The Open 3D Engine is an Apache 2.0 licensed 3D game engine written in [[C++]]. - [Website](https://o3de.org/) - [GitHub](https://github.com/o3de/o3de/) - AlternativeTo - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_3D_Engine) - Formerly known as [Lumberyard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Lumberyard) > QUOTE # Notability I used Lumberyard a little in 2016 and tried it out again in mid-2023. The way it models spaces and landscapes is cool if you're building the type of natural environments that the CryTek games are based on. It is trivial to build flowing water and paint the ground with different types of natural surfaces. With the features now in Unreal Engine, most of the things that made CryEngine stand out are significantly less interesting. >[!WARNING] Not Recommended > Unless you are super interested in game engine development and are willing to shoulder a massive pile of legacy code with no help, I can't recommend using this engine for anything. # Philosophy There's still a big "metaverse" banner on the home page. ## Community A dead world. Despite the word "community" being used all over the home page, there doesn't actually seem to be one. Under "community content" is stuff like podcasts and official blogs. It links a completely empty Mastodon account. I reported 2 bugs on Github, one after months never got a response, and the other got a reply from someone focusing on how old their own tutorial was and when I pointed out that I just reproduced the issue they stopped replying. The complete lack of any search results returned when searching for anything with "O3DE" or "Lumberyard" when trying to troubleshoot indicates to me that despite it being open source, there is no real community around it and there are no resources behind it from the corporations that once stewarded it. ## Scripting Scripting support for [[Lua]] and a visual scripting language called Canvas. Some subsystems also support Python out of the box, with [[Python]] being used by many of the engine's internal tools as well. Confusingly, engine plugins and resource packs are called "Gems" - like in Ruby despite having little else in common. ## Issues Started going through the Pong tutorial in late July 2023. Ran into issues that made no sense and rapidly decreased my desire to continue working with it to zero. - Picker cannot find UI Canvas assets in subfolders - Canvas variables cannot be used from the component view - Create variable in Canvas, initial value "from component" - Return to editor, set variable value in component - Run game, any duty that variable was intended to perform won't work - Exit game, check inspector, variable value is inexplicably empty # OS Support Linux, Windows, many others. # Features # History Began life as CryEngine 4, licensed by Amazon who released it as Lumberyard under a strange license that was free but required the use of AWS for any online functionality. Then in 2021, Amazon handed ownership to the Open 3D Foundation which open sourced it and re-branded it as the Open 3D Engine. # References Official basic tutorial. The same one where I encountered several stupid bugs. ```cardlink url: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCQwFpnHSZQhhsr6iJqyeYqKe6dexnHh9 title: "O3DE Pong Tutorial Series" description: "Share your videos with friends, family, and the world" host: www.youtube.com favicon: https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/83a619e0/img/favicon_32x32.png image: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kK0XnYFKw38/hqdefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEWCKgBEF5IWvKriqkDCQgBFQAAiEIYAQ==&rs=AOn4CLBNvz3MSSzjBwvwdLCWILCHxFbl3g&days_since_epoch=19568 ```