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Improving the Publish Game Dialog

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
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Carve, hollow, and cleaning up the scene tree

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.  
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Leadwerks Game Player enters beta

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
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Dev Blog

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
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Growing Leadwerks

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
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3.4 Recap and Beyond

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
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Leadwerks 3.4 Launch Prep

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
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Hardware Upgrades and Minimization

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
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Beta update available

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
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Leadwerks 3.4 beta now available

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
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Bug fix update

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/
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Beta update available

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
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Beta update available

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
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(A word that means a combination of stubborness and responsiveness)

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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Beta update available

A new update is available. This will cause the problem when the editor would crash on auto-loading a map with water on Linux at startup, and also fixes the problem where Lens flares weren't being hidden when you got close to them.   Right now I am working towards a stable build that can go onto the default branch and am not adding new features before then. If you have opted into the beta branch, thank you for the feedback you're providing.
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Water Update [beta]

A new update is available. I believe this will fix any problems you may have previously experienced with the water rendering. If this is not the case, please let me know, preferably with a link to download your project.   Although Intel's new drivers work well, I have noticed that enabling, then disabling, then enabling water in the editor causes a crash. The crash occurs in the driver DLL and is not an OpenGL error. This will be reported to Intel. (It just occurs when a shader reads a de
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Water beta now available

An update is now available on the beta branch which adds water. This can be controlled in the scene properties or in code with the following commands: World::SetWaterMode(bool mode) World::SetWaterHeight(float height) World::SetWaterColor(float r, float g, float b, float a) bool World::GetWaterMode() float World::GetWaterHeight() Vec4 World::GetWaterColor()   You must update your project to get new EXEs and shaders. All model shaders have been modified to handle the slice plane used whe
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Development

I've been working on water. It's a challenge to get it to work properly with the post-effects stack and lighting, something I never did quite right in Leadwerks 2. However, the results are turning into the best implementation of water I've ever made. Water blends naturally with post-effects stack. Water reflection/refraction equation and behavior is improved over Leadwerks 2. Water ripples don't have an obvious direction of flow and look very realistic, without looking "wrong" when pla
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Selective file inclusion (continued)

Based on a little observation, I've made the following changes to the publish routine on the beta branch: The FPS Player script has been updated so that the footstep sound files are explicitly named, so they don't get missed in the publish step. You will need to update your project to get the new script (or just copy FPSPlayer.lua to your project). There is now a checkbox to "Only include used files". If this is checked, then the new packing routine will be used, otherwise the old beha
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Selective File Inclusion (Beta)

A new update on the beta branch on Steam adds selective file inclusion on publishing a project. This works by scanning map files and building a list of required files, and only packing up files that are actually used in your game. Here's how it works: All map files are always included, and scanned for required files. All script files are always included, and scanned for required files. Included prefab files are scanned for required files. Included model files are scanned for require
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Full Steam Ahead

The standalone version of Leadwerks is no longer being updated. If you have a license for Leadwerks 3.1+ standalone version, you can exchange your registration key for the Steam version. Please contact support and include your Leadwerks registration key.   The Steam edition of Leadwerks can be run online or in offline mode, and can make games that are published to Steam, or published as standalones without requiring Steam. Leadwerks on Steam also includes access to the Leadwerks Workshop vi
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Beta update available

A new update is available on the beta branch.   The FPS player script has been fixed to allow throwing of objects when he is not holding a weapon.   The script flowgraph system's behavior with prefabs has been changed. Script connections between prefabs will no longer be locked in the prefab file, and can be made in the map itself. The map version has been incremented, and maps saved with the new format will not load until you update or recompile your game. The changes in this system may
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Collapsing Models

I frequently come across models that have an excessive hierarchy of unnecessary limbs. This causes rendering to be slower and memory usage to be higher than it needs to be. If great numbers of the model are used in the scene, these problems can be significant. The windmill model below contains a pretty complex hierarchy.     A new tool is being added in the model editor to collapse all limbs of a model into a single object. Select the Tools > Collapse menu item and your model will be
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Merry Christmas, and another beta update

Merry Christmas! Here's an update on the beta branch. The previous update was mistakingly supplied with the Debug DLL for Windows. This has been fixed. (Good thing we have a branch for testing!) The internals of the Workshop system have been completely rewritten to support Workshop items in any folder. The editor will also no longer download Workshop items at startup, but instead wait until you install them in your project. Workshop items will not be automatically updated, but will dis
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Beta Update available

Two new commands are available: System::CountGraphicsModes System::GetGraphicsMode   This allows you to view available graphics resolutions and choose one.   Fullscreen windows now work on Linux.   The "Go To" menu item in the scene browser will also recenter the flowgraph editor, if it is open and the selected object has been added to the map flowgraph.
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