Development Blog

Thank you!

 

Will there be any intermediate/advanced tutorial series? For example, how to load/save game (or part of it), or how to load generic files (for example, XML files) and how to parse them. Or yet, how to write shaders LE way, make procedurally models from vertex buffers / triangles and similar...

I would probably stay away from all of those for a while and focus on the basics. Some of what you listed sound more like candidates for features, rather than stuff the user should have to learn to implement.

 

With basic tutorials, you can teach more in less code, which is easier to learn.

 

If a user learns the basic tutorials, then that should give them the ability to implement more complicated behavior.

I agree that it is far more important to have rock-solid basis than advanced development on the shakey ground.

 

Anyway, since we are using now Main.lua, the API docs should also take that fact into account and stop using the obsolete App.lua (eg. this API doc). Not that I cannot do a necessary adaptation myself, but it goes with the territory of rock solid foundations And not that I do not understand that it's not a small task, considering the volume of the API.

 

P.S. Shaders make integral part of LE suite and it would be thus important to have some guide on how to implement them in LE. It's the shaders that make one of the cornerstones of professionally looking games (or at least of that "wow" effect), IMHO, and knowing how to use them in LE (I'm not talking about teaching people OpenGL or shaders) would give us much more community generated shaders. This would give an edge to LE.

The examples actually work if they are pasted into main.lua or app.lua...that was one thing I had to figure out to maintain compatibility. Although you are right it would be nicer if all the examples were updated to get rid of that global App table.

Collisions detection and Raycast detection are the essential part of 3D games, without them there is no gameplay, some tutorials on that should help the beginners.

Collisions detection and Raycast detection are the essential part of 3D games, without them there is no gameplay, some tutorials on that should help the beginners.

 

Agree! As far as I've read tutorials, collision detection is explained in the Marble game example. A picking (Raytracing) is absolutely essential to any kind of game, be it FPS, RTS or an adventure. Therefore, a tutorial on picking should be included in the base tutorial set.

 

Just for the record, I was not talking about essentials, but about the polished/professional aspect of the game. And shaders are must in this respect.

 

Anyway, I think that we should be threading the other thread now That of requests...

You can now load any image file as a terrain heightmap.

Awesome.