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Framework, Lua, and the programmers who love them

We're finishing up 2009 by resolving some longstanding design issues that haven't been particularly critical, but have weighted on my mind. Framework is not like the main engine. It's far more high-level, and is also the kind of code people want to customize. I don't like locking the user into my way of doing things. However, the interaction between Lua, C++, and Framework commands are a real issue, which we started to see immediately as Lua became available. This was resolved by compiling Frame
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Future Ideas

Here are some of my thoughts on how a future engine might look. I am not devoting any time to this, and it would not come to exist for several years, but it's fun to think about technology and design:   I've been fascinated with the game "Fuel". This game has an enormous playable area that is streamed from the hard drive. You can drive for hours and barely cover a fraction of the map. For some reason the game has been given bad reviews. I played Motorstorm on the PS3, and I think Fuel is a lot
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Merry Christmas!

There's a crazy sale on Steam right now. If you haven't played STALKER yet, you can get it for $10: http://store.steampo...check/app/4500/   In other news...   Framework is being compiled into the engine DLL and being made an official part of the engine API. It will remain a separate piece of code for BlitzMax programmers they can just import. A mechanism will be added to add your own custom post-processing effects, though this will not be available immediately. It will be something like th
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12-22-9

Working to improve the implementation of the code known as framework. It needs to be able to talk to Lua, with all programming languages. I can't really go on documenting the script until this is finalized, so the time to do it is now.
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12-18-2009

This is a good idea to keep in mind, especially with something like software development:   "Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant." -Robert Louis Stevenson
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12-17-2009

Well, the single-state lua update is out and I am ready to start making tutorials again.   Someone in the forum pointed out the game Fuel to me. This is an offroad racing game with a nearly infinite world. The data is streamed off the hard drive, basically like its treating the drive as if it were extended RAM. The game got bad reviews, but I think it's great. I went driving for at least 30 minutes and covered mountains, desert, redwood forests, and ravines. I'm in love with the terrain engin
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12-14-2009

New update Thursday, if everything goes well. Progress will speed back up after that.
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December 8, 2009

Rewrote the scripts that needed to be done with the OO single-state system. Just a few things to wrap up now and I will have it available.
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Why Apple Fails

Their prices are more than 250% the price of a comparable PC. Even their "most expensive" laptop is using a budget GPU! So for less than half the price, you can actually get a laptop with a much better GPU!   $999: http://www.newegg.co...=laptop%209800m   $2499: http://store.apple.c...mco=MTM3NDcyOTc   Just for fun, I checked all the most expensive options. The grand total was $7305.35. Who spends $7000 on a laptop with a budget GPU???   I can't believe how dense their management is.
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December 7, 2009

It's 12:30 in the morning, but I have the model scripts working the way I want. Thanks to "Nilium" for his tips, and to everyone who gave their feedback. I am confident in this revision. I have a lot of scripts that need to be slightly altered, but it's just a matter of adjusting the function structure, not really changing any existing code.   Here's the light_ambient script: require("scripts/class") require("scripts/linkedlist") local class=CreateClass(...) function class:Spawn(model) lo
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Lua work

I've been revising the Lua design a bit. Ideally this should have been done six months ago, but I did not realize how popular it would be. During beta testing there wasn't much interest in it. That's understandable, because no one likes using beta software. As soon as it was released, suddenly there was some very advanced stuff being implemented immediately. This is great, and I can see my thoughts about how it would benefit us were correct. It also made me want to implement a single-state syste
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Week 2

People are starting to use Lua, which is good. Initially there was some confusing, but in each case it turned out to be a small misunderstanding. I spent a few hours editing the wiki to add Lua syntax to the commands. I'm going to start working on Lua demos and more high-level stuff, in addition to fixing any bugs that exist. I'm not too interested in adding new features right now. This engine has plenty of features. Tons. It's time to use them to make something.
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Steam Hardware Survey Results

New Steam hardware survey results are available: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey   As of October 2009, 80.79% machines surveyed can run Leadwerks Engine.
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XBox

Last week I was researching the XBox and PS3 platforms. An XBox version of Leadwerks is technically feasible, and though the cost is considerable, it's not a barrier we can't cross. However, obtaining the development license from Microsoft will be much harder. Basically, they are unlikely to sell a development license until this engine has gained more users and had a couple of commercial games released. So we'll just keep improving and building momentum, with the eventual goal of expanding to th
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The Day After

I'm taking a short break before I swap GPUs to fix that ATI shader error.   There are now 110 Leadwerks Engine 2.3 users. I did not think the number would be nearly that many.   I am most interested now in documentation, tutorials, and examples as well as improving existing features. With C++, it wasn't worth diving too deep into game tutorials, because only 40% of the programmers would find it useful. Furthermore, it is harder to design useful game components that are easy for users to lear
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4

Entering data...

I did not expect this many upgrades over the weekend! I'm entering data as fast as I can.   Already I can see the private sections are a big improvement. It totally changes the feel of the forum. It feels like it's more our own area, instead of just a random bulletin board floating around in cyberspace. If that makes any sense.
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WerkSpace

Well, this is our new community site. I've wanted something like this for a while, and finally found a way to do it. We've got blogs, a gallery, customizable profiles, and yes, a forum. I was unsuccessful in my attempt to migrate the data from PHPBB, so the old forum will be left intact as an archive. I really like this new system. It's not just a forum, it's a social netwerking site!   If you register an account and aren't able to access all the goodies, please be patient while I enter a
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Windows 7

This is my opinion of Windows 7. When I tried Vista, I immediately disliked it, but used it for eight months. At the end of that period I still disliked it for all the same reasons.     Source
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Get your credit card out

...and head over to www.dexsoft-games.com to buy the Northern vegetation pack. I don't care if you don't even need it, just give them money so they will continue making incredible media. This is the artistic savior independent developers have been waiting for.   http://forum.leadwerks.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=5509   Source
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Logic Problem

I am working out the advanced logic and interaction by applying it to different problems. Messaging the way the original Quake engine was set up is pretty straightforward. Half-Life 2's input-output system is interesting, but requires an additional mechanism beyond the existing keyvalues system. Lua allows some really powerful stuff. You could enter a string in the property editor, and the script itself could execute this string! But if it's confusing for me, it's going to be really confusing fo
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OpenGL 3

I finally found a good reason to upgrade the renderer to OpenGL3. This will allows MSAA with deferred lighting. It might possibly also yield some performance gains, but that is speculation. This will occur some time in 2010.   Source
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