It will have its first stable v0.1.0 MVP release in a matter of days. It’s designed to be easy to contribute to at scale so it’s a very suitable starter project for anyone looking to tinker with Amethyst in its current state.
As mentioned, the engine itself is still considered pre-release, but games like Evoli and more to come will demonstrate where Amethyst already shines, e.g. games that can take especially good advantage of the engine’s very close marriage to the specs ECS.
Yup, this is true. There are a few of us on the team who work/have worked on some very well known engines (and their ecosystems) meant for AAA game development. =)
The more challenging thing at the moment is developing or improving fundamental libraries/tools in Rust, which is a fairly young language. Being able to leverage existing C/C++ libraries helps, but in general isn't what we prefer to do.
>I assume that Forrest is posting here because he sees potential in your technology, and wants to encourage you to reach that potential.
Any and all feedback is welcome, as are contributions.
>However, as a game developer, using an engine without some substantial dogfooding (or orders of magnitude more use by third parties, ala Unity) is simply a bad idea. I have done it multiple times and each time it's burnt me.
Definitely don't bet your company/livelihood on an experimental tech. I will say that as a general philosophy, we are far more concerned about correctness and stability over rushing to get a product out to satisfy investors. Not having to try to convince people to buy an unfinished product to satisfy investors is one of the advantages of being a non-profit.
We'll get to the point of being production quality, will just take some time.
We do suffer from a bit of a dearth of artists/modelers. We recently had one join who is doing a lot of nice work to the editor UI.
There's a few of us who have quite a bit of experience in the gaming industry and with game design, both from working at studios and game engine companies. We could definitely use more, if anyone is interested. =)
Generally the mentioned tools, particularly an editor of some sort in the style of the Unity or Unreal editors, are an important component of a data driven game engine. I didn't see anything skimming over the site about an editor. Is that part of the plan?
It is in very early stages. We are developing it as a WASM app that runs in a system webview, or can be accessed via a regular web browser for a more cloud-y experience. I'll take this opportunity to promote the awesome Yew project (https://github.com/DenisKolodin/yew) which is what we use for the frontend.
Evoli in particular is, as the poster above suggested, a game we are developing to force ourselves to use our own engine and drive development priorities.
That being said, we are pre-1.0 and making a large, commercial project with Amethyst right now would be quite challenging. Our goal is to improve this significantly by the end of the year.
> And why are companies like DigitalOcean and Sentry sponsoring a game engine?
We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Many companies like DO and Sentry have programs for open-source and/or non-profit companies where they provide free or discounted services in exchange for some exposure.
I'm not sure what you mean, I'm afraid. They actively support us by discussing our needs and figuring out how they can best support us. They've each specifically asked to have their names and logos associated with our project.
Perhaps if you can reframe your question I can better answer?
We have several so-called showcase games lined up. The only official one at the moment is Evoli: https://github.com/amethyst/evoli
It will have its first stable v0.1.0 MVP release in a matter of days. It’s designed to be easy to contribute to at scale so it’s a very suitable starter project for anyone looking to tinker with Amethyst in its current state.
As mentioned, the engine itself is still considered pre-release, but games like Evoli and more to come will demonstrate where Amethyst already shines, e.g. games that can take especially good advantage of the engine’s very close marriage to the specs ECS.