Leadwerks Game Engine 3.5 is now available on Steam. Along with version 3.5, we're rolling out a new tutorials to teach you everything you need to make games. A step-by-step series of lessons teaches how to use the editor, write Lua scripts, and create gameplay. No preexisting knowledge is required. Read the new material here.
A new project templates system has been added. This provides different game types you can choose from to create a basic playable game in a few seconds. We're lau
The beta branch on Steam has received an update with some important changes.
A new project template called "Tutorial Samples" has been added, which includes the files you need to complete the new tutorials found here.
A new script, Main.lua, has been introduced to take over the main entry point of your program. As explained in detail here, this will have no effect on your existing projects.
The screenshot publish feature is fixed.
Flowgraph arguments no longer require the EnableLegac
The design of the App table in Lua was originally created to work with mobile, which has a more restricted program flow. The application calls App:Start() once to initialize it, and then will continually call App:Loop() until the function returns false. These two functions are found in the file "Scripts\App.lua".
Since we are focused on the PC now, it does not make sense to keep this structure. It also makes it more confusing to teach scripting. A conventional program layout with one mai
A new update is now available on the beta branch. This completes our migration to the newer SteamUGC system for Workshop content. Downloads should be working reliably now, but please let me know if you experience any trouble.
Steam protocol calls are now supported on Linux. Most notably, the Steam interface will open the Workshop now, instead of it opening in a web page.
An extra color option for the perspective viewport has been added, as well as several new color schemes. Select th
Game polishing is one of the most important factors to grab someone's attention. It also makes the gameplay feel smoother and generally makes the game look more done. But how do we do it? Here are 5 ways to add polishing into your game:
Lerping Lerping is a term to make transitions smoother. This is commonly used in animations, where you linearly interpolate one frame into another. Animations and transitions will stop looking 'choppy' and will actually blend into the smooth gameplay.
I'm working to move our Workshop implementation over to the newer SteamUGC API. There were recently some things updated, and that is still being sorted out. I'm also finishing up the game player.
The first incarnation of Leadwerks Game Launcher was pretty utilitarian (and ugly):
I realized this was pretty drab for a product aimed at consumers, so I designed a more outlandish colorful interface that was purely web-based:
This one looks nice, but you can tell it will start to fee
The Steamworks SDK has been updated with some new functionality I need to transition Leadwerks Workshop to the SteamUGC system. This will result in unlimited file sizes, more reliable downloads, and other new features. However, the documentation isn't updated yet, so I am going to wait for that before moving forward, and focus on non-coding things this week. Once the Workshop edits are finished and tested, Leadwerks 3.5 will be released.
At the same time, Jorn and I are working on the new
Recently we made the choice to use Trello to map out our current workflow. We are using a loose implementation of Agile with a backlog of the tasks we need to complete. We have 2 week sprints in which we aim for a certain amount of task points in each sprint to complete.
We have found this system works quite well given the fact that we work on this part time for now and this also gives us good flexibility as to what jobs we feel we need to do in the sprint.
We invite you to browse the De
A new update is available on the beta branch. A few months ago, Valve introduced the SteamUGC API to Steamworks SDK. This replaces the original RemoteStorage API, and allows unlimited file sizes and a simpler command set. I also suspect the internals in the Steam client and servers are more reliable, because it is a second-iteration design. The beta build can download Workshop items published with the old legacy API, or with the new one. However, Workshop items published with the beta build
An update is available which is a release candidate for version 3.5. Version 3.5 adds carve and hollow CSG operations, an improved project template system, and customizable filters for scene objects. In this update I reverted the group selection behavior to the same way it works in 3.4, and decided to hold off on adding an extra grouping feature. I expect a lot of new users soon, so stability is my most important goal.
The summer games tournament is coming soon! We had a really great tur
Microsoft has released a cross-platform code editor called "Visual Studio Code". It's just a lightweight text editor like Notepad++. You can get it here for Windows, Linux, and Mac.
Although the editor is focused on web development it actually does support Lua syntax highlighting. If you are curious to try to use it with Leadwerks, add this text to your launch.json file:
{
"version": "0.1.0",
// List of configurations. Add new configurations or edit existing ones.
// ONLY "n
Aesthetics are important in a consumer-facing product like this. Your games should have the best possible presentation to the end user. With that in mind, I've revised the Game Launcher interface to be more content-focused. The same interface will be available on our site, and launching a game works exactly the same either way.
The program log has been hidden away since it is a "developer" thing most users don't need to mess with. It can be brought up by pressing F10.
Hi,
I've been reading and posting here and there on the forums for quite some time now, and being that my current project is taking shape, I think it's time that I introduce myself, and in the next post, I'll share some goals of my project.
Quick Bio:
As a Kid, I've had an interest in game development with my hundreds of hours I put into RPGMaker 2000/XP. At that time, I was mostly inspired by The Legend of Zelda series and other top down games that could be made in the program.
Felt like writing another blog... So here we go!
Goals, motivators and progression are crucial in order to keep your player playing for a decent amount of time. Goals are usually represented with objectives or progression, engaging the player into the game and let them have a reason to keep playing.
Like I talked about in the previous blog post, progression matters a lot when it comes to engagement. It gives the player a sense of achievement which keeps the player motivated to
As a side project I have been working on a Top Down Game Template so you can make games similiar to Shadowgrounds, Diablo etc.
I have been working with waypoint navigation as the video shows.
In the video example I have put two crawlers in to the scene and gave them the same script.
I give them a different waypoint controller target. This waypoint controller then takes care of its selected target.
The waypoint controller has 4 pivots as targets placed around the map for the targe
"To give you an idea of the character interaction, this special feature will highlight a few parts of a minor subquest.
[...]
All of you who’ve played a role-playing game are familiar with the standard retrieve item-receive reward type of quest.
There’s nothing wrong with those, and as a matter of fact, they are very useful for introducing a player into a universe. Unfortunately, typically those quests are implemented as “Hi how are you – if you get me this sword, I’ll give you 500 coins”, an
Only rare 3D map and character moving (for now)
Maybe I have started this blog too soon, but I want to share my ideas . (also I am a bit bored )
If you want to build something similar like this in your game, please do that .
Whats inside the Screen (items with "+" are currently not in the game):
The screen itself:
The resolution can be changed in the options menu,
There is a very smooth vintage and contrast shader to make it look better.
Appearently it has a very good look now. htt
Inspired by the other blogs I thought I would write another one myself.
I have been working on Lockdown, a scifi old school dungeon crawl. As usual real life gets in the way but I have made some good progress lately. I hope to have a demo out soon.
As I have been adding to the game I have been improving my code skills so have gone back and tidied up some bits of code. I have also realised I could do with starting from scratch. I dont use the FPS template for movement and I know my c
Not much to say in this blog post, but I've had a very eventful past 2 days with coding and level design.
First I created a comprehensive test level that allows me to test almost every aspect of what a person would have in an fps. There are is a rifle range, areas to test line of sight / AI evasion, falling deaths and a super short goal oriented map section.
I have also started creating my own FPS controller. This controller is being designed so the controller can relinquish it's control
Here is a preview of what the Leadwerks Game Player Workshop looks like. A rotating banner shows the top games, like a mini-Steam within Steam. The difference is this distribution channel has no restrictions on when you can publish your game, and you can deploy games to all supported systems, including SteamOS, without having to actually compile on those systems.
I envision a time in the near future when everyone with a small fun playable game can pick up tens of thousands of new users pla
Let me start start off my apologizing for this being a few days late. Personal issues and stuff got in the way. Anyways, you're wandering what's been going on for this past week right? Let me start off with the BIG stuff. I hope you're not arachnophobic.
So this was a little thing I had in mind, you may not know this but, I'm arachnophobic. I know, hard to believe considering this thing is in the game, it does tie in to the story but it doesn't have a clear name yet(open for suggestions!)
Jorn Theunissen has been hired on a part-time basis to help design a new set of documentation for Leadwerks. We're taking a top-down approach whereby he designs an outline that encompasses everything you need to know, assuming the reader starts with zero knowledge. The goal is to explain everything in one set of information, down to the level of describing what a mipmap actually is.
The organization of the material will be a linear list of lessons, with no nesting or sub-sections. This ma
Haven't written a blog before, but things have always come into my mind about certain subjects.. Figured I should finally start writing a blog.
This blog is mainly about my personal experience and advice on making games in general. Even though I've made some games like Ravage Online (RO) and the potential Grievous Grounds (GG); the games aren't really done and I'll be elaborating how this has happened.
Scope
The scope of both of these games are pretty big. For Grievous Ground
.thumb.png.930e14f6185274fc318c83d22a72a188.png)
