This month I was working on a lot of NASA projects using Leadwerks. My goal with this is to build up enough business that I can start hiring more people to help. It's nice to make money using my own tools, and it gives me a lot of ideas for the new engine.
This morning I felt like experimenting with the design of plugins in the new editor a bit. I came up with two types of plugins. One will add an new menu item to the model editor that flips the normals of the current model. The ProcessEven
The beta branch on Steam is now updated. Version 4.6 introduces peer-to-peer multiplayer capabilities with a new multiplayer game template. Check out the new features in the documentation:
P2P
Lobby
Voice
The physics library is updated to the latest version of Newton.
The editor has some enhancements as well:
Model editor view range is calculated from model extents, so if you load a model that is huge it won't be invisible.
Model editor displays n
I've made progress with the new vehicle system and it is shaping up nicely. The vehicle wheels consist of a slider joint with a spring (the strut) connected to a pivot, connected to the wheel by a hinge joint (the axle). If the wheel can be steered, an additional pivot is inserted between the strut and axle, with a motorized hinge to control steering. There were two big problems in addition to this that need to be solved in order to make a vehicle that is stable at high speeds.
First, the m
Here's a look at the new vehicle system that is being developed. The API has been simplified so you simply create a vehicle, add as many tires as you want, and start using it. The AddTire() command now accepts a model and the dimensions of the tire are calculated from the bounds of the mesh.
class Vehicle
{
int AddTire(Model* model, bool steering=false, const float spring=500.0f, const float springrelaxation = 0.1f, const float springdamping = 10.0f);
void SetGas(const float accel);
void
I'm wrapping up the new multiplayer capabilities for Leadwerks 4.6, and I am very excited about what this offers developers.
We saw previously how the lobby system is used to create or join games, and how to retrieve Steam IDs for messaging. Once we have joined a game we can start sending messages with the P2P::Send command, which includes a few overloads:
static bool P2P::Send(uint64 steamid, const int messageid, const int channel = 0, const int flags = 0);
static bool P2P::Send(uint64
The next update will include a new networking system with built-in voice chat for multiplayer games.
Voice communication is built into your game and can be enabled simply by turning it on when a specific key is pressed:
void Voice::SetRecording(window->KeyDown(Key::T))
You can selectively filter out users so your voice only gets sent to your own team or to a specific player:
void Voice::SetFilter(const uint64 steamid, const bool state)
When another player sends their voice
The new Lobby system in Leadwerks 4.6 allows you to create a public listing of your multiplayer game for others to join. This uses the Steamworks library. You can tap into the Steamworks lib by piggybacking on the default "SpaceWar" example game, which uses the Steam app ID 480. This is set up by default when you create a new Leadwerks project.
Now you might think of a lobby as a place where people hang out and chat before the game starts. You can treat it like this, but it's best to keep t
A new build is available on the beta branch. This changes the model picking system to use a different raycasting implementation under-the-hood. Sphere picking (using a radius) will also now correctly return the first hit triangle. You will also notice much faster loading times when you load up a detailed model in the editor!
Additional parameters have been added to the Joint::SetSpring command:
void Joint::SetSpring(const float spring, const float relaxation = 1.0f, const float damper =
It's nice to have my big monster computer back, and everything is just the same as I left it. I have a triple-boot machine with Windows 10 and both 32 and 64 bit versions of Ubuntu 16.04. This is easier than trying to set up multi-arch compiling on one install of the OS, though I look forward to the day I no longer have to bother with it.
I'm running out of hard drive space on my Windows 10 500 GB SSD so I ordered a 1 TB SSD, and I plan to transfer the 500 GB SSD into my laptop to replace t
We made it, yes, sorry for this delay, but we had big problems with uploading. Now you can download demo here:
Hope you'll like it ? We have come a really big way of development to finally present this to you. Thanks, and join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/ZT9EU65
I did some work optimizing the new renderer to discrete cards and came up with a new benchmark. This scene is interesting because there is not much in the scene, so the culling does not benefit much xrom multithreading, since there is so little work to do. The screen is filled with a spotlight in the foreground, and in the background a point light is visible in the distance. Both engines are running at 1280x720 resolution. This is really a pure test of deferred vs. forward lighting.
AMD R9
Release of Tech-Demo will be delayed until 17th November. We sincerely apologize for this, but the project still has technical problems that we want to fix.
Hello, our dear subscribers! Important news - we are finally announcing the release date of Between The Realities' demo-version! It will be released in Leadwerks Game Launcher on November 11th!
In the demo version, which is a technical demonstration of our capabilities, there will be only 5 game levels, 5 types of weapons, 2 types of enemies and as well as 1/4 of the main plot.
One of these days will be released a new teaser. Stay tune!
Here is a script for a first-person player. All of this is actually working now. It's very interesting that physics, rendering, culling, and Lua game code are all executing at the same time on different threads. CPU usage in a simple scene and some physics is about 35% on a quad core processor, which is good.
I think the most interesting thing here is that to break the kinematic joint used to control an object the player picks up, you simply set the variable to nil. However, I did run into
I've successfully converter the sliding door script over to the new API. This will all look very familiar, but there are some cool points to note.
The entity mass can be retrieved and set with a property as if it was just a regular variable. Underneath the hood, the engine is making method calls.
I decided to prefix most field names with "slidingdoor_" to prevent other scripts from accidentally interfering. The "enabled" value, however, is meant to be shared.
The Entity is
With Christmas approaching I am now turning my attention to finishing Leadwerks Game Engine 4.6. The major features planned are peer-to-peer networking and a new vehicles system, as well as miscellaneous bug fixes. A beta build will be made available early on Steam for testing.
A big update for the beta of the upcoming Turbo Game Engine is now available, adding support for VR and Lua script!
VR Rendering
Turbo Game Engine now supports VR rendering, with support for true single-pass stereoscopic rendering on Nvidia GPUs. Other hardware will use a double-rendering path that is still faster than Leadwerks. To turn VR on simply call EnableVR(). Controllers are not yet supported, just rendering.
Lua Scripting
Lua script is now supported in Turb
During development of Leadwerks Game Engine, there was some debate on whether we should allow multiple scripts per entity or just associate a single script with an entity. My first iteration of the scripting system actually used multiple scripts, but after using it to develop the Darkness Awaits example I saw a lot of problems with this. Each script used a different classname to store its variables and functions in, so you ended up with code like this:
function Script:HurtEnemy(amount)
if s
Virtual reality rendering is very demanding on hardware for two reasons. First, the refresh rate of most VR headsets is 90 hz instead of the standard 60 hz refresh rate most computer monitors operate at. This means that rendering must complete in about 11 milliseconds instead of 16. Second, we have to render the scene twice with two different views, one for each eye. Without any special optimizations, this roughly means that we have to pack 16 milliseconds worth of rendering code into five milli
I've uploaded a new release last night correcting the player's pickup to be much more reliable. It should be very rare for a case in which the player is in a object and releases it causing the player to fly backward. I could have kept objects solid but that caused another can of worms. I also posted this on my OneDrive due to issues of people not being able to download it from this site.
Yesterday I was working on implementation of the power balls and the launcher. I've written a rough draf
Hi Leadwerkers ⚙️,
today I have a cool announcement to make. In the past two years I was working on the Phodex Framework, which is a set of helpful tools, utilities and systems, created to unleash Leadwerk's true power and potential, to be able to create the games I had in mind. Now, that I have released my first Leadwerks game Bladequest: The First Chapter and the Phodex Framework has proven its worth in practice, I thought it is time to share some parts of the framework, especially those
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