Written by Travis Boatman, CEO of Carbonated, Inc.
This article originally ran on Travis Boatman’s Medium blog in November 2024 and has a few minor updates. For more content like this, click here.
Free and Open Source … so says the Linux Foundation
In November 2024, I spent the week at the Linux Foundation event in Napa — and after an adventurous Cybertruck drive in the rain (yeah, I’m one of those), I wanted share some tidbits.
First it’s a bit incumbent on my role as a general board member of the group to advocate for the engine. That said, selfishly we use it at Carbonated, and we’re not only proud of the work the foundation does on the engine, but frankly think it’s important for the games industry to have a royalty & license free open source alternative.
Also, O3DE is ready for prime time, and you can certainly build your game and company on top of it. We’ve been using it for many years, with both internal closed beta’s, as well as fully approved Apple releases. Soon you’ll be able to play MadWorld on O3DE on your mobile devices.
Now, here’s some cool logo’s and company mascots:
HISTORY OF O3DE
Ok, so back in July 2021, the Open 3D Engine (O3DE) Foundation was born under the Linux Foundation after Amazon open-sourced its Lumberyard engine. We’d been working with the folks at Amazon and the tech for some time, but the big switch to O3DE (completely reworked renderer, tools, … pretty much everything is re-written), really convinced us it was the right bet. So we made that switch to O3DE to develop our game MadWorld.
Madworld is a mobile free to play game. Shooter + Progression + huge global Meta, but this post is really about O3DE, sooo…
“NOT ONLY THE HAIR CLUB PRESIDENT … I’M ALSO A CLIENT”
I joined as the general board member of the O3DE Foundation in October of 2021. The idea was Carbonated could help advocate for developers, the mobile platform, and help guide the foundation roadmap (along with the other members of course). Later in March of 2024, Joe Bryant stepped in as the Executive Director from the Amazon side (CiCD, Content, Installation, FTUE, Early adopter support and more). He’s been doing an excellent job leading O3DE. In fact, the most recent 24.09 October release was considered the best yet.
ACTUALLY GOOD NOW (Oct 24.09 Release)
You could take our word for it (and you should), but if you don’t wanna, here’s an external perspective. Games from scratch — who I really like. Although he tends to be pretty direct, honest and quick to judgment — with a wrong-side of the bed style. But that adds to his credibility.
- GAMES FROM SCRATCH REVIEW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC_ALm5X4wU&t=6s
24.09 RELEASE HIGHLIGHTS
- Easier Project Setup: Start with Script Canvas and Lua (no C++ compiler needed)
- Mobile Performance Gains: We’re talking up to 400% better performance on iOS, Android, and those XR gadgets
- Better Export Options: New Project Export UI means no wrestling with command lines to get onto different platforms
- Customizable Physics: PhysX 4 and 5 are now separate Gems. Pick your favorite
- Mobile-Specific Rendering Pipeline: Toggle features on or off to balance performance and visuals on mobile
- Lots more: I’m no copywriter … so go read the release notes yourself
WHY CARBONATED USES O3DE
Couple of reasons. First, we have much love for both Unity and Unreal … as long time game devs (many of us are 20+ year veterans), of game dev… not .. like real veterans. Anyway, for us DIGITAL veterans, we know there’s never been a better time to be a game creator. Tons of incredibly capable free options. Secondly — in the early days at Carbonated we were a Unity studio, so we’ve got a good frame of reference. That said … when we decided to go the venture route, to build not only our dream game (MadWorld), but our dream company (Carbonated). To do that, we wanted tech that we could own, control, build company value against. But also not be at the whim of license fees, royalties, or big company leadership changes. So we took a big bet, and went open source.
The O3DE works for us for a few reasons.
- Open Source & Free: No fees, no licenses. Knowing we’ll free of licensing and leadership changes — helps us sleep well at night
- No Royalties: We get to keep our lunch money. Given we’re mobile we’re already paying a heavy % to platforms, so this matters.
- Modern Atom Renderer: Cross-platform, modular, data-driven, and multi-threaded renderer that supports modern rendering pipelines
- Mobile Performance Boost: Native Vulkan and Metal support is huge.
- Community-Driven: We can chip in or gripe directly — it’s all out in the open.
- Mobile “Gems” & Network Ready: Think plug-and-play features. Add what you need, ditch what you don’t. Enables us to customize and extend the engine’s capabilities to meet unique project requirements
Here’s an image from our artist Ryan working in the editor, and mobile shot from one of our Beta sessions. Plus … something exploding.
GO CHECK IT OUT
Grab it directly from O3de.org, and you can find Joe Byrant at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-bryant-o3df/
We’re happy to help, so ask us anything … or don’t and just use Chat GPT.
Happy 2025, and say hi to the AI overlords for me.
