Josh

Here's what I have planned for the LE3 file system: -Editor displays paths in a tree structure. Objects are categorized by folder hierarchy instead_of_names_like_this. -Abstract file system is gone. -Pak files are treated as folders. All file commands work on both real files and pak files, except pak files are read-only. I thought about making pak files writable so WriteFile() would actually work, but do you really want to have to periodically defragment your pak files? I don't. So if you have a pak file called "Models.pak" and a file in it called "house.gmf" you can call this command to load it: LoadMesh("Models\house.gmf") If a real file exists at the path "Models\house.gmf" it is loaded preferentially. In other words, pak files act just like folders, but if a real file exists in the specified path, it will be loaded instead of the pak file. A method of registering either a single pak file or all pak files in a directory will still be needed, so that file names can be retrieved quickly. The hierarchy shown in the editor will display pak file folders and files just like regular folders and files. If a pak file is updated, it will reload the directory structure the same way directories get dynamically reloaded. Any thoughts on this?

85.71% of Steam users' computers can run Leadwerks Engine:

If Ton Roosendal has a lot of money and is interested in Leadwerks, then I might be interested, but he hasn't contacted me yet. All I ever hear about Blender is that the interface sucks. Over and over, for years and years. I think I downloaded it once a few years ago, and if I remember right it was just a blank window with some squares at the bottom or side, and I couldn't make it do anything. I can't exactly remember, but the point is people generally don't have time to learn something they aren't even sure they want to know, so if you don't convince them right away you will lose them. So in very crude terms, if they can't even solve their most remedial problem of having a poor interface, it's not something I feel very optimistic about. And no one from the Blender company(?) (is there one?) is asking for my help or offering me anything. So why would I want to try to learn their code when I can write my own that is at most better and at least understandable by me? Blender may have some good design ideas that I can use, but as far as entwining my company's future with a product that they can't even give away for free, I don't see any reason I would want to do that.

Who does?

To answer the OP's question, I'm not really interested in delving through the Blender code, and I don't think it would be moral to take their open-source code and turn it into a commercial product.

Please update your SDK. I believe this problem has been fixed here: http://leadwerks.com/werkspace/index.php?/tracker/issue-140-canvas-resize-exception-access-violation/

There is no demo for version 2.40, but I need to make one soon.

Click on one road node and hold the mouse button down. Drag to the other and release the button, and the two will be linked. It sounds like the script for the road node is missing.

I recently solved a problem I believe is causing this behavior in the older demo version. I am pretty sure the full version 2.40 has fixed this problem, since we experienced something very similar on the same hardware.

Okay, now you're talking. I'm leaning towards including it, even though I wasn't before today. It will be a significant amount of work, but it would be a lot of fun to have 3DWS built into the editor. The geometry this produces is all unique, which is why it used to be used for lightmapped levels. It sucks for anything with repeating geometry, and it sucks for detailed buildings, but it's good for indoor scenes and simple buildings. I don't think tessellation will be able to handle the hard edges of CSG blocks. I'll have to research it some more to see. If it works the way I am picturing, I might be able to add some dummy triangles to the edges...but then you also have the problem of the tessellated edges not lining up, and gaps appearing.

I believe some of the motivation for this request,from no one in particular, is simply because Unreal uses it. I've seen this approach vary in popularity based on what game engine is popular at the moment. I want to analyze the usefulness of this approach for the long term future, to try to predict whether it will be genuinely worthwhile, or if it will just fall out of fashion.

Two years ago everyone was saying the exact opposite; that CSG was ancient technology and I should get with the times. I'm not interested in mimicking what Epic happens to be doing at any given moment. I'm interested in what gives our users the best results. There may be good reasons to support this, but if you tell me I should do it because Epic is, that is probably the worst line of reasoning you could use.

You guys are going to be the death of me. It sounds like you want 3D World Studio and Leadwerks Editor combined into one super editor. I will admit that I like the idea of having our old 3DWS approach to level editing available, especially if the CSG solids can have chunky tessellated bricks sticking out of them.

Yes, that will be implemented.

What is it that you were expecting different? Doesn't that confirm that you can load unique instances of media files? The design I described also allows you to alter the vertex data of a unique mesh without affecting other instances of the same file.

It's a problem with LuaJIT. I need to recompile it with the max string length increased.

Looks like you didn't set the global fw object.

I'm working on the texture class right now, and for that I am using an optional flag to load a unique copy of the texture: LoadTexture( "wall01.dds", MEDIA_UNIQUE ) The unique flag will cause the engine to always load an original copy of the file from the disk, instead of creating a copy of an existing item. This same approach can probably be used with shaders, sounds, meshes, etc. However, unique meshes will not be instanced, so you would only want to use this when you need it. The default behavior will be the same as LE2.

hahahaha We know where the bugs are. They are in the areas north, south, east, and west in the code. Since BMX supports just about every data type C++ does, it's not a problem. You can probably even access the C++ fields and methods with BMX.

It's always good to look at all sides, even if you don't change your mind. For the engine, there are clear benefits to using C++. I don't think this is the case for the editor. All converters are still just command-line utilities stored in the "Tools" folder. The editor calls the process and reads back the console output to tell when it's done. This means the converter code is separate, you can add your own converters, and if a converter crashes the whole editor won't crash.

I looked at wxWidgets but found it to be ugly, glitchy, and difficult to work with. For example, the sliding panels in Code::Blocks will cause visual errors if you make the window smaller then the panels. Using C++ for the editor would be a very bad choice. I don't think C++ is typically used to make GUI applications anymore. C# and Java are much more common. They're both slower than BMX and neither offers a cross-platform GUI that actually uses the OS controls. Using C++ for a low-level engine command set is one thing, but it would be suicide to try to write a complex GUI app with it.

If there's a viable third party GUI library that exists, why are people requesting a new one? This indicates to me the existing libraries are too difficult to use, or difficult to integrate properly.

Convenient and pretty are two different things. I love the .NET GUIs, and I wish they were used for the standard Windows GUIs, but I will be using MaxGUI, which gives the standard interface for each OS. I think you will find it very convenient. The asset importation is really good, and I am using drag-and-drop control whenever possible.

I can't find that last name anywhere. If you have a couple of email addresses he might have used or another name it could have been ordered with, please let me know. If it was a gift, someone probably ordered it with another name. If you even have their forum user name, I can use that.

Are env vars cross-platform? I have no idea if they work on Mac and Linux.