Development Blog

Thanks for the roadmap josh, and for keeping us informed on what's going on do you have any time estimation for the stage 1 of the roadmap ?

I was going to quote all the sentences accompanied with a +1, but in the end, it's shorter to say:

 

-Good inheritance design

-Thanks for the roadmap

-Great news for the DLL/C#

-Yay for the streaming terrain.

 

Therefore, +>9000

 

I've never seen an infinite streamed world with the density and complexity I want, but Leadwerks seems to do best when we do really aggressive development.

Percfect.

I'm a big fan of stage 3

So it will be released when all three stages are done?

The beta will go on sale at a discounted rate when I feel the time is right.

I would still look into using blender in some way. You could have PTEX and sculpting and animation all done inside of your editor maybe... at least it's worth a serious look. I think you'd be able to change the interface into anything you wanted. You could design it so it's free. But of course the free software wouldn't work without being connected to the commercial Leadwerks SDK.

 

Having access to blender functionality would mean that the groundwork for lots of features like baking light maps in the editor itself would be possible as well as one hell of a cinematic editor.

I really can't imagine ever writing a version 4, because version 3 is being designed to be perfect.

 

That's quotable for sure

Yes. This will be great.

I really can't imagine ever writing a version 4, because version 3 is being designed to be perfect.

Famous last words.

 

The road-map and your plan sounds perfect. Now can any of us afford it?

 

ESP to JOSH: $499..........

Maybe add ribbons, ribbon particles too?

 

Looks great.

The beta will go on sale at a discounted rate when I feel the time is right.

Does this mean that if you buy the beta at a discounted price you'll get the full version for free once it's released?

 

Also, does entity movement include pathfinding? If not, will that also be included in version 3?

 

That said, I'm very happy and extremely excited about some of the upcoming features. I'm one of Leadwerk's low-skill users so I look forward to the "simple" things: networking (yay!), water/river and plenty of brief and easy to understand examples, tutorials & samples. I hope all these new features don't make things too complicated.

Does this mean that if you buy the beta at a discounted price you'll get the full version for free once it's released?

Yes.

 

Also, does entity movement include pathfinding? If not, will that also be included in version 3?

Built-in pathfinding will be supported.

Yes! Assuming the library will remain as easy-to-use as it is now (or easier - using the post-processing effects, for example, seems a little more complicated than it could be) it seems this library will have everything I could ever want.

Oh, and fingers crossed to be able to use more ground textures. I think that was the last big thing I was missing.

Any clues to what you are thinking about along the lines of networking? I would recommend using Raknet myself.

I just want entities to be synced, files to be transferred, and let the user transmit whatever raw data they want. I could spend the next year learning raknet, and still wouldn't know anything. Actually, the only things I don't know how to do myself are NAT punch-through and TCP file transfer, so I'll probably just write the commands and then let the network programmer worry about the details of implementation.

All sounds very exciting.

I will be interested to see what you do with the actual pricing though - I'm not yet sure whether I want to pay again whilst so many premium engines (CryEngine, UDK, etc) are going completely free except royalties of course. But not paying anything up front is important to indies.