that we will create in subsequent chapters, look at game design for Lumberyard games, and explore how to plan the development process.
Chapter 3, Constructing an Immersive 3D Game World, will help you create a game world with trees, a river, hills, mountain, light sources, and shadows. In order to test our game, we will create a player-character and a camera.
Chapter 4, Creating 3D Characters, will help you to add 3D characters to a game. We also explore Geppetto and its user interface.
Chapter 5, Animating Your Characters, will examine the process of animating our game characters using Mannequin, Lumberyard's animation tool. This chapter covers Mannequin's user interface and its functionality.
Chapter 6, Creating Gameplay, will help in making your game interactive. In order to do, we need to create gameplay components. That is the focus of this chapter along with an introduction to Flow Graphs and the Flow Graph User Interface.
Chapter 7, Creating Multiplayer Gameplay, will examine the requirements of creating a multiplayer game in Lumberyard. We will also explore Amazon GameLift.
Chapter 8, Bringing Your Game to Life with Audio and Sound Effects, will explore Lumberyard's Audio System. We will look at the complexity of Lumberyard audio and examine the components of the Lumberyard Audio System.
Chapter 9, Employing Cloud Computing and Storage, further explores Amazon Web Servicesand reviews two additional Web Services: Cloud Canvas and Amazon Simple Storage Service.
Chapter 10, Engaging With Users Using Twitch, will take a singular look at Twitch, the Amazon Web Service that allows people to watch live game streaming. You will learn how to implement Twitch functionality for in-game user interactions.
Chapter 11, Providing Your Game to the World, will provide you with an overview of the steps necessary to publish your game once it is completed. Specifically, we will look at game builds, how to test them, debug them, and release them.
Chapter 12, Stretching Your Lumberyard Wings, will explore various possibilities with Lumberyard, beyond the basics. We will explore concepts, such as Virtual Reality (VR), the Waf Build System, Lumberyard's cinematics System, System Streaming, and Memory Handling. We will also explore two additional Amazon Web Services (Simple Query Service and Simple Notification Service).
What you need for this book
This book is intended for use alongside a computer running Lumberyard. The Lumberyard Editor is therefore required to fully realize the benefits of this book. Lumberyard can run on a PC with the following minimum system requirements:
At the time of this book’s release, Lumberyard beta 1.5 was the most current version available. There might be slight differences in user interface components between the illustrations in this book and the actual Lumberyard interface.
Who this book is for
This book caters to current and future game developers who have an interest in creating immersive, high-quality 3D games with live, multiplayer features. The book is written with the assumption that the reader will have some knowledge of a game design and software development. Experience with C++ is beneficial, but not required.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "There are five areas of the Mannequin interface."
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "These files have a *.i_caf file extension."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Downloading the example code
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The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Learning-AWS-Lumberyard-Game-Development. We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!
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Questions
If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at [email protected], and we will do our best to address the problem.
Chapter 1. Welcome to the Lumberyard
The purpose of this chapter is to provide you with a brief overview of Lumberyard, what it is capable of, and what you can do with it. We'll start with a brief discussion of where Lumberyard fits into the game engine landscape. Our initial look at Lumberyard will include system requirements and how it integrates with the cloud for computing and storage. You'll be provided with step-by-step instructions for the download and installation process. Lastly, a tour of the Lumberyard interface will be provided.
In this chapter, you will:
What is Lumberyard?
Lumberyard is a free 3D game engine that has, in addition to typical 3D game engine capabilities, an impressive set of unique qualities. Most impressively, Lumberyard integrates with Amazon Web Services (AWS) for cloud computing and storage. You will learn about AWS in Chapter 9, Employing Cloud Computing and Storage. Lumberyard, also referred to as Amazon Lumberyard, integrates with Twitch to facilitate in-game engagement with fans. We'll cover Twitch in Chapter 10, Engaging With Users Using Twitch.
Another component that makes Lumberyard unique among other game engines is the tremendous support for multiplayer games. As you'll see in Chapter 7, Creating Multiplayer Gameplay, the use of Amazon GameLift empowers developers to instantiate multiplayer game sessions with relative ease.
Lumberyard is presented as a game engine intended for creating cross-platform AAA games. There are two important components of that statement. First, cross-platform refers to, in the case of Lumberyard, the ability to develop games for PC/Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. At the time of this book's publication, additional support for Mac OS, iOS, and Android devices was being worked on. There is no doubt that these additional platforms will be supported soon. The second component of the earlier statement is AAA games. A triple-A (AAA) game is like a top-grossing movie, one that had a tremendous budget, was extensively advertised, and wildly successful. If you can think of a console game (for Xbox One and/or PlayStation 4) that is advertised on national television, it is a sign the title is a AAA game.
Note
Now that this AAA game engine is available for free, it is likely that more than just AAA games will be developed using Lumberyard. This is an exciting time to be a game developer.
More specifically, Amazon hopes that Lumberyard will be used to develop multiplayer online games that use AWS for cloud computing and storage, and that integrate with Twitch for user engagement. The engine is free, but AWS usage is not. Specifics on this issue will be covered Chapter 9, Employing Cloud Computing and Storage. Don't worry, you can create single-player games with Lumberyard as well.
System requirements
Amazon recommends a system with the following specifications for developing games with Lumberyard:
As mentioned above, currently, there is no support for running Lumberyard on a Mac OS or Linux computer.
The game engine is a very large and complex software suite. You should take the system requirements seriously and, if at all possible, exceed the minimum requirements.
Downloading and installing Lumberyard
Note
The Internet is a dynamic medium and some links are subject to change after this book's publication date. If a link does not work, you can search for the new web page using an Internet browser. Some of the images, buttons, and other graphical references might be different from what is presented here.
The following steps will guide you through the download and installation processes for Lumberyard. Before following these steps, be sure your system meets the minimum requirements listed in the previous section:
Tip
If you see Modify Setup when you run the installer, it indicates you have already installed Lumberyard.
Note
If you have a firewall running on your computer, you might be prompted to grant access for Lumberyard to make changes to your computer.
Launching Lumberyard
You can launch Lumberyard in one of three ways. First, you can click the Launch button immediately after installation, as illustrated in the previous section. You can also navigate to the location on your hard drive where you have Lumberyard installed, for example, C:/Amazon/Lumberyard/1.1.0.0/dev.
You can also double-click the Lumberyard Launcher icon on your computer's desktop. As part of the installation process, you will have three icons related to Lumberyard added to your desktop. We will use the Lumberyard Launcher icon now and address the Lumberyard Editor and Project Configurator icons later:
Note
The names and look of the aforementioned icons might be different on your system, depending on what version of Lumberyard you have installed. For example, the Lumberyard Launcher icon was replaced by/renamed to Setup Assistant in v1.2.0.0.
At this point, we want to ensure our installation is complete, including installing any additional software, SDKs, and plugins. The following steps will guide you through the process:
Note
Depending on your version of Lumberyard, you might need to uncheck the Run your game project option.
