How much of an overlap was there between Lumberyard and the changes you had already made to the version of CryEngine you were working with?asked by Jon Martindale
TL;DRLittle overlap, because the two engines have diverged and will keep diverging; the studio can't merge Amazon's changes automatically but can pick improvements case by case thanks to Lumberyard's modularity.
Not so much. We're lucky to have the engineering resources and talent to completely customize and rebuild huge amounts of our engine, as any ambitious project would, and we've done that to specifically service our games' needs. Amazon has quite rightly built Lumberyard to service many different games and game developers.
Both engines have advanced well beyond the original CryEngine base, but they have moved in different directions and will continue to do so. While this means we can't benefit automatically from all the changes Amazon makes to Lumberyard by simply merging code, that's really not a problem for us. Amazon has sensibly architected Lumberyard to be as modular as possible, which means we don't have to make any wholesale changes to our technology, yet we can look at improvements Amazon makes on a case by case basis, and take advantage of them if we feel it works with our games.
We were already in a position where we were only 'cherry picking' changes to CryEngine, so not much changed for us there, and Amazon is making Lumberyard in such a way that this can continue indefinitely.