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Dead Anyway Dev Diary #2

Recently we made the choice to use Trello to map out our current workflow. We are using a loose implementation of Agile with a backlog of the tasks we need to complete. We have 2 week sprints in which we aim for a certain amount of task points in each sprint to complete.   We have found this system works quite well given the fact that we work on this part time for now and this also gives us good flexibility as to what jobs we feel we need to do in the sprint.   We invite you to browse the De

tjheldna

tjheldna

Beta Update Available

A new update is available on the beta branch. A few months ago, Valve introduced the SteamUGC API to Steamworks SDK. This replaces the original RemoteStorage API, and allows unlimited file sizes and a simpler command set. I also suspect the internals in the Steam client and servers are more reliable, because it is a second-iteration design. The beta build can download Workshop items published with the old legacy API, or with the new one. However, Workshop items published with the beta build

Josh

Josh

3.5 release candidate available

An update is available which is a release candidate for version 3.5. Version 3.5 adds carve and hollow CSG operations, an improved project template system, and customizable filters for scene objects. In this update I reverted the group selection behavior to the same way it works in 3.4, and decided to hold off on adding an extra grouping feature. I expect a lot of new users soon, so stability is my most important goal.   The summer games tournament is coming soon! We had a really great tur

Josh

Josh

Using Visual Studio Code with Leadwerks

Microsoft has released a cross-platform code editor called "Visual Studio Code". It's just a lightweight text editor like Notepad++. You can get it here for Windows, Linux, and Mac.   Although the editor is focused on web development it actually does support Lua syntax highlighting. If you are curious to try to use it with Leadwerks, add this text to your launch.json file: { "version": "0.1.0", // List of configurations. Add new configurations or edit existing ones. // ONLY "n

Josh

Josh

Game Launcher taking shape

Aesthetics are important in a consumer-facing product like this. Your games should have the best possible presentation to the end user. With that in mind, I've revised the Game Launcher interface to be more content-focused. The same interface will be available on our site, and launching a game works exactly the same either way.   The program log has been hidden away since it is a "developer" thing most users don't need to mess with. It can be brought up by pressing F10.  

Josh

Josh

My Introduction Entry (Part 1: History)

Hi,   I've been reading and posting here and there on the forums for quite some time now, and being that my current project is taking shape, I think it's time that I introduce myself, and in the next post, I'll share some goals of my project.   Quick Bio:   As a Kid, I've had an interest in game development with my hundreds of hours I put into RPGMaker 2000/XP. At that time, I was mostly inspired by The Legend of Zelda series and other top down games that could be made in the program.  

reepblue

reepblue

Goals, motivators and progression

Felt like writing another blog... So here we go!     Goals, motivators and progression are crucial in order to keep your player playing for a decent amount of time. Goals are usually represented with objectives or progression, engaging the player into the game and let them have a reason to keep playing.   Like I talked about in the previous blog post, progression matters a lot when it comes to engagement. It gives the player a sense of achievement which keeps the player motivated to

f13rce

f13rce

Which way? Thata way, no thata away! Waypoints.

As a side project I have been working on a Top Down Game Template so you can make games similiar to Shadowgrounds, Diablo etc.     I have been working with waypoint navigation as the video shows. In the video example I have put two crawlers in to the scene and gave them the same script. I give them a different waypoint controller target. This waypoint controller then takes care of its selected target. The waypoint controller has 4 pivots as targets placed around the map for the targe

josk

josk

What's in a quest?

"To give you an idea of the character interaction, this special feature will highlight a few parts of a minor subquest. [...] All of you who’ve played a role-playing game are familiar with the standard retrieve item-receive reward type of quest. There’s nothing wrong with those, and as a matter of fact, they are very useful for introducing a player into a universe. Unfortunately, typically those quests are implemented as “Hi how are you – if you get me this sword, I’ll give you 500 coins”, an

Slastraf

Slastraf

What's inside the screen?

Only rare 3D map and character moving (for now) Maybe I have started this blog too soon, but I want to share my ideas . (also I am a bit bored ) If you want to build something similar like this in your game, please do that .   Whats inside the Screen (items with "+" are currently not in the game):   The screen itself: The resolution can be changed in the options menu, There is a very smooth vintage and contrast shader to make it look better. Appearently it has a very good look now. htt

Slastraf

Slastraf

Coding improvements.

Inspired by the other blogs I thought I would write another one myself.   I have been working on Lockdown, a scifi old school dungeon crawl. As usual real life gets in the way but I have made some good progress lately. I hope to have a demo out soon.     As I have been adding to the game I have been improving my code skills so have gone back and tidied up some bits of code. I have also realised I could do with starting from scratch. I dont use the FPS template for movement and I know my c

josk

josk

Steady Progress

Not much to say in this blog post, but I've had a very eventful past 2 days with coding and level design.   First I created a comprehensive test level that allows me to test almost every aspect of what a person would have in an fps. There are is a rifle range, areas to test line of sight / AI evasion, falling deaths and a super short goal oriented map section.   I have also started creating my own FPS controller. This controller is being designed so the controller can relinquish it's control

Einlander

Einlander

Game Player Preview

Here is a preview of what the Leadwerks Game Player Workshop looks like. A rotating banner shows the top games, like a mini-Steam within Steam. The difference is this distribution channel has no restrictions on when you can publish your game, and you can deploy games to all supported systems, including SteamOS, without having to actually compile on those systems.   I envision a time in the near future when everyone with a small fun playable game can pick up tens of thousands of new users pla

Josh

Josh

Week in preview-02/04/15

Let me start start off my apologizing for this being a few days late. Personal issues and stuff got in the way. Anyways, you're wandering what's been going on for this past week right? Let me start off with the BIG stuff. I hope you're not arachnophobic.   So this was a little thing I had in mind, you may not know this but, I'm arachnophobic. I know, hard to believe considering this thing is in the game, it does tie in to the story but it doesn't have a clear name yet(open for suggestions!)  

lxFirebal69xl

lxFirebal69xl

Expansion

Jorn Theunissen has been hired on a part-time basis to help design a new set of documentation for Leadwerks. We're taking a top-down approach whereby he designs an outline that encompasses everything you need to know, assuming the reader starts with zero knowledge. The goal is to explain everything in one set of information, down to the level of describing what a mipmap actually is.   The organization of the material will be a linear list of lessons, with no nesting or sub-sections. This ma

Josh

Josh

Developing games

Haven't written a blog before, but things have always come into my mind about certain subjects.. Figured I should finally start writing a blog.   This blog is mainly about my personal experience and advice on making games in general. Even though I've made some games like Ravage Online (RO) and the potential Grievous Grounds (GG); the games aren't really done and I'll be elaborating how this has happened.   Scope       The scope of both of these games are pretty big. For Grievous Ground

f13rce

f13rce

Week in preview-23/03/15

Now, I don't want to make this too long, but bear with me as this is a great way to keep up to date with the game and will serve as a backbone for when I want to re-use things in future projects.   So let's start with probably the biggest piece of news, last week an unique picture was uploaded and it showed "The Eater" in all his former glory. Honestly, I think he looks fantastic and will most likely scare the hell out of the player when he first meets him. The thing with "The Eater" is tha

lxFirebal69xl

lxFirebal69xl

Further refinement of physics shapes

I added more options in the model editor for single convex hulls, polymesh, and no collision. Also changed the physics render mode to wireframe so it's easier to see the physics and visual geometry together:     This makes it easier than ever to enable collision on a model, and it works better with the navmesh system:     A new "shrink wrap" method has been added to generate low-poly convex hulls.   Exact convex hull:   Shrink wrap method:   This really saves a huge amount o

Josh

Josh

AMD Releases Driver 15.3 beta for Leadwerks

AMD has released a new driver which fixes a compatibility problem with Leadwerks. You can download the driver from their site here: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-catalyst-windows-beta.aspx   Resolved Issues: [412702] Screens may blank out when enabling a 3x1 SLS with 3 HDMI monitors [411847] Leadwerks : Project Manager crashes with a "Pure Virtual Function Call" error [413076] Second Life : Rigged mesh objects are not rendered correctly when hardware skinning

Admin

Admin

Cleaning up physics shapes

Before Leadwerks 3 existed, Leadwerks 2 used a little tool called "Phygen" to generate collision shape files for 3D models:     The user would input the parameters and then save that file with the same name as the model it was to be associated with, with the PHY file extension. This was not a very good system, but the idea of storing a physics shape in a PHY file that was automatically loaded along with the model was a good one.   In Leadwerks 3 we implemented prefabs to make it easier t

Josh

Josh

Project Templates

The project templates system is being revised. Project templates are going to be oriented around game types rather than programming languages.   Picture is worth 1000 words:   If you have the standard edition, the common project files will still include the C++ files, so any new project you create will be usable in C++.

Josh

Josh

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

Josh

Josh

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.  

Josh

Josh

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