Amazon Lumberyard: Introduction, Installation, First Hours_part 2 (end)

Editor Layout

Before using Lumberyard Editor, you will need to learn its layout configuration and how to navigate within the Perspective Viewport.

The Lumberyard Editor interface is divided into the following areas (each numerically represented in the following image):

1. Main menu: Access to all game engine functions and settings.
2. Editor toolbar: Most commonly used tools (Select, Move, Rotate, Scale, Lock on, Ruler, Snapping, among others). It is composed of three bars: EditMode, Object, Editors.
3. Viewport header: Search bar and several display options for  (display resolution, ratio, helpers, among others).
4. Perspective Viewport: A preview of your 3D environment. It is where the action occurs.
5. Viewport controls: Several controls for selected objects, mouse location, navigation speed, camera collision detection, AI/Physics, and others.
6. Console: Display of input and output between the user and the Editor.
7. Rollup Bar: Access to objects and tools for building and managing content in the Perspective Viewport.

The Rollup Bar is more complex than it initially appears, since it handles all properties, definitions and characteristics of all objects within the Perspective Viewport. Therefore, it's important to enumerate its tabs:

1. Objects: Contains options for Artificial Intelligence, Entities (Actor, Archetype, Component, Geometry, Particles), Audio, Brushes, and Prefabs, among others.
2. Terrain: Contains options to apply, modify, and remove terrains, vegetation, holes, Fog, Wind, Clouds, Skyboxes, and others.
3. Modeling: Contains options for geometry handling, such as selection of geometry types and display types (wire-frame, flat shading, full geometry).
4. Display: Contains options regarding the rendering settings, i.e., clouds, roads, Fog, Terrain, and Sky box, among others.
5. Layers: As the name suggests, it contains options to organize your assets by layers.

Open the First Level

It is now time to open your first level and play with it. Inside the Welcome to Lumberyard Editor window, click on Open level.

Then, expand the GettingStartedFiles, choose the getting-started-completed-level, and click Open.

Note that the list of files and samples presented here belongs to the project that is set by default.

Soon a small 3D village is presented:

3D Level Navigation

Navigating inside the Perspective Viewport is easy, since it uses traditional First Person Shooter (FPS) controls.

                                 Action                          Keyboard Key

                                 Strafe forward                         W

                                 Strafe backward                       D

                                 Strafe left                                cell

                                 Strafe right                              cell

For the record, note that you can modify these keys if you want (more on that later).

Since 3D scenes are composed of objects or entities, you can interact with them using the mouse.

                    Action                                                 Mouse Button

                Select objects                                            Left mouse button

                Turn left/right, look up/down  Right mouse button

                Pan left, right, up, or down Middle mouse button

                Zoom in, out                       Mouse wheel or (Right mouse + middle mouse button)

Before continuing to read the tutorial, you can invest some time playing with these controls within the village demo (or load any other demo from the available ones). To load another demo you only need to select File > Open and choose another sample.

Assets Installation

Lumberyard currently offers three additional ready-to-use art assets and code that you can use as examples:

1. Woodland: A collection of wilderness (forest, vegetation, and other natural features) assets.
2. Beach City: A dark and stormy night containing several assets (cars, houses, vegetation).
3. Legacy Game Sample: A ready-to-go FPS game, including complex animated characters, vehicles and game IA. This sample uses the woodland sample assets.

The first step is to download them all.

Step 1: Woodland

The Woodland asset is the easiest to install since it comes packaged as a Gem. Unzip the Woodland zip file to the dev\Gems folder inside your default Lumberyard installation.

To verify that everything is fine, open the Project configurator > Enable packages; at the bottom you should now see the Woodland Asset Collection.

To add the Woodland asset to the SamplesProject (your current default project), you only need to check the box and wait for the Asset Processor to load all resources.

Step 2: Beach City

To install the Beach City, you must follow the following steps:

1. Unpack the Beach City zip file into your Lumberyard \dev directory.
2. Navigate to dev\_WAF_ (inside the installation folder).
3. Edit the file *projects.json and add the following to the end of the file before the last closing brace:

1. {
2. ...
3.     "BeachCity": {
4.     "product\_name": "BeachCity",
5.     "executable\_name": "BeachCityLauncher",
6.     "code\_folder": "Code/BeachCity",
7.     "project\_directory" : "BeachCity",
8.     "modules" : ["BeachCity"]
9.     }
10. }

Now open the Project configurator, click Configure project, select BeachCity and click Set as default.

Open the Editor and open the level (Open level > BeachCity_NightTime). If everything is working, you should be able to navigate within the Beach City environment. Note that by default this asset doesn’t have a Camera Framework, so you can only (for now) navigate in the Editor mode.

Step 3: Legacy Game Sample

The Legacy Game Sample installation is similar to Beach City.

Unpack the Legacy Game Sample zip file into your engine directory.

Navigate to dev\_WAF_ (inside the installation folder).

Edit the file projects.json and add the following to the end of the file before the last closing brace:

1. "GameSDK": {
2.     "product\_name": "GameSDK",
3.     "executable\_name": "GameSDKLauncher",
4.     "code\_folder": "Code/GameSDK",
5.     "project\_directory" : "GameSDk",
6.     "modules" : ["GameSDK"]
7. } 

The complete projects.json is now:

1. {
2.     "SamplesProject": {
3.         "product_name"      : "Samples Project",
4.         "executable_name"   : "SamplesProjectLauncher",
5.         "code_folder"       : "Code/SamplesProject",
6.         "project_directory" : "SamplesProject",
7.         "modules"           : ["SamplesProject"],
8.  
9.         "android_settings": {
10.             "package_name"  : "com.cryengine.sdk",
11.             "orientation"   : "landscape"
12.         }
13.     },
14.     "MultiplayerProject" : {
15.         "product_name"      : "Multiplayer Project",
16.         "executable_name"   : "MultiplayerProjectLauncher",
17.         "code_folder"       : "Code/MultiplayerProject",
18.         "project_directory" : "MultiplayerProject",
19.         "modules"           : ["MultiplayerProject"],
20.  
21.         "android_settings": {
22.             "package_name"  : "com.cryengine.sdk",
23.             "orientation"   : "landscape"
24.         }
25.     },
26.     "BeachCity": {
27.             "product_name": "BeachCity",
28.             "executable_name": "BeachCityLauncher",
29.             "code_folder": "Code/BeachCity",
30.             "project_directory" : "BeachCity",
31.             "modules" : ["BeachCity"]
32.         },
33.     "GameSDK": {
34.         "product_name": "GameSDK",
35.         "executable_name": "GameSDKLauncher",
36.         "code_folder": "Code/GameSDK",
37.         "project_directory" : "GameSDk",
38.         "modules" : ["GameSDK"]
39.     }
40. }

Before you test the Legacy Game Sample you need to perform an additional step. Open a Command Prompt in your Lumberyard dev folder and run the following command:

1. lmbr_waf configure

If you get any error, it should be solved by the following steps:

1. Open the Launcher.
2. Select Compile the engine and asset pipeline.
3. Install the required software.

Run the lmbr_waf configure command again.

To test these assets you just need to open the Project configurator, click Configure project, select GameSDK and click Set as default. Wait until the Asset Processor loads all the assets. Now you can play a complete FPS within Lumberyard.

To enter game mode, you must select from the Main menu the option Game > Switch to Game.

Conclusion

This concludes this introductory tutorial to Lumberyard. You learned where and how to download, install, and configure it. Then you learned the basic notations of the interface and navigation. Finally, you found out how to import, configure and use the available external assets.

Written by Orlando Pereira

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