Now, I don't want to make this too long, but bear with me as this is a great way to keep up to date with the game and will serve as a backbone for when I want to re-use things in future projects.
So let's start with probably the biggest piece of news, last week an unique picture was uploaded and it showed "The Eater" in all his former glory.
Honestly, I think he looks fantastic and will most likely scare the hell out of the player when he first meets him. The thing with "The Eater" is tha
I added more options in the model editor for single convex hulls, polymesh, and no collision. Also changed the physics render mode to wireframe so it's easier to see the physics and visual geometry together:
This makes it easier than ever to enable collision on a model, and it works better with the navmesh system:
A new "shrink wrap" method has been added to generate low-poly convex hulls.
Exact convex hull:
Shrink wrap method:
This really saves a huge amount o
AMD has released a new driver which fixes a compatibility problem with Leadwerks. You can download the driver from their site here:
http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-catalyst-windows-beta.aspx
Resolved Issues:
[412702] Screens may blank out when enabling a 3x1 SLS with 3 HDMI monitors
[411847] Leadwerks : Project Manager crashes with a "Pure Virtual Function Call" error
[413076] Second Life : Rigged mesh objects are not rendered correctly when hardware skinning
Before Leadwerks 3 existed, Leadwerks 2 used a little tool called "Phygen" to generate collision shape files for 3D models:
The user would input the parameters and then save that file with the same name as the model it was to be associated with, with the PHY file extension. This was not a very good system, but the idea of storing a physics shape in a PHY file that was automatically loaded along with the model was a good one.
In Leadwerks 3 we implemented prefabs to make it easier t
The project templates system is being revised. Project templates are going to be oriented around game types rather than programming languages.
Picture is worth 1000 words:
If you have the standard edition, the common project files will still include the C++ files, so any new project you create will be usable in C++.
Leadwerks 3.4 (now coming up to 3.5) has retained the core design philosophy from it's inception with Leadwerks 3.0 of easy level design and simple Lua scripting, but has changed quite a lot in other ways.
Publishing of games to Steam Workshop wasn't even a thought until Leadwerks came to Steam in January 2014. Consequently, the current publishing interface isn't quite as intuitive as it could be and requires too many clicks.
To make publishing easier, a Publish menu item has been added in
CSG carving now works very nicely. The hardest part was making it work with the undo system, which was a fairly complicated problem. It gets particularly difficult when brushes are in the scene hierarchy as a parent of something or a child of something else. Carving involves the deletion of the original object and creation of new ones, so it is very hard to describe in a step-wise process for the undo system, especially when all manner of objects can be intermixed with the brush hierarchy.
Leadwerks Game Player is now in beta. If you recently posted a game on our site or entered one of the recent game tournaments, you were sent a pre-release Steam key to access the application.
Leadwerks Game Player provides you with a route to self-publish your games to Steam Workshop. Because it is a free application, the entire Steam userbase of 125 million people can access your game. Your Lua game is run in sandboxed mode using an interpreter application we provide, so that Steam
Documentation is being organized into a built-in help browser. Documentation simply falls into two categories, "Tutorials" and "Commands". Tutorials are laid out in a linear sequence of lessons divided into subchapters. "Commands" displays the command reference, which remains pretty much the same as it is now, with the exception of additional function syntax declarations for Lua. Search and index will be added, but right now I want to focus on content.
The sequence of tutorials is meant
19 weeks in and about 5 miles of skype text in which Rick and I have collaborated on this game prototype. Already it’s had is fair share of emotions and emoticons, but has been a privilege and a pleasure none the less.
What’s new to DA
Gavin character now animates in game.
Introduction of AI.
Scene interactions with inventory items.
Various scene and interior models as well as a few weapon models.
A Simple crafting system (combining items to make new items or tool on item)
Since my last blog update I’ve spent the majority of my game dev time working on my map and in particular the buildings. When I say buildings I mostly mean one in particular which is a house that I’ve been working on for a good while now. The house initially started out as 100% csg but after memory issues in the editor and feedback and advice on the forum I decided to re-do parts of the house as models. This meant I had to use blender more than I would have liked but the good thing is I think I
As of this morning, the most recent Steam sale is now complete. The sales figures were excellent and we picked up a lot of new users. Most importantly, we've got a lot of new data on how people behave and what can be done to make them happy.
There's three stages a new Leadwerks user goes through to become a happy productive developer. The first is to actually buy the software. The main ingredients here are the demo, website pages describing the benefits of our approach to game developmen
I've got a couple days sales data from the 3.4 launch and it went well. Our conversion ratio and all that boring businessey stuff is good, and I know more now than I did last week. I think our intro video could use some updating and a little more professional polish, so I am looking for a video production company to create something new.
I was planning to make a trip back to Caifornia soon. I was going to skip the GDC, but I then got invited to the Valve party. I guess they're hiring the
Today, Leadwerks Software announces the release of Leadwerks Game Engine 3.4, introducing many new features that help make Leadwerks Game Engine the easiest way to build royalty-free 3D games. With today’s free update on Steam, developers will have access to an all-new vehicle command set for building interactive cars and trucks with a physically realistic transmission model. Built-in water settings have been added in the editor to provide life-like water with the click of a button. Leadwerks
Leadwerks 3.4 will be launched as soon as AMD releases their new driver, preferably by Monday. The three big features this introduces are:
Vehicles
Water
Built-in Workshop browser
As well as over 100 small fixes and improvements.
The launch will coincide with a week-long sale. The results of the sale will give me an estimate of cash flows for 2015 and let me make decisions about what to invest in the company and continued development.
Following the launch, we'll have a
I've had an urge lately to minimize my PC setup. Maybe it's the experience of an interstate move with five computers, but I find myself valuing small size and practicality more lately over quality.
I purchased a Dell Ultra Sharp UZ2715H monitor with built-in speakers. This allows me to eliminate three cords and an extra power adapter from my external speakers. Interestingly, the two-speaker setup was a downgrade from my old speakers+subwoofer system, because I got tired of kicking that bi
Asset browser search bug fixed:
http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/11966-searching-for-any-string-in-the-asset-browser-that-includes-a-will-crash-to-desktop/
Low-quality fallback for water on Intel graphics implemented. At this point it is hard-coded to the manufacturer, but in the future an adjustable setting will be added.
Water shaders moved into "Shaders/Water" folder. Make sure you update your project to get the shaders.
Post-processing effects in the editor are disable
A beta of Leadwerks 3.4 is now available on the beta branch.
Texture lock rotation on brushes now fixed (really).
Vehicle orientation fixed (it was inverted on the Z axis).
Engine version incremented to 340.
Vehicle and water documentation is written. Here's a simple example on how to build a car:
http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/documentation/_/command-reference/vehicle/vehiclecreate-r861
We have about a week before this is released on the default branch. There wi
While crawling around on the internet I found this video
the relevant part starts at 3:36.
Realtime level updates are something many engines have, but since I'm not using those engines it never was something on the forefront of my mind. After watching the video I wondered how close I could get to implementing something like that in Leadwerks. The solution I came up with is brain-dead simple. I load a level and a camera, and after a time limit reload the level and place the camera where it
A new update is available on the beta branch which fixes two bugs.
Undo not working correctly with copied objects:
http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/11888-undo-after-ctrl-duplicate-is-messed-up/
Water plane movement and culling problem:
http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/11895-water-plane-doesnt-cover-all-terrain/
A new update is available on the beta branch.
Fixed CSG texture / texture mapping bugs:
http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/10401-leadwerks-texturing-bugs/#entry85790
http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/10433-csg-prefabs-cannot-be-retextured-using-drag-and-drop/
Fixed a long-standing script properties bug:
http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/11672-script-editor-incorrect-parameter-fields/
Fixed script editor recent files list:
http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/top
A new update is available on the beta branch. My goal is to get a stable build and move that over to the default branch before adding any new features.
A bad bug in water rendering has been fixed.
Memory usage in the editor is reduced.
Additional checks have been added for potential rendering problems. These are for situations that should not happen, but It is possible these could raise errors when running in debug mode.
Thank you for testing, I will continue to resolve any bug
I like how a sequence of decisions can lead in one overriding direction. It's very fun.
The FPS weapons and zombie packs were released because I felt there needed to be a little more built-in gameplay available to users.
The Steam Community Choice sale resulted in a large number of new users, most of whom are completely new to game development.
The Winter Games tournament resulted in ten new games that were fun and very creative.
This finally gave me the ammo I needed to launch
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