Josh

Reflection? I don't follow.

Yes. In LE3 you can set which pass a material is rendered in, and keep everything in one world. MaxGUI uses the native GUI for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. It calls the Win32 API on Windows.

Yes.

They could also install the demo and use it for 30 days.

This brings up a good question. For LE3 what I might do is have a simple model viewer that is free, and then the more advanced tools are part of the full SDK.

You can't create a Linux host for LE2. LE3 will *probably* support Linux, and supports a no-render mode, so you can write a dedicated server that doesn't require a GPU.

None come close. I guess I am picky that way.

The cost of LE2 now + LE3 upgrade later is less than the cost of buying LE3 when it comes out. I can't say more than that yet because the price has not been decided beyond that.

Yes, it works. The capacity depends on your bandwidth, what information you are passing, and how frequently you are sending it. I'm afraid I can't tell you a precise number of units it can handle, because that will vary a lot from game to game.

The link you posted above goes to a third-party website where someone made a simple visualization program. You are free to do the same with Leadwerks. The Leadwerks Engine SDK tools are not freeware.

Install MinGW: http://sourceforge.net/downloads/mingw/Automated%20MinGW%20Installer/MinGW%205.1.6/ Install CodeSourcery: http://www.codesourcery.com/sgpp/lite/arm/portal/package6491/public/arm-none-linux-gnueabi/arm-2010q1-202-arm-none-linux-gnueabi.exe Install Android SDK: http://dl.google.com/android/android-sdk_r06-windows.zip Check Settings > "Force https://... sources to be fetched using http://...", then restart the installer. Install Java JDK (cookies required to get to next screen): http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk6-jsp-136632.html Install Eclipse: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/technology/epp/downloads/release/galileo/SR2/eclipse-java-galileo-SR2-win32.zip Install ADT plugin for Eclipse: http://developer.android.com/sdk/eclipse-adt.html#installing Configure the plugin: http://developer.android.com/sdk/eclipse-adt.html#preparing Hello World Tutorial: http://developer.android.com/guide/tutorials/hello-world.html

Not if the hair is something other than a regular mesh. If it's just an animated mesh, that's fine too.

The reason C++ development is slower is that it usually requires more characters to communicate the same thing. The other reason is that C++ compilers, especially MSVC, are much slower than the BlitzMax compiler. No amount of experience will compensate for those two factors. Other than that and some memory handling issues, I find the two languages to be pretty much the same. Neither satisfies me completely, but they're both usable for the tasks they are good at.

If you want to make your own model viewer for your artists to use, that is fine. The SDK tools are part of the SDK, and are only for use by licensed developer. The Leadwerks Engine SDK is a product for both programmers and artists, so owning a license doesn't allow you to give away the SDK to artists. If they're just making models or textures, they may not even need to do anything special for the engine, if they can send you a .psd or .max file.

I'm making good progress on LE3 now. First I had to write basic functionality for things like strings and file access. It was tedious, but now that it's done I've got a nice library of functions that make programming all that much easier. The string commands include Trim(), Split(), ExtractExt(), StripDir(), etc. I know the Boost library has some functionality like this, but I'd like to avoid relying on third party libs whenever possible. I've also got the file system working, with a FileFactory class that can be extended to handle internet or other files. The commands are simple and easy to use: Stream* stream = ReadFile("myfile.txt"); int n = stream->ReadInt(); delete stream; The regular file commands work for .pak file reading as well. These features will also be useful for Codewerks, my meta language that uses C++ compilers. I have put development of this on hold for now, but I am still very interested in picking it back up again at a later date. It's nice to see that everything I originally envisioned for that will work just fine. The OpenGL 3/4 renderer is started. The changes from OpenGL 2.1 to the latest version are pretty minor. Since I already know OpenGL pretty well, I don't think the LE3 renderer will be too hard at all. The texture class is working. Each texture has one or more "frames" for animated textures. So far everything should be cross-platform compatible, but I'll be picking up an iMac pretty soon so I can try it out on MacOS. I'm going to use XCode on Mac and Visual Studio on Windows. I'll probably use Code::Blocks or CodeLite for Linux. I'm comfortable with C++, and have enough knowledge of it now to finish the project. So I guess to sum it up, this week marks the end of the learning and experimenting phase, and the start of actual coding. Coding LE3 in C++ is about the same as coding it in BlitzMax, although a bit slower. The point is I am just dealing with my own code and design instead of worrying about learning new conventions, so I think things will speed up now. Thanks for all your ideas and feedback in the feature requests forum. Some really good suggestions have come from the community that I will incorporate in LE3. On a final note, LOL Week was a tremendous success. Here are some of my favorite images that were posted.

With the firepit you would have an emitter, a light, and a physics body you attach to the mesh via the 3D interface, and then save as a prefab, so it would appear in the editor the same. The only difference would be the light brightness modulation, but maybe I will build some different light flicker modes into the engine and make it a light setting.

From your perspective, it will be the same as it is now, the editor will just detect changes. There won't be a live constantly running Lua state. Instead, the properties for an entity class will be mostly built-in, and the Lua properties you define will be loaded when switch to game mode. I think Scintilla does have this capability, I just haven't tried it yet.

There won't be any command or structural changes to LE2, although new features are still being added. LE3 is a whole new engine with a new approach. The goal of LE2 was to provide a programming SDK for programmers that was higher-level than OpenGL and was still flexible. LE3 is going to have a lot more built-in features and systems. My goal is to have you get straight to game programming, instead of messing around with GUIs, AI, etc. I also want to start producing games myself with it.

That's already done. There'll just be a standalone script editor, or you can use Notepad or whatever. It's nice because the script editor is running in a separate process, so it stays fast and responsive. I'm already using Scintilla.

There's a small update to version 2.40 available that adds this command. C++: void SetWorldCullRange(float near, float medium, float far); BlitzMax: SetWorldCullRange(near:Float, medium:Float, float:Float); Lua: world:SetCullRange( near, medium, far ) Sets the distances for entity culling. This property can be controlled with the environment>atmosphere entity in the editor.

I don't see any way Blender helps me. It doesn't help in a technical sense, because I can't decipher code someone else wrote. It doesn't help me in a sales approach, because I don't have large numbers of people asking for me to support it. It doesn't help me financially, because the Blender staff isn't offering me money for my services. I just downloaded the program again. There's no 64-bit installer. I can't figure out how the camera moves. I found a "camera fly mode" and now the world is flipping around. If there are examples included with the program, I can't find them because there is a weird file browser I can't figure out. I'm not being harsh or opinionated when I say Blender's interface is bad. It's objectively horrible. I mean, I can either not offer my assessment of it (which I have done until now), I can lie and say it is good, or I can tell the truth and say it is really bad. There might be other features that are fantastic, but I will never see them because the basics are missing. I like the idea of Blender. I even like GMax, but the MD3 export has limited precision. Maybe someone on Blender's staff will take my criticism or someone else's to heart and change their design approach.

You can just drag an .obj or whatever onto the editor window, and if the file isn't already in the game path somewhere, the editor will copy the file to the Models folder, convert it to GMF, and create an instance of it in the scene.

When was the last time you renamed your shaders folder? My take on the abstract file system is this: -It creates ambiguity, which in general is bad. -The LE3 editor displays the directory hierarchy, so we have a new focus on that. -It was mostly good for grabbing pak files, but I have proposed an alternative way of handling that. The command would probably be something like RegisterPackFile(path) or RegisterPackFiles(folderpath) to just recursively register any pack files in a directory. Materials would still load textures first from the path relative to the material file, then from the root path.

What does cross platform mean? Windows, Mac, Linux? With fallbacks for the fixed-function pipeline?

I like the last shot best. The random colors are very realistic, especially the blue painted wood. Reality isn't nearly as color-coordinated as games. I would try to work more color into the buildings. I don't know why, but for some reason I want to see some trim with really garish orange paint and bright colors.