Frictional Games is the developer of puzzle horror games like Penumbra and the new Amnesia: The Dark Descent. We sat down with Frictional Games co-founder Thomas Grip to learn more about their development process.
Josh: I'm a big fan of the Penumbra series. What can we look forward to in Amnesia: The Dark Descent?
Thomas Grip: There is a lot to of new stuff in the game. First of all the game is a more streamlined experience both in terms of general gameplay and interaction. For the gam
The Leadwerks team will be hosting our second Google Hangout on Sunday, July 22, at 17:00 GMT (that's 10:00 AM in California). We'll spend 30 minutes talking about all the cool things happening in the community, and answer your questions about our upcoming new game engine.
Follow us on our Google+ page before Sunday and check back to join the Hangout. We're limited to ten participants, so first come, first serve. See you then!
An update for Leadwerks 3 has been released, bringing new graphical enhancements to mobile games. Building on the efficient art pipeline and user-friendly tools of Leadwerks 3, the engine now supports projected shadows for characters and other dynamic objects. This technique works by casting a shadow onto the surrounding world geometry, to provide real-time shadows that run fast on all platforms.
To enable dynamic shadows on a single object, just select it in the editor and choose the
I'm starting to get terrain integrated into the Leadwerks 3 editor. For the most part, it stays pretty close to the design of the terrain tools in Leadwerks 2, and you should have no trouble figuring it out. I'm implementing the critical features first: This will be added into version 3.0 before the release of 3.1.
As I described in my previous blog, my goal is to take all the lessons learned from Leadwerks 2 and come up with something more refined and powerful.
Leadwerks Game Engine on Steam has been updated with bug fixes and a host of new features that are now out of beta.
Crowdsourcing Post-Processing Effects Although Leadwerks 2 featured an extensive set of post-processing effects, they were all hard-coded into the engine. This limited the ease with which new effects could be added, and caused all Leadwerks screenshots to look similar. In Leadwerks 3 we decided to implement a post-processing stack of shaders. You can attach post-processing ef
C++11 introduces shared pointers, a powerful language feature that provides easy memory management without the overhead of garbage collection. The example below should look familiar to you:
#include "Leadwerks.h"
using namespace Leadwerks;
int main(int argc, const char *argv[])
{
shared_ptr<Leadwerks::Window> window = Leadwerks::Window::Create();
shared_ptr<Context> context = Context::Create(window);
shared_ptr<World> world = World::Create();
shared_ptr<Camera&
Leadwerks Game Engine 5 moves Leadwerks forward into the future with massive performance increases and more advanced features, it also makes game development easier than ever before with three great new programming features.
Shared Pointers
I could write a whole article about the benefits of shared pointers. Shared pointers are basically a simple form of garbage collection that relieves you from the need to manually delete objects, but doesn't suffer from the slow speed of full garbag
I've begun implementing unicode in Leadwerks Game Engine 5. It's not quite as simple as "switch all string variables to another data type".
First, I will give you a simple explanation of what unicode is. I am not an expert so feel free to make any corrections in the comments below.
When computers first started drawing text we used a single byte for each character. One byte can describe 256 different values and the English language only has 26 letters, 10 numbers, and a few other cha
An update is available for the new Turbo Game Engine beta.
Fixed compiling errors with latest Visual Studio version
Fixed compatibility problems with AMD hardware
Process is now DPI-aware
Added high-resolution depth buffer (additional parameter on CreateContext()).
Subscribers can download the new version here.
Ultra Engine 0.9.8 is here with a groundbreaking material painting system, robust tessellation, and a first-person shooter template to provide a head start on your next game. New features and enhancements make it easier than ever to create games and simulations that look great and run fast.
Material Painting
Our new material painting system brings your scenes to life with unique details painted everywhere. You can easily turn plain tiled textures into lifelike environments in a few sec
Leadwerks Software has released version 2.5 of their game development software Leadwerks Engine, featuring enhanced graphics and support for the Microsoft .NET application framework. Josh, CEO of Leadwerks said, “.NET support fits in with our goal of making game development simple and more approachable for programmers. We have an energetic community of coders who have been requesting .NET support for some time, and we’re happy to deliver that in Leadwerks Engine 2.5 along with enhancements to ou
I'm a big fan of constructive solid geometry because it allows people without advanced modeling skills to design a game level that looks great. In fact, I originally got my start in game development using the Quake and Half-Life modding tools, making game maps.
One of the criticisms of CSG has been that it only allowed creation of faceted objects. (Valve's Hammer Editor has a workaround for this that lets you set smooth groups, but you can't see the results until they are run in the game.)
I'm pleased to announce the full stretch goals for the Leadwerks for Linux Kickstarter campaign:
$26,000 - Android + Ouya for All: We will provide all backers who pledged $100 or more with Android support. We’ll also add support for OUYA, the Android-based open game console. This will let you build games for Android and OUYA, without ever leaving the Linux operating system.
$30,000 - Blender integration: We want to integrate Leadwerks with the free 3D modeling package Blender. We’ll star
You may recall a few weeks ago we added consideration of smooth groups in the lightmap calculations. (Explanation for new people: we use a forward renderer with static lighting as a fallback that runs across-the-board, and are working on a deferred OpenGL 4 renderer for the next major update. I've been working with deferred rendering since 2006, so this is relatively easy to add.)
You may recall the case of luxels (lightmap pixels) that fall outside a face were problematic, and I used a bi
Leadwerks 3.0 has been updated with bug fixes and productivity enhancements. To get the update, run the Leadwerks Updater. Use the Project Manager to update your project with the latest files.
Resolved bug reports are listed in the Bug Report Forum. This release fixes a few issues including Android multitouch indexes sometimes not working right, sphere casting that was sometimes wrong, and several other small problems.
Some new enhancements have been made to improve productivity. Cam
Leadwerks has added new features that allow users to take advantage of Steam features.
Steamworks Integration Leadwerks now has native support for the Steamworks SDK. You can make your game ready to publish on Steam by calling Steamworks:Initialize(). This also enables the in-game overlay so you can take screenshots, chat with friends, and access the entire Steam community in-game.
Screenshot Publishing The new screenshot publishing window allows you to upload rendered images directly to
The results of the Leadwerks Winter Games Tournament are in! I think you will agree, this tournament produced some very fun playable games. You can download all of these games and more in the Leadwerks Games Listing. Each author will receive a Leadwerks sticker via mail (Gonan gets a Leadwerks T-Shirt since this is his second entry.)
So without further ado, let's look at the games, in no particular order:
Crime Closer
By nick.ace
Catch the crooks before they get away!
Next
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 2015 Leadwerks Halloween Game Tournament is complete, with results above and beyond any previous game tournament. The quality, content, and fun of the lineup of games this tournament is really spectacular.
Halloween Pumpkin Run
http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/viewitem?fileid=540259470
If one game summed up the spirit of this year's tournament, it's this title. The atmosphere, gameplay, and fun of this title make it an instance classic in the Leadwerks catalog of user-made
A preview build of Leadwerks Game Engine 4 is now available on the default branch on Steam, with a new vegetation management system and other features.
We completely rethought how large-scale scene management should work to bring you a one-of-a-kind vegetation system for handling massive amounts of foliage. Instead of storing each instance in memory, our new system uses a distribution algorithm to dynamically calculate all relevant instances each frame for rendering and physics. This allows
Today we are rolling out three new paid model packs by artist Nova Dimension.
The Urban Interior Pack contains everything you need to populate your decaying urban settings with fixtures, furniture, and survival supplies.
The Morgue Model Pack provides a creepy setting for horror or apocalyptic games. Just imagine how scary this could be with the right lighting and music.
Finally, the Old Furniture Pack provides an extended collection of every type of furniture pr
Leadwerks Game Engine 4.1 is now available on Steam. This release cranks up the already legendary Leadwerks visuals to new levels of awesome.
Environment Probes The new environment probe entities can be used to add global illumination and reflections to any scene.
Volumetric Lighting Each light in Leadwerks can now display an adjustable volumetric effect using a ray-marching technique to give your game dramatic visuals.
Enhanced Post-Processing Effects Leadwerks 4.1 includes
The Winter Games Tournament is complete, with a long list of fun mini-games made by the community. This tournament saw the release of many new and innovative types of games you want to be sure to try. To claim your prize, go to "My Profile" in the drop-down box that opens when you click your name in the upper-right part of this website:
On your profile page, click the button that says "Edit My Profile" and enter your name, shipping address, and shirt size.
Lone Water: Prologue
Lon
Visual Studio gives two options for creating C++ applications. Console applications use printed text to communicate with the user, harkening back to the pre-GUI days of DOS. The other option is a windowed application with a GUI interface, simply called "Win32 Project" in the Visual Studio project creation dialog.
A console application will use the regular old main function you know and love:
int main(int argc,const char *argv[])
This is cross-platform compatible and runs on an
Leadwerks Game Engine 5 is being designed to make use of shared pointers. This eliminates manual reference counting, which has probably been the most difficult part of programming games with Leadwerks. Here are three concepts you must understand before you start using smart pointers in Leadwerks 5,
Don't Create Multiple Shared Pointers from One Object
When a shared pointer goes out of scope, it deletes the object it references. If another smart pointer was created separately that re
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