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Learn about game development technology

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Odds and Ends

I implemented direct WAV file loading, and will add OGG as well. The MP3 file format has licensing issues, and we are not going to support it. However, if you use a third-party MP3 converter, the editor will detect whatever converters you add and use them (see more below). We're using OpenAL for sound, but have a more in-depth implementation than in the past. Sound source management is important because you only get so many sound channels on most cards, and this is handled automatically, bas
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Collision Decisions

As I was implementing the collision commands for Leadwerks3D, I noticed a few things that illustrate the differences between the design philosophies of Leadwerks Engine and Leadwerks3D.   You'll easily recognize the new collision commands, although they have been named in a more verbose but logical manner: void ClearCollisionResponses(); void SetCollisionResponse(const int& collisiontype0, const int& collisiontype1, const int& response); int GetCollisionResponse(const int& c
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Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! The free Justine add-on for Amnesia: The Dark Descent is available. Just don't get too scared! B)   Leave a comment telling us how you are celebrating Halloween this year.  
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Alles Gute

The Leadwerks.com server started acting up earlier today, and I had no idea why. Database errors were occurring, and I had not made any changes to the site. I called our server site in Chicago. First they restored the full site from a backup from 2 A.M. yesterday morning. The matter was still not solved, though. A couple hours later, they determined that an automatic CPanel upgrade had caused PHP extensions to be loaded multiple times. This was fixed, and now we are back to normal. If you
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Where Angels Fear to Thread

Leadwerks Engine 2 is single-threaded. The engine performs one task at a time. The engine updates physics, then performs some other tasks, then renders the scene, waiting until each task if finished before moving onto the next one:   I have experience programming threads in BlitzMax, and it works pretty much the same way in C++. Leadwerks3D is taking full advantage of threads and multicore CPUs, splitting off any expensive tasks that can be run on separate threads.   Multithread program
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Field Trip

I was at a shopping center this afternoon wasting time, and came across a hobby shop. I can't quite articulate what it is about stuff like this that I like, but this is what I want game development with Leadwerks3D to be like. This is why I set up the Leadwerks Asset Store and make the effort to make nice thumbnails with transparency to show off items in 3D. I want more game development to be a process of producing reusable components, and then at the design level, of picking and choosing whi
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Apple and Leadwerks

I was thinking this morning how Apple has influenced my life and the company Leadwerks. You might ask why I am talking about this, since we are only now coming out with our first product for any Apple operating system. Well, before Windows existed, back in the 1980's, this was my first computer:     The first "game" I ever made was in Macintosh Paint. I drew a road from a top-down view, with barriers randomly placed on either side. I drew a race car, zoomed in the image, and used the se
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2

Three's a Crowd

Crowd navigation is built into Leadwerks3D. You just set a destination, and your characters will automatically travel wherever you tell them to go. I think having navigation built into the engine will give us better results than a third party add-on would. We can automatically recalculate sections of the map that change, AI script functions can be called when certain events occur, and the code to control characters is extremely simple.  
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Navigation Win

I fixed our AI navigation problems and got pathfinding to work using navmeshes. Now you can easily make a horde of zombies chase after the player without setting up any waypoints. Which is the whole point of this, of course.   The problem had to do with a polygon filter, and I am still not sure what is going on, so I disabled it for now.  
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Artificial Stupidity

I'm testing the Leadwerks3D AI navigation and getting some interesting results. I'm not sure why it's acting this way, but we'll get it figured out soon. It seems like the navigation gets "stuck" on corners, fails to enter some tiles, and likes to take the scenic route to some destinations. B)  
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"Finding" a "Path"...Get it? Wait a minute...

So after about three weeks of pain and frustration, I have successfully calculated my first path using Recast navigation. This has been a new experience for me. I've implemented half a dozen low-level C++ libraries, and never had any serious trouble, but Recast Navigation is something else.   The technology underlying Recast is impressive. First they take triangle geometry, convert it to voxels, then calculate navigation, and convert it back into rough polygons. You can read about the proc
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Multitouch Madness

I've implemented multitouch input on iOS, and gave Aria the information he needs to do the same for Android devices. Multitouch is an interesting input method. Each "touch" has a beginning, some movement, and an end. To handle multiple touches, they need to be persistent; you need to keep track of which touch is which. This is a little weird if you're coming from a mouse and keyboard paradigm.   On iOS, you have a pointer to a UITouch object, and on Android it's a jObject object (I think)
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Android Progress

I got touch input and text rendering working on Android. Happily, I have not encountered any issues with different behavior on any tested OpenGLES devices, including iOS. The framerate on my HTC Evo jumps around quite a bit, which appears to be an issue with the Java garbage collector. Framerate on iOS is a solid 60 FPS, so we should be able to get this sorted out.   Here's a video: http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/videos/_/leadwerks-engine-3/android-progress-r100   I also discover
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Leadwerks3D on Android

After some initial difficulty, Leadwerks3D is now running on Android, with the exact same code that runs on iPhone, iPad, Windows, and Mac. A big thanks for Aria for all his help and expertise with the Android platform. This means Leadwerks3D is now running on all platforms we intend to support at launch, and it can be easily extended to support new ones.     To celebrate, here's another cartoon I drew:
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iHurt

Here's the code: Print("context = "+GetObjectAddress(context)); Print("Graphicsdriver: "+GetObjectAddress(graphicsdriver)); Print("GetGraphicsdriver: "+GetObjectAddress(GetGraphicsDriver())); Print("ActiveGraphicsDriver: "+GetObjectAddress(ActiveGraphicsDriver)); Print("context->graphicsdriver: "+GetObjectAddress(context->graphicsdriver)); Print("context = "+GetObjectAddress(context)); Here's the output, running on an iPhone 4: context = 0x06921400 Graphicsdriver: 0x0694e800 GetG
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Coders Gonna Code, Haters Gonna Hate

Lately I've been talking a lot about making non-programmers happy, so here's something for the coders. B)   For Leadwerks3D documentation, I considered three possibilities: -IPB-based docs -Wiki -Offline CHM files   Each has their own strengths and weaknesses, as always seems to be the case.   IPB A bit slower, harder to organize, harder to edit, looks really good and consistent with the site, search requires quite a few clicks to get where you want to go, missing table of contents is
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Pathfinding

It doesn't happen to me much anymore but when I get stuck on a difficult problem, I get very restless and short-tempered. I guess that's the point where most programmers give up on a project. Since I can't physically wrestle code to the ground and give it a good beating Billy Batts style, the fight or flight response probably is not conducive to sitting in front of a piece of glass and figuring out code. On the other hand, I have a tendency to get difficult things done, no matter how hard the
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Connecting Actors

To make an entity in Leadwerrks3D behave, you can drag a script from the asset browser to the actors list in the entity properties editor. Each entity can have multiple scripts attached to it. Each script can have different variables exposed, with control for the GUI they are displayed in. For example, you can specify upper and lower limits of a spinner or a list of choices for a drop down box. Each script attached to an entity, along with its set of properties, is called an "actor" because.
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Entities and scripts

Below you can see the properties editor. When you select a script attached to an entity, the properties for that script appear on the right. Here we have a simple "Pulse" script that changes the color of the entity along a sine curve. This can be used for making lights that pulsate slowly, or continually turn on and off.   Here's what the script looks like. The "--in" tag at the end of the Pause and Resume functions indicate that these functions can be activated in the flowgraph editor.
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5

Drag, drop, and roll

The various parts of the new editor are coming together. Today I got the properties list box drag and drop functionality working. I actually had to go back and rewrite some of the list control rendering code because I haven't used it in a while, but it didn't take long.   I'm trying to attack known unknowns first, so we're focusing on the flow graph, AI, and game logic, and everything required to build up to support that. I've already written a CSG editor and an engine with great graphics,
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4

Almost Android

Leadwerks 3 is compiling for Android. There's presently a problem with the file system that is preventing any 3D rendering, but we'll get that worked out shortly. We're targeting Android 2.2.   In order to compile C++ for Android on Windows, we had to install the following: -Java SDK -Eclipse IDE -Android SDK -Android NDK -CygWin -GDB   We also learned that OpenGL ES 2.0 does not run in the Android simulator. For the time being, we have to run the engine on an actual Android device.
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August 13, 2011

Once again, I like to attack the things I haven't done in the past first. I know how to make a CSG editor. What I haven't done in the past is a visual editor for gameplay and logic.   In the shot below, you can see the properties editor, with the "Scripts" tab selected. I moved the name and angle editor outside the tabbed panel, with the idea that these are so important they belong in the main window, but the real reason was to break up the boredom of a full-window tabbed panel. Under the
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3

Making a scene

The scene browser lets you see every entity and brush in the scene, and also lets you arrange entities in a hierarchy. You can add a light to the scene, position it onto a lamppost, then use the scene browser to parent the light to the lamppost model and save the whole thing as a prefab.   There's no "mesh" class in the new engine, and entities inherit a lot of the properties that models in LE2 had, like scripts and physics. Models are just MDL files, and generally just contain model and bon
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And now the fun begins

We have our design parameters. We know the editor should let the user control every aspect of the engine in a visual manner, without having to use any other tools or do any editing of text files. We have 3D World Studio to serve as inspiration for the design and feel of the program.   The sky's the limit. You, the users, have told me that you want to invest in a system that does more for you and makes your life easier. I'm happy to provide the basis for your next projects. Thank you for l
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More interface stuff

I implemented resizable viewports this morning. This is so much more fun than fiddling around with compiler settings.   You can grab the bars between viewports, or the very center space, and drag it around to resize the four viewports. I usually prefer a smaller perspective view, and like to devote most of my space to the 2D views when doing serious editing:   You can also drag the views around to make a single big viewport, or just have two viewports visible:   In 3D World Studio, w
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