Building maps with modular props
The beta branch on Steam is updated with a new build.
Fixes and Enhancements
The camera movement options have been made more sane. The range of possible values is a little more practical now. A mouse smoothing option has been added that makes the camera motion in the perspective viewport feel a lot more smooth and natural. I also found a bug that caused the camera move speed to change when a map was loaded. It was an annoyance that was almost unnoticeable but it feels much better now.
The editor is also using a different garbage collection mode. I believe this fixes the problems some people were having with memory allocation during some operations.
The Leadwerks Workshop on Steam is almost ready to open. A "Workshop" menu has been added for easier access to this functionality.
Mapping and Modular Props
While preparing content for the Workshop, I dug into my old backups disks looking for models and textures we could use. From Leadwerks 2 we got "The Zone", a huge pack of buildings, structures, and props inspired by the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series:
Going further back to the days of 3D World Studio, I found a set of industrial props that look a lot like something you would find in Counter Strike Source. With the aid of Macklebee, we imported a bunch of items into Leadwerks 3.1. By adding normal maps, many items are quite usable still today. Here are a few samples:
My favorite items are the modular model sets, like these chain link fence segments. They are sized and oriented so they will easily line up in your map perfectly along the power-of-two grid lines:
These pipe pieces can be dragged into the scene and made into interesting configurations with just a few clicks. They are sized precisely so you don't have to worry about lining them up exactly, you just pop them into the scene and they work:
I love this kind of stuff because you can easily drag some pieces into the scene and make something of your own, without a lot of effort. The best is when pieces just line up magically without you really thinking about it. For example, I decided to try building a chain link fence around a large electrical tower. Because the tower was sized precisely, I was able to line up fence pieces that exactly matched the dimensions of the tower base:
Getting a chance to play with all these props again reminded me of why I got into game development in the first place. Building your own map is like having an infinite supply of digital Legos that never run out, plus you can run around inside your creation and fight monsters, race cars, or do anything you want. How is that not the most awesome thing ever? I'll be writing some guidelines on modeling modular props so that it's easy for the map designer to use them like this, and in the future I think more of the items we supply will be designed to be used like this.
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