After a wild week at GDC 2013, it's nice to be back doing what I do best...writing code!
A new build of Leadwerks 3 is now available. We've added light vector maps so that lightmapped surfaces can display normal mapping effects. Lightmapped materials with normal maps should use the texture "Common/lightvectormap.tex" in slot 4. (If you create a new lightmapped material, this will be done automatically.)
This technique works by calculating the average light vector that influences eac
Since you guys are my boss, in a way, I wanted to report to you what I spent the last few days doing.
Early on in the development of Leadwerks 3, I had to figure out a way to handle the management of assets that are shared across many objects. Materials, textures, shaders, and a few other things can be used by many different objects, but they consume resources, so its important for the engine to clean them up when they are no longer needed.
I decided to implement an "Asset" and "AssetRe
Leadwerks 3 is a new game engine purpose-built for mobile. By building the entire platform on pure native code, Leadwerks aims to bring a new level of performance and flexibility to 3D mobile games.
After two years of development, the team is now beginning a closed beta test. Select members of the community will provide feedback and testing so that final bug fixes and refinements can be made.
You can sign up to our mailing list for up to date information as we finish up development o
The Leadwerks team will be hosting our next Google Hangout on Sunday, September 16, at 17:00 GMT (that's 10:00 AM in California). Aggror will talk about his experience leading the Leadwerks Community Project, and we'll provide a sneak peak at the new Leadwerks 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!
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!
The Leadwerks team will be hosting our first Google Hangout on Sunday, July 1, 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!
Leadwerks Software is now offering internships through the Center for Entreprenuership at Sacramento State University. Internships are available for programming, 3D art, web development, and marketing.
Programming Internship
Assist the development team with tools and core engine design.
Work with game development team to create a sample Leadwerks3D game.
Gain experience working in a professional software development environment.
C++ and Lua experience are a plus but not required.
Leadwerks has been accepted into the Sacramento State University Center for Entrepreneurship. The mission of the Center for Entrepreneurship in the College of Business Administration (CBA) is to develop and nurture innovative business ideas and to capitalize potential entrepreneurial opportunities, both from CSUS and local entrepreneurship communities.
The Center will provide entrepreneurs with the skills and resources needed to launch a venture and to identify and cultivate solutions to en
Leadwerks Engine 2.5 has been updated with a few small fixes and added commands.
-Added GetModelLODEntity(), CountModelLODEntities().
-Added vegetation index in pick structure.
-Improved vegetation terrain coloring.
-Fixed terrain color map.
You can download the update by running the Leadwerks Engine sync tool.
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
Leadwerks has released a new evaluation kit for version 2.4 of their game development tool. The demo lets developers program games in C, C++, and Lua script for a trial period of 30 days.
Leadwerks.com now features a video gallery where our members can post movies of their games made with Leadwerks Engine. Instead of slowly uploading a huge video file, you can simply enter a YouTube video ID to submit movies. Check out some of the cool videos like Legos falling over to a techno soundtrack, fly through floating islands in Aerora, and of course there's Dave Lee's excellent Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
We've also created a random rotating banner image in our website header. Lead
Leadwerks Engine 2.43 is now available. This version features improved raycast performance, a new DRAWEACH entity callback, and a few small bug fixes. Registered developers can download the update by running the Leadwerks Updater.
The Leadwerks Engine 3 Forums are open to all Leadwerks developers so you can post your ideas and get information on the development of Leadwerks Engine 3. Additionally, forums are now divided up by product, with forums for Leadwerks Engine 2, Leadwerks Engine 3, and 3D World Studio. We think this organization will provide more room to grow in the future.
Leadwerks.com is now hosted on our own dedicated server located in Chicago, Illinois. It was found that this location gave the best overall results for our worldwide user base. We tested the new server in advance for a couple of days, and transferred the database right before switching the DNS, so no data should have been lost. Please submit a bug report if you experience any problems.
The Leadwerks server has a 500 gb secondary hard drive where site backups are automatically saved to, in
First, so you don't have to read through all my rambling, the website database is set back to November 2010, and there is no way around it.
I was working with the forum software on Sunday, 4-17, and I was just very pleased with how things were working. I saw there was an update for the bug tracker application, and the change list just mentioned some bug fixes, so I felt okay installing it. The new version removed custom issue fields, which we use extensively for listing hardware, drivers,
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 Rocks and Stones Model Pack by Pure3D is now available here:
http://leadwerks.com/werkspace/index.php?/page/products/_/assets/rocks-and-stones-pack-r1
You can also still get the Industrial Cargo Model Pack for the low introductory price of just $9.95 until Monday, September 6, before the price goes up:
http://leadwerks.com/werkspace/index.php?/page/products/_/assets/industrial-cargo-model-pack-r8
The Industrial Cargo Model Pack is now available for only $9.95. This package includes three cargo containers and two wooden spools. All assets are certified game-ready for Leadwerks Engine. This is just some of Dave Lee's work, and there's lots more coming!
Leadwerks Engine 2.32 is now available.
2.32
-"Render" Lua object function renamed to "Draw".
-Added Draw entity callback.
-Entity draw callback and Lua "Draw" object function will only be called at most once per frame. Perform animation in this function.
-Entity LOD distance parameters changed for better performance.
-LoadAnimation now works without exact hierarchy matches, so LOD meshes can all use the full-res animation.
-Implemented entity octree with hierarchical culling and pick
Pure3D has launched their realtime division for producing high-quality real-time assets ready to use in Leadwerks Engine. The first vegetation model set Groundplants 1.x is now available. It features 20 digital vegetation and foliage models. More file formats and engines will follow. This pack is available at a special introductory price of only €19. You can browse the contents of the pack in this pdf file.
Leadwerks Engine SDK 2.31 is now available. A new SDK installer in the download area allows you to download different versions of the SDK. You must have an activated Leadwerks account to download the new SDK installer.
New features include lighting optimizations for point and spot lights. You can read about this feature in detail here. Another new feature is character controller crouching behavior. Note that the origin of character controllers has been moved to the very bottom of the co
Leadwerks Engine 2.3 has been released. This major update includes a new editor, Lua script integration, forest rendering, roads, and more.
Lua Script Integration: Write object scripts and write your game in any programming language, or you can write your entire game in Lua.
New Editor: Leadwerks Editor is our new tool for creating enormous terrains, placing objects, and creating worlds. You can even edit scripts and see the results instantly.
Forest Rendering: An advanced new r
Finally, the evaluation kit for Leadwerks Engine 2.3 is released. Get it here. The evaluation kit allows saving and script editing for a period of 30 days. C/C++ programming is not possible with the evaluation kit. An NVidia GEForce 7000 or ATI Radeon 2000 series graphics card is required. An NVidia GEForce 8800 or ATI Radeon 3870 graphics card is recommended.